• Promo Magazine, Thursday, May 22, 2008 10:30 AM

Few would consider delivery chains like Pizza Hut and Papa John's to be Web 2.0 businesses, but the two are now locked in a battle for superior responsiveness online. Easy-to-use Web sites are no longer enough, as both chains this week have rolled out widgets that allow consumers to place orders without even opening a Web browser.

Papa John's downloadable myPapa applications, which can be placed anywhere from one's desktop to start pages in iGoogle or My Yahoo to MySpace and Facebook, allow consumers to click on the pizza box widget icon and place an order that will be sent to their nearest Papa John's location. Pizza Hut's mini-app also lets customers order quickly, reorder stored favorites from a "Pizza Playlist" and build custom orders.

Phone sales still rule at the nation's pizzerias, but online sales are becoming a crucial channel as well. Earlier this month Papa John's announced that it reached $1 billion in online sales since it first started taking orders over the Internet in 2001. Pizza Hut was quoted in a May 7 Associated Press report as saying that its online orders have grown six fold in the last three years, without giving dollar values.

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