Canada’s most popular pizza delivery chain has now built out an iPad and iPhone app before touching other mobile platforms.
Pizza Pizza launched an iPad app Jan. 7 and is already taking orders for pies, pasta, and salads from users of Apple’s tablet. It previously released an iPhone app in mid-2011 and quickly received more than 100,000 orders within six months. The mobile app was awarded by the Webbys, Canadian Marketing Association, and W3. Yet after two iOS apps being released, there’s still no Android app in sight. Why?
It’s what the pizza people want, says Melody Adhami, president of Toronto-based Plastic Mobile, the mobile development firm behind the app.
“We go based on analytics, so where we see the most traffic is where we invest more energy,” she says. “The iPad traffic was ahead of the Android traffic when we started the initiative.”
Building a native app makes it easier for those mobile Web users to order pizza, she says. Plastic Mobile can focus on creating a nice user experience and took advantage of the iPad’s greater screen real estate. The first thing served up, of course, is the menu. It highlights the specials and allows the order maker to see all of Pizza Pizza’s options at once, whereas the iPhone cycled through those items using a carousel style interface.
The app has features like a visual pizza builder, one-click ordering to get the same thing you got last time, and a restaurant locater complete with GPS tracker and map. Some students can even use their meal cards to pay through the app.
The pizza chain that counts more than 600 restaurants can now also add iOS apps among its sales channels. Developing the iPad app was useful even though the iPhone app is compatible with the tablets, Adhami says.
“We thought we’d reach people at a different time,” she says. “The phone might be something they do on the go. This is a more stationary, at home device.”
No numbers are available yet on downloads for the app, but it was featured by Apple during its first week in the App Store.
Pizza Pizza’s iPad app has a visual builder tool.
Plastic Mobile was founded in 2008 and has an account office in New York. Called the “queen of apps” by others at her firm, Adhami has advice for mobile developers that expand a smartphone app to tablet size.
“It’s important to not overuse the space and clutter things,” she says.
If you’re ready for lunch, the Pizza Pizza app can be downloaded for free from the app store. You’ll have to pay for the pizza, though.
