Mobile

In this economy, running any type of business is tough – but restaurants often have it extra hard. Large amounts of overhead plus small amounts of cash flow can be a recipe for disaster – plus, there’s often insane competition between eateries struggling to make ends meet.

These days, it’s not just about food any more: the struggle for restaurant success has shifted to cyberspace. In the restaurant business, a dynamic web presence can mean the difference between success and bankruptcy. Here are three ways you can “beef up” your online presence to create a fresh, hot wave of success for your restaurant business.

It seems as if the iPad is everywhere these days, and ensuring people can find your company every day with theirs is an absolute must. After all, you don’t see anyone grabbing the yellow pages to find a business these days. Instead, they grab a seat, pick up their iPads, and let their fingers do the searching. Regardless of how they eventually find you, if an iPad user is searching for your company, it’s up to you to make sure your ducks are all in a row.

One of the things that is definitely true about today's electronic world is that things change with lightning fast speed. Because of this it can be very tricky for business owners to know exactly which technology might work best.

For instance it seems like now everyone has access to either smart phone or some sort of mobile device that can access the Internet. You're likely familiar with downloading apps, and you may be familiar with going online and looking at websites on your phone, but when it comes to your own business, do you need an app or a mobile website? And what’s the difference between the two?

These days, no one hits the yellow pages to find a restaurant or a gym or even a plumber. Instead, search engines like Google and Yahoo have long since taken the place of that massive book.

While lots of companies know they must have good search engine placement to capture the attention of customers, few have even begun to consider the fact that many will be searching for them with their smartphones, which brings in an entirely different set of issues.

Today, instant gratification is king, and with people using their smartphones to access your site, making a few changes is an absolute must.

If it looks like a mobile site and functions like a mobile site, does that mean it truly is a mobile website?

Not necessarily.

While some websites do look great on a mobile device, in many cases they aren’t truly mobile.  This is because they weren’t made specifically for the various mobile devices out there.  They are simply lucky enough to translate over to the device well.

It may seem that a mobile website is just your regular site opened on a mobile device, but this isn’t the case. A mobile site is specially created to be used on a phone, iPad or tablet.  Following are some reasons why you should make sure you have a mobile site.

Most mobile devices don’t play Flash-We’ve already discussed some of the drawbacks of Flash, and here is another: iPad users can’t access Flash sites. No matter how breathtaking your site might be, if an iPad or iPhone users tries to visit, it will not work. This could result in a lost sale. Perhaps that person wanted to check out your site while they were out and about the city. If they liked the site, they might have come in to take a look around, but because they couldn’t even get the page to load, they went somewhere else. Customer lost.