Part 2 — Impacts of Mobile Search on Restaurant Traffic

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This is Chris Smith with HYPEsites. Over the past 10 years we have helped over 400 companies succeed online. We have recently analyzed hundreds of restaurant websites and interviewed owners, staff and consumers and are pleased to announce a new initiative to work with restaurant owners/managers to help them increase profitability by matching website marketing and functionality with consumer preferences and shopping habits.

We are breaking the information into a series of short and informative videos. Welcome to Part 2 - Impacts of Mobile Search on Restaurant Traffic.

During peak dining times 95% of website visitors for restaurants are coming from a mobile search

Most restaurant websites totally fail to take this statistic into consideration ignoring the fact that how your website looks and works on a phone can cost you up to 95% of your traffic.

Let’s look again at Cafe Frankie’s and SALT7 on a smartphone.

Cafe Frankie’s appears even more dated, but I can find most of the information again including the menu. But now we have a real issue. The menu is scaled for a larger device and has to be zoomed and scrolled to be read. 80% of all searchers get frustrated and just hit the back button to find another restaurant when they see a menu like this.

Let’s switch to SALT7. It all looks great until you get to the menu which is also totally unreadable on a smartphone.

Imagine the diner who is looking for a place to eat dinner on their smartphone while in their car. There is no chance that they can glean any useful information from your menu in the short time they have.

I would grade both of these sites “F” on a smartphone.

At least both of these sites were readable on a phone - except for the critical food menus. Consider another restaurant website. This is Baja Cantina in Boca Raton. I couldn’t even grade this site. The entire site is not mobile-friendly and nothing can be read without zooming and scrolling.

Mobile searchers have no loyalty and even less patience. Can’t find what they are looking for, or worse, finding it and it not being easily viewable and readable - bye bye. They are on to the next restaurant.

TAKEAWAY: If your restaurant menu is not easily readable and navigable on a smartphone you will lose up to 95% of the consumers who visit your site, even from visitors who searched specifically for you.
Successful mobile search is critical as 90% of all restaurant searches result in same day visits or takeout orders. 64% of these searchers eat/order within one hour and an additional 26% do so within the same day.

This is Chris Smith from Hypesites. Thanks for watching Impacts of Mobile Search on Restaurant Traffic. In our next video we will address how to Cost-Effectively Address Online Ordering.