Cold Spring Tavern’s Homepage

Cold Spring Tavern, located in Santa Barbara CA is a delightfully quaint, antique-filled, mountainside Western saloon serving local wine & American fare including wild game. They have recently launched their dazzling new website designed by yours truly — Restaurant Engine!

Their new website was built custom tailored for their needs and features captivating photos of the restaurant’s unique atmosphere ambiance. Cold Spring Tavern’s owners worked closely with our developers to create a website that is not only functional but that also matches the aesthetics of their establishment by using carefully selected colors on top of our custom “Primo” template.

Cold Spring Tavern offers a wide range of delicious food from their ‘Charbroiled New Zealand Venison’ to their ‘Jack Daniels Pecan Pie’. Customers can enjoy these tasty dishes in their cozy dining room or outside sitting at one of their many picnic tables. With the help of the Restaurant Engine development team and our unique software, Cold Spring Tavern’s menu page presents all the great dishes they have to offer on one easy to read website.

Cold Spring Tavern’s Gallery Page

For Cold Spring Tavern a well-organized page that displays their upcoming entertainment events was a must-have for their website. Cold Spring Tavern uses Restaurant Engine’s events plugin to manage and display all the fun-filled events Cold Spring Tavern is hosting and custom contact forms for patrons to book their next event at Cold Spring Tavern. Their site features a gallery page showing all the great food and fun that Cold Spring Tavern offers. Cold Spring Tavern worked closely with our team to build their unique website. We received great photos and content from the Cold Spring team to add to their website during the initial included setup process. Any future updates to their website will also be handled for free as part of our hosting fee.

Restaurant Engine is beyond excited to be working with the lovely people at Cold Spring Tavern and encourages anyone in the Santa Barbara area to visit their enchanting Tavern for brunch, lunch or dinner!

Technology is changing eating out.  The use of mobile phones and online access is changing how customers find and experience eating at restaurants.  But what exactly is happening out there and how can restaurants grasp onto these trends to improve their business and build better relationships with the customers?

Hello, this is Drew Adams, owner of Restaurant Engine.  Restaurant Engine will have a booth at the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Expo on August 29 – 30 in Raleigh, North Carolina and I will be speaking on a panel dedicated to Restaurant Technology.

In the run-up to the being on the panel, I thought I would like to outline three trends in restaurant technology especially as it pertains to online and mobile usage and how your restaurant can leverage them.

Trend: Mobile search

In 2015 Google announced that mobile searches had overtaken desktop searches in 10 countries including the US and Japan.

Google says the results of a survey of online mobile searching shows that 55% of people using mobile devices for research want to purchase within an hour and 83% want to purchase within a day!

Of the people searching for restaurants specifically 70% considered making a purchase and 54% actually made a purchase.  For restaurants being seen or shown during what Google calls these “micro-moments”  is a huge opportunity to gain new business.  

Consider this story from a typical restaurant customer.

“If I am in a town I do not know I do an internet search, “best restaurants Charleston”, and I always go to Trip Advisor…sometimes Yelp….and ask for the top restaurants, read the ratings, check the budget, often then I will go to the restaurant’s website check out the menu, see the ambiance, and sometimes I call directly. If it is before hours I will use Open Table to check availability and make a reservation. If there is not availability and I really want to go I will call the restaurant. I do all this on my phone.”

But the most important part of the diner’s description above is probably, “I do all this on my phone.”  Think about that.  Checking location, menu, reviews, setting reservations – things that back in the 90s would have taken several conversations among friends, a subscription to Zagat, a phone book, and, yes, a push button phone – all done now on a 5 inch x 3 inch screen in the palm of a hand!

According to Google’s Think Insights, 59% of those researching online will visit the business’s website and the ones who actually make a purchase come an average of 6 times to the website.  An OpenTable survey says that 86 % of diners regularly check out menus online before they dine out.  

The bottom line is that it all re-inforces the upmost importance of having a good mobile website.  And in a world with Yelp and TripAdvisor and the like, the restaurant’s website is the restauranteur’s chance to “make the case” to the customer directly on why they should visit the restaurant and give them an idea of what they will experience when they come.

Studies have shown the most enjoyable part of a vacation is the anticipation.  Considering this, I would propose that the restaurant’s website has another function, and that is to set diner excitement.  In doing that, you are actually creating the first moment of the diner’s experience and influencing the overall enjoyment of the meal.

What technology to use to be a part of the trend

• Make sure you have a website that is optimized for mobile.
• Make sure you are in Google Location.
• Make sure the basics like your address and phone number are easily accessible.
• Use images that convey the experience the customer can have coming to your restaurant. 

Trend: Mobile apps

An OpenTable survey earlier this year found that 56% of consumers said they were “very unlikely” or “unlikely” to download an app for an individual restaurant, compared with 6%  who said they were very likely to download such apps.

But, that being said, it’s impossible to ignore the mammoth success of the Starbucks app.  Consider these statistics:

• 16% of total transactions in quarter ending December 2014 were paid for by the app
• 21% of total transaction in quarter ending December 2015 were paid for by the app

In fact, customers have preloaded $1.2 billion dollars onto their Starbucks accounts, which makes Starbucks the same size as a healthy mid-sized bank!

Its clear that customer will use apps.  Mobile apps give customers several advantages that they love including:

• Gaining rewards for purchases
• Pre-order ability (avoid lines)
• Quickly finding locations close by

Likewise restauranteurs also gain from being able to:

• Reward repeat customers
• Increase efficiency
• Have a detailed order history data on customers
• Send App notifications – via GeoFencing or Beacons

Clearly, it is working for franchise like Starbucks, but how important is having an app for single independent restaurants?  I believe this questions is playing out in the marketplace today.  There are some relatively cheap options so you can experiment with having an app if you want one.  If you have take-out and delivery or a chain with multiple locations, I would advise experimenting with one and see how it affects your total take-out volume and speeds adoption of your loyalty programs.

What technology to use to be a part of the trend

Here are a few ways to tackle the app building task:

• Hire your own app developer and incorporate the features you want.
• Use a third party solution that has pre-built features.  Here are some companies that offer these services.  
  • Levelup
  • MojoBistro
  • OpenDining

Trend: Online Ordering

Panera, which defined online ordering as ordering done via kiosks, mobile or the web, says that in cafes that have been converted to the 2.0 model specifically, they account for more than 20 percent of retail sales, and it reaches 30 percent for 2.0 cafes converted more than a year, he said.

LevelUp research indicates that customers who have placed an order online visit the restaurant 67 % more frequently than customers who haven’t.

Our partner OpenDining says that online orders are 22% larger than comparable call-in orders and also add on average an 18% increase in total, non-dine-in orders.

Online ordering gives advantage for consumers to

• Skip lines
• Saved preset likes and dislikes
• Get items delivered

Online ordering has increasingly been a no-brainer for restaurants that offer take-out or delivery. 

What technology to use to be a part of the trend

Online ordering consists of subscribing to online ordering provider and then putting your menu into their system. 

Online orders can be received via fax, text or email as a baseline, but even better is if they are connected directly to your point-of-sale systems on site so the orders can appear in your systems as if keyed in by waitstaff.  This is supported by most point-of-sale system.  Here at Restaurant Engine we partner with Open Dining to provide online ordering features and then we integrate the ordering into a restaurant’s website.

Conclusion

Use of online technology in the process of eating out has been increasing and signs show will continue to increase.  Customers want to use mobile phones and online media to locate and research restaurants, make reservations, order their meals, pay for those meals and earn rewards.  Keeping up with these technology trends can be daunting but  can reap big rewards for companies with increased traffic, order size and customer satisfaction.

It’s time to get off the fence and take action on your website.

Today’s restaurant customers expect your restaurant to work on their desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. They expect a seamless experience among all of their devices.

Are you providing this for your restaurant customers? If you don’t have a mobile responsive site, you’re losing patrons.

A loss of patrons means a loss of business. So, how do you remedy the situation? You build a mobile-friendly website.

In the not so distant past, web designers created two sites – one for mobile and one for desktop use. That trend has rapidly disappeared as designers found the task cumbersome and time consuming.

Enter the mobile responsive site – the website that delivers at multiple resolutions.

Defining the Mobile Responsive Site

There’s a saying that’s been around for a while: “Content is like water.”

Translated into more digestible bits, this is what that statement means:

• Put water into the cup, it becomes the cup. Put water into the bottle, it becomes the bottle. Put water into the teacup, it becomes the teacup.

You can use this analogy to define a mobile responsive site. It becomes what the viewer needs it to be, and resizes with each device.

When using responsive web design, you ensure that your website provides an optimal viewing experience and interactivity across a wide size range of devices. Responsive sites are easy to read and navigate on all devices with little effort on the customer’s part. (tweet this) There’s limited scrolling, panning and re-sizing.

What’s more, Google’s Mobilegeddon began in April 2015, and it continues still. This is when Google decided to rank mobile-friendly web pages higher in its mobile search results, thus penalizing non-responsive sites.

With more than 50% of web searches performed on mobile, your patrons will quickly scramble away from your site if it’s not easy to navigate. As the months go on, it could be devastating for your restaurant.

Aren’t sure if your site is mobile-friendly? Visit Google’s Test Tool.

Mobile Users Don’t Want This

Your patrons don’t want to navigate your desktop site on their smartphone. That being said, they also don’t want to navigate a poorly-designed mobile site.

When creating your responsive site, look at how things stack up. If it makes more sense for the photo to stack on top of the text, make sure you set your site up the right way.

You’ll annoy your patrons by serving up some of these things on your mobile website:

• A mobile site that is different than your desktop site.
• A site that looks bad on a smartphone.
• Text that is too small to read.
• Navigation that doesn’t work well.
• When they can’t find your hours.
• When they can’t see your address and click to call phone number.

Your patrons want you to meet their needs with a mobile-friendly website.

Mobile Users Do Want This

Now that we’ve defined the mobile responsive site, reminded you that Google will penalize your site in mobile searches if it isn’t friendly for smartphones, and discussed mobile users’ pet peeves, let’s talk about what your patrons do want.

In other words, let’s discuss the things that will keep you from losing them.

Not only do your customers want information such as your phone, location, and menu, they want it to be easily accessible. (tweet this)

For example, if they’re in their car looking for your address, they want to access your site and get the needed info quickly. They also want to find your phone number easily. With that number, they want to be able to click and call.

Not only is it important that your site be well-designed and responsive, but it must be informative and easily navigated from any device.

With more than 207 million smartphone users in the US in 2016, you’ve got to meet your patrons where they are. With most people carrying smartphones, your patrons want to navigate your site with a simple swipe of their finger.

They want drop-down menus and intuitive navigation.

We want to emphasize again how important a mobile responsive restaurant is for your site by telling you that 90% of mobile searches are for local, area restaurants. That’s a lot of business headed your way. You don’t want to lose these patrons.

According to a report, 61% of mobile users are more likely to contact a local business with a mobile site. This means you, and it means you’ll lose patrons if you aren’t meeting their needs with a responsive site.

Your dining customers also aren’t nearly as ready to give your restaurant a free pass when it comes to a website that doesn’t render well on their smartphone. Today’s digital generation, especially the Millennials, wants what they want when they want it.

And, that means your website in a format that works for them.

Online Ordering Made Easy

When talking about meeting your patrons’ needs with a mobile responsive site, we must mention mobile friendly online ordering.

According to a study, nearly one in four restaurants offer online ordering. That’s great, especially if their online ordering pages are responsive.

If you currently need to redesign your website to make it mobile friendly, this is one area to pay special attention to. Restaurants will start to see their online orders made on smartphones increase, and you want to be ready for this today.

The bonus of online ordering is that you can interact with your patrons in multiple ways. You cater to them on their terms.

Online ordering has the added benefit of increasing order size because your customers have more time to browse and less pressure to order.

Plus, online responsive ordering allows busy families to pre-order meals and pick them up at specified times that fit their needs. This leaves you more tables inside your restaurant and increases your bottom line.

To Conclude

Mobile Internet usage has skyrocketed in the last few years. So, what happens when smartphone users hit your restaurant website, and it isn’t mobile responsive?

Most likely, they leave.

There is no more grace period. The waiting game is over. Mobile is here to stay and growing every day. To ensure your website looks equally good on all devices including iPhones, Androids and the many versions of each on the market, you need a responsive website. Now.

Good luck, and remember, you will reap the benefits from a mobile responsive site. You’ll gain, and keep, your patrons.

Need a new mobile responsive restaurant website?

At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites with dynamite online menus. Contact us today for your free website consultation. We are here to help you update your website and stand out in the crowd so you can stay ahead of your competition with your restaurant website.

Images:  Visual Hunt / vic_burton and VisualHunt / CC BY-SA

Increase your orders by integrating online ordering into Facebook and email.

There is a big buzz phrase in the restaurant industry as of late:

• Online Ordering

The big buzz in the restaurant industry is online ordering. (tweet this)

Those two simple words are having a tremendous impact on the success of restaurants.

In this day-and-age, people are relying on the Internet more and more to simplify their lives. With online ordering, restaurants are helping with this simplification. Imagine having to run a million errands, but still having to feed your family and not having the time to cook a meal?

While you may not have time to cook a meal, you probably have the time to look up your favorite restaurant on your computer or mobile device and place an order. Online ordering is certainly something that countless people appreciate the convenience of; and it is something that restaurant owners appreciate as well, as it helps to increase the number of pickup and delivery orders and increases the average order size. Plus, it boosts customer loyalty (and the more loyal customers a restaurant has, the more repeat orders and the more success a restaurant will have).

So, now that you know the benefits of online ordering, hopefully you have integrated it into your website. However, your website isn’t the only place where you can integrate online ordering – you can also integrate it into your email marketing and social media campaigns.

Imagine how many more orders will be placed when your customers can place them directly from their email or through your social media pages?

But, how do you go about integrating online ordering into social media and email? While it may sound like a difficult task, it’s actually not as hard as you might think.

Ordering Through Facebook

Of all of the social media platforms available, Facebook is the most feasible to use for placing and filling online orders. As soon as your customers visit your Facebook page, they will have the ability to place an order directly from it, and given the fact that there are literally millions of people who use Facebook each and every day, this could translate into some pretty impressive orders for your restaurant.

To incorporate online ordering on your Facebook page, you have to include a Facebook Ordering App on your page. Once your customers click on this app, they can see your menu items, select what they want to order and even pay for their order directly from your Facebook page.

Once the order is placed, thanks to the ingenious design of a Facebook ordering app, the order is sent directly to your restaurant and your staff can start preparing the order. Once the order is placed, all your customers have to do is pick it up. Talk about easy!
And, given the beauty of sharing on Facebook, when a customer places an order through your page, that order goes viral, so to speak; his or her friends can see that an order was placed, which will naturally create more interest in your restaurant.

Email Ordering

Offering online ordering through your email marketing campaign is also quite simple. Whenever you send out an email to the people on your mailing list, don’t forget to include a link to your online ordering option.

Entice your audience by including high quality images of your menu items in your emails.

Of course, you’re going to want to make sure the email talks about your amazing food options. Include pictures of your food to make the emails even more enticing. Somewhere in the email, include a call to action: Something like, ‘Placing your order has never been easier’ and include a link directly to your online ordering system. Once accessed, your customers can place their orders directly from their computer.

Online ordering can boost your success; integrating online ordering through your social media and email campaigns can skyrocket that success. (tweet this)

Are you interested in learning how you can bring your online ordering to Facebook and email? Contact us today and we will get you set up in no time.

Images Klearchos Kapoutsis and Keith Slagerman

Increase your sales with mobile-friendly online ordering.

There’s no denying that you want your restaurant to be as successful as possible, and a lot of your success is measured by the amount of sales that you do.

If you are looking for a way to increase your sales, there is a surefire way to do so:

Online Ordering

Online ordering has been proven to exponentially increase the number of both pickup and delivery orders that restaurants receive, as well as increase the average order size and customer loyalty.

While offering online ordering will drive up your sales, making online ordering mobile-friendly will drive them up even further.

Mobile-Friendly Online Ordering

What is a mobile-friendly online ordering system? Basically, it allows your customers to view your menu from their mobile device with ease. Once they have chosen the items that they wish to order, they can place their order directly from their mobile device. And, not only can your customers place orders from their mobile devices, but they can pay for them, as well. Once they order is placed, all they need to do is head to your restaurant and pick it up.

When you consider the fact that nearly half of all of the visits to your restaurant’s website come from mobile devices, making online ordering mobile-friendly just makes sense. (tweet this)

Here are the steps to implementing Mobile-Friendly Online Ordering:

Step 1: Setup A Mobile-Friendly Online Ordering System

The first step is to get your mobile-friendly online ordering system setup.

You could go with a completely custom setup for your website, but that can take a lot of time and a lot of money. It might be worth it, but the other alternative is to go with a system like the one we offer at Restaurant Engine (see: Restaurant Engine Online Ordering). You make a few decisions on design and the rest is setup for you.

The online ordering can integrate with your restaurant’s ordering system so you can easily take orders from your website and put them in with in-store orders.

With Restaurant Engine, your online ordering system is also mobile-friendly. This means that your website, menu and online ordering system can all be easily understood and accessed on tablets and smartphones.

Step 2: Optimize Your Online Menu

Next, you’ll want to optimize your menu for your customers, which will also optimize your menu for search.

How do you do this?

There are a couple things to keep in mind.

First, you probably have great titles and names for your menu items. It’s part of what makes you unique. These unique titles are fine, but if you have a unique title you’ll struggle to get people to be able to search for your menu items. People search for things like “Pepperoni Pizza” and they’ll struggle to find yours if you call “Tony’s Hot Pep Pizza”.

You can still optimize your menu with great descriptions. Add a great description and use the language that your customer would use. Describe each menu item in great details and really sell your website visitors on the item. The description will also make it easy for customers to know what they’re buying and easier for them to find through search and social media.

See the descriptions for the unique titles on the Red Tractor menu.

Menu Item Mantra: Titles Tell, Descriptions Sell (tweet this)

Step 3: Keep Your Menu Updated

Finally, keep your online menu updated. Make sure old items are removed and that every new item is added. It will make your online ordering system more efficient and effective. It will also make sure that your website visitors are enticed to buy.

When you add new items to the menu or if you’re doing a promotion you could add a special graphic or image to the other pages on your site to promote. You could put something on the homepage that says, “Brand New Pizza! Order Online Now!”

Train your staff or get in a habit for removing old items and getting new items up as soon as possible. And remember to add great descriptions where you tell the story of the menu item while using the language your customer would use.

Conclusion

We’ve been seeing great success with our clients with mobile-friendly online ordering. More than other industries, the restaurant industry has customers that are on their phones. Your customers are likely using their phone to find information about eating out. They might be at the office, hanging out with friends or even on their sofa at home.

Getting your menu online and making it easy to find and read online can get customers to your interest, get them interested in your offerings and get them to order right from your website.

Do you want to upgrade your mobile ordering so that it is mobile-friendly? If so, contact us today and we will be more than happy to get you setup with the Restaurant Engine online ordering system!

Image jseliger2

Customers can find everything they need to know about your food truck on a mobile website.

Mobile websites aren’t for everybody, but they’re ideal to have in the restaurant business.

Combine that with a moving restaurant, and a marketing strategy for mobile devices is an absolute necessity!

We’re talking about food truck mobile websites.

Here’s seven food truck marketing ideas for those seven-digit devices…

1. Optimize!

Because you’re operating from a remote location, people will often be searching your site from a  mobile device. Your first step should be making sure your food truck’s website always looks professional on smart phones and tablets. This means the look and feel of your site should change to suit the features of a smaller device (ie. smaller screen, different navigation format).

Optimizing for mobile doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. When you use the right design platform with built-in mobile compatibility, the template switches automatically for each device.

2. Make mobile sharing easy

Give your customers reason to tell friends about your food truck. Offer an amazing new food item.

Use social media buttons on your website to make sharing easy from a mobile device. Add key “share” buttons for Facebook and Twitter to the top of your mobile page, and with every new blog post. This encourages people to share your content without having to copy and paste anything – a real benefit when working with mobile devices.

3. Broadcast your location

Embed a Google Map on your mobile website’s home page to broadcast your location in real-time. (tweet this)

Always drop a new pin when you change your location, so it’s easy for customers to find you on their mobile devices.

Updating from your smart phone is especially useful in cases of surprise schedule or location changes. If there’s an unexpected complication that pushes your truck to a different spot, it’s easy to keep your customers informed on-the-go.

4. Host a scavenger hunt

Pick a spot to set up your truck, then send out a location clue via social media the night before. Offer a free meal to the first person to find you and broadcast your location using their mobile device. This is a fun and creative way to get your customers excited about your truck. It also broadcasts your name and location to a whole new audience of potential customers.

5. Text campaigns

Get personal with your biggest fans – ask them to sign up for texts with exclusive news and specials. You can even have customers sign up via text message by having them send a code to a specific number.

After you’ve built a decent following, send out important announcements, flash deals and discount codes to your SMS subscribers. Remember that timing is everything with texting – catch people right before they’re deciding on lunch or dinner plans. Always offer something special to make it worth being on the list!

6. Mobile photos

Photos are a great way to engage customers using mobile devices. They don’t require any reading, and they look great on small screens. Get the Instagram and Pinterest apps to share spontaneous photos from mobile locations. Share photos to your Facebook and Twitter profiles using mobile uploads. The more spontaneous the better.

You should always tag your location, or any other special theme, for each photo. (tweet this)

Think about how each photo connects to a street intersection or even a nearby business or event (eg. a music festival). This ties you to the larger community album for that tag, and gives your truck more visibility.

7. Encourage mobile check-ins and feedback

I was once sitting with a friend at a food truck, when he took his first bite and said “I have to tell people about this now.” He immediately whipped out his iPhone and started typing a review on Yelp. Sure, my friends can be especially crazy about food, but plenty of people feel inspired to write a review or check-in the moment they fall in love with a restaurant.

Print and post your website and social media profiles in a visible spot on your truck. Yelp discourages restaurants from directly asking for reviews, but having the Yelp logo somewhere on your truck will give a gentle reminder. Even if it’s just a quick mobile check-in on Facebook, this gets the word about your food truck out to more people.

When forming a mobile strategy for your truck, it helps to work with a powerful design template.

Need a website for your food truck business?

Restaurant Engine has a solution built specifically for food trucks. See it now.

Photos by Charleston City Paper and Buzz Times Business

Bar visitors can share your mobile website with their friends.

Most smart-phone users have encountered a site not optimized for mobile. The scrolling is off and the navigation is a mess. Want to click on a hyperlink? You’ll feel like a horse trying to thread a needle.

Why is this still happening! Mobile searches are still rising while desktop searches decline! Every business site should be optimized for mobile.

Bars and restaurants have site styles that are perfect for the small, basic format of a smart phone or tablet. Bar sites especially are usually simple, full of visuals and use bold and regularly updated content.

For bars and restaurants, bold and fresh content are perfect for mobile users. (tweet this)

Don’t miss out on online traffic. Think of these four scenarios where your bar’s mobile website is crucial…

1. After-dinner drinks

People often decide to head to the bar when they’re out in some group activity. It could be after a classy dinner or a paintball fest. If the vibe is good, the group decides to extend the night. The conversation goes something like;

“I heard about this awesome place called Flannigans!”

“Yeah I think they have half-priced Mojitos”

“Is that on tonight?”

“I dunno let’s check…”

… someone whips out their cell to do a local search.

This is a great opportunity to reach new patrons.

Optimize your website for mobile to reach out to new customers. Make sure nightly specials are updated and easy to find. Add a quick link to your menu, and some professional photos to draw them in.

Remember that the look and feel of your mobile site have a powerful impact on spontaneous decisions.

2. Mobile meet-ups

Friends text each other your information and a link to your website when they want to meet-up.

Aside from in-person group decisions, there’s also that typical text-to-meet-up scenario. People love using their mobiles to make drinking plans.

Just picture the typical Saturday for Bill. He’s thinking about a night on the town when he gets a text from Bob.

“Meet us at Flannigan’s in 15!”

Bill has no idea where Flannigan’s is, but Bob just hopped in the shower. Bill calls Bob for directions, there’s no answer. What does he do?

He searches Flannigans on his iPhone. The easier the bar’s mobile site is to use, the better impression he gets. Sleek design and easy navigation? Bill is liking this bar already. Half-priced Mojitos tonight? He’s definitely inviting Brenda.

First impressions are everything. Bill’s user experience added to an awesome night. Later that week he gets a warm and fuzzy feeling when he thinks about Flannigans. He texts the user-friendly site to other friends when they ask for a great place to grab drinks.

What better place for a mobile meet-up than a local bar? Does yours have a mobile website? (tweet this)

3. Navigating to your bar

Most mobile devices double as GPS systems now. I know several friends who hop into the car and enter their destination automatically on a smart phone. These people want an address that’s quick and easy to find.

Obviously drinking and driving don’t mix after a few. This means there’s also a lot of customers taking public transit or driving with friends. These can be less familiar modes of transport. All the more reason to double-check the location on a mobile device.

Add a few pre-drinks into the equation and you really need a site that’s easy to navigate.

Use your mobile site to communicate your location clearly and quickly.

4. Social media ops

People love to tag photos and tweets on a night out with friends. They’ll use their mobile phone to snap a memory and post it to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. It’s these on-the-spot posts that make bars best friends with social-media.

Let patrons show the world where they’re having this amazing time!

Add social network links and usernames to your mobile site. Connect easily with patrons who want to tag your bar as their current location.

Get even more involved by adding a call to action to your mobile site. Make a suggestion like “Tweet #iloveflannigans for a half-priced Guinness.” Offer rewards to your mobile visitors.

Your patrons will always appreciate a fun and spontaneous way to connect with your bar.

Optimizing for mobile gives your customers a much better user experience. It’s easy to do.

For more about mobile optimization, check out our article about Responsive Website Design for Restaurant Mobile Websites.

Want to get a better feel for how mobile users are interacting with your site? Try conducting some research using Google Analytics. A free account with them lets you track visits from mobile devices versus traditional desktops.

Unsure how to get a mobile website? Try Restaurant Engine for free. A mobile responsive website is included.

Photos by Lion’s Den and Stinson Carter

Sources estimate that at least 10% of all worldwide Internet usage is mobile based, with flourishing economies such as those in Asia having seen a 192% increase in mobile website usage since 2010.

It’s for this reason that at Restaurant Engine, all our restaurant websites come complete with a mobile version, intended specifically to allow iPhone and other mobile users to easily find your contact details, view your menu and book a table.

Optimize Your Restaurant Website for the iPhone 5 & Mobiles

To help you ensure your restaurant Website converts mobile visitors as well as it does desktop visitors, we’ve shared three tips below.

Avoid “Pinch and Zoom”

On iPhones, it’s possible for users to “pinch and zoom” with their fingers in order to zoom in on a Web page. While this is a nice feature when required, for the convenience of your visitor (and potential customer) it is something you should try to avoid forcing them to do.

All of our Websites use ‘responsive design’ to ensure the zoom level of the Website is comfortable whether the visitor is using an iPhone, iPad or any other mobile device.

Make it Easy to Contact You

One of the primary uses of a mobile restaurant website is for a user to find your contact details.

“One of the primary uses of a mobile restaurant website is for a user to find your contact details.”
Tweet This!

They may be running late and wish to push their reservation back. Maybe they wish to add an additional person to the seating arrangements and would like it ready for when they arrive? Or they may be struggling to find your restaurant.

There are countless reasons why a customer may try to find your contact details while they are on the move. As a result, it’s important your street address and phone number are at the top of your mobile website.

Use Plain Text on Your Mobile Website

One of the best features of an iPhone is to connect its calls and maps functions to websites. By displaying your phone number and address in plain text rather than as an image, not only do you increase load times of the web page because images take longer to load, you also give iPhone users the ability to quickly and easily call you or locate your address on their built in map app.

iPhones recognize phone numbers and postal addresses and link the text to the appropriate app or function of the fun, giving your visitors to your restaurant website the ability to call you or find your location with one easy touch of their iPhone screen.

A Mobile Website is a Requirement, Not a Commodity!

Regardless of the three tips above, having any mobile website is better than no mobile website at all. Ensure you cater for all your customers, whether they’re sat at their desk or surfing on a mobile in the back of a taxi.

Mobile usage is not reducing. It is increasing and doing so at an increasingly fast pace. Stay ahead of the trend and ahead of your customers by ensuring you offer a mobile website before you start getting asked by your customers why you don’t have one.

Do you have a mobile website for your restaurant? Do you track how many customers use your mobile version? Let us know by commenting below.

Want to let your customers place food orders online, right from your website?  Now you can!

Today we’re excited to announce that Restaurant Engine now integrates with Zuppler, the leading online ordering system for restaurants.

Zuppler gives you an online ordering menu that let your customers place orders on your website, on your mobile site, and on your Facebook page too!  Accept payments online and open up new channels to increase sales for your restaurant.

Zuppler is a fantastic service, which meets all of the quality standards that we strive for here on Restaurant Engine. Here are just a few of our favorite the benefits included with the Zuppler online ordering system:

• Place food orders and accept payments online.
• Customizable online ordering menu
• POS (point of sale) integration
• Mobile online ordering menu (customers can place orders from their mobile phones)
• Free setup and support from your personal “Zuppler Coach”

Bonus!  Discount For Restaurant Engine Customers

Zuppler has very simple public pricing:  8% per order.  But if you sign up through Restaurant Engine, you get the exclusive rate of 7% per order.  Nice!

Or if the idea of per-transaction fees don’t appeal to you, you could opt for the flat pricing of $90/month.  Learn more about Zuppler pricing here.

How to Sign Up

Visit our online ordering page here on Restaurant Engine.  There, you can click “Get Started” to sign up through Restaurant Engine and access the discounted rate for Zuppler service.

Sign Up for Zuppler Online Ordering

If your customers don’t use smartphones and don’t need to find your website when they’re on the go, then why bother making sure your website is mobile-ready?

However, if you’re in the Restaurant Business, then it’s a different story. Let me tell about something that happened to my wife and I, just last week:

Since we recently moved from New York City to Connecticut, we love to explore our new neighborhood looking for restaurants to try for the first time.

So last weekend, after some afternoon shopping we decided to look for a restaurant, but wanted to make sure we chose something good. My wife took out her iPhone and searched Yelp for “Italian Restaurant in Norwalk”. A few results showed up, but all had mixed reviews.

She wanted to get a better idea of the ambiance and food menu before coming in, so she tapped the link to view one of restaurant websites on her mobile browser.

Blank Screen.

A small message reads: “Your device doesn’t support Flash.”

Frustrated, she tapped back and tried viewing the website of one of the other restaurants that came up.

This restaurant’s website displayed on her mobile browser, but all of the text was extremely small and hard to read. We were walking in the rain so we didn’t have time to “zoom in” and cringe to read the website.

So we decided to play it safe. Rather than trying one of these restaurants, we decided to go somewhere we’ve been before.

Those restaurants lost us as potential new customers.

Make it Easy For Your Customers

If only those restaurants had mobile websites that were optimized for the smaller touch screen (and of course didn’t rely on Flash), we — and probably many other folks using their smartphones and iPads to look for restaurants — would have walked in and filled their tables.

A great mobile website design should do 3 things:

– It should display automatically, on ALL mobile devices.
– It should be easy to read, without having to “pinch” or “zoom”.
– It should load fast, especially on slow data connections.

If your restaurant mobile website does all of these things, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition, attracting more of those customers who are on the go.

At Restaurant Engine, we focus on making sure our client’s websites work great on mobile. Every one of our restaurant website templates has been meticulously optimized for mobile browsers.

Take a look at this video to see what I mean: