Where are the customers? It's lunchtime on a weekday and you are a short walk from a nearby office building. Your counter should have a line out the door. Instead, your shop is empty but for the occasional passerby who stops in to purchase a single slice to go. You feel as if your shop is invisible, and maybe it is.

There are several marketing tactics you might be using now. You may be mailing flyers, subscribing to coupon packs and other mail services. You might be distributing door hangers and even gotten a web site. Perhaps you are considering radio or local TV spots and newspaper inserts.

If you haven't been overly impressed with the results of these tactics, you may be missing one very important factor.

What are the Big Chains doing to reach their customers these days? They are pouring money into promoting their online ordering. Look at recent ads and television commercials and you'll see the same message: Order Online. Visit any of the big chains websites and their online ordering is the first thing you see.

All of the big chain companies have moved to put themselves where their customers shop and do business.

Virtually everyone sitting in an office has a computer in front of them. They are used to doing business online. They use the Internet for communications, research and business.

And it's not just office workers. Teens and the Generation X crowd have grown up with email, web browsing and instant messaging. For them the Internet is a way of life they have always known.

With both your customers and the market leaders showing the way, now is the best time for you to do the same.

Now It Is Your Turn To Put Your Menu on Every PC in town.

OnlineWaitress ordering is easy and affordable for the independent pizza shop. You don't need any complicated or expensive installation. All you need is an email address, if you do not have one we will create it for you free of charge. Subscribe to online ordering, and begin getting the word out to your customers.

Once your customers learn that online ordering is available at your shop, they'll do the rest. Your customers place their online orders themselves. The orders are automatically emailed to your restaurant in a 2-ply format: One is used as a receipt for your client and the other is for your records. All you do is bring the email slip to the kitchen and make the food just as the customer ordered.