If You Don’t Have A Mobile Responsive Site, You’re Losing Patrons

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