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 Published: April 20, 2009

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — The major pizza chains now do 20% to 30% of their business online, but they want that figure to climb a lot higher, to 50%. Getting there will take some doing, but the journey offers lessons for other marketers also seeking to build their business online: Know your customers, make it easy and offer incentives.

There are good reasons for pizza purveyors to move buyers to web ordering. Online customers spend more and are more satisfied, and serving them is more efficient for each individual store. People who order online are also more likely to jump on the promotions that marketers use to drive interest in new products. Bob Kraut, VP-marketing at Pizza Hut, which expects to do $1 billion in online sales by the end of 2012 — a whopping tenfold increase from the May 2007 level of $100 million — said the online pizza buyer is more recession-proof than most.

“We’re seeing very healthy increases year over year with our web business,” he said. “I think that’s because the customer is a little higher income and has a greater connectedness to this form of ordering and tends to not be affected by the economic conditions as maybe other customers.” Pizza Hut has also begun to compete more with casual dining by offering pasta dinners with breadsticks that serve four for $15.

Rob Weisberg, Domino’s VP-multimedia marketing, said the average online buyer spends $2 more than one who orders by phone or in person. Domino’s does about 75 online orders a second, and Mr. Weisberg said the chain now has fewer employees answering the phone and more of them making pizzas. He declined to give the percentage of sales from online.

Papa John’s, which spurred its two much-larger competitors to action in the online arena several years ago, did not respond to requests for comment.