Introducing Mobile Technology to Increase Restaurant Profitability

When you consider that 91 percent of adults own a cell phone if you are not trying to communicate with those people you are missing out on a huge client base. In fact, many of them use their cell phones to locate a restaurant to purchase a meal they find online the same day, many within the hour. Mobile technology touches almost every person and when you have a website that makes your restaurant easy to find you can increase your profitability substantially. Here are some of the ways restaurants are taking advantage of mobile technology.

SEE ALSO: Four Cool Ways Mobile Technology Has Impacted Home Safety

Image Credit: Luca Viscardi

The Features of Mobile Apps
Mobile Apps designed to promote restaurants and make ordering, finding menu choices and even locating a restaurant closest to a customer’s current location are ways restaurants are benefiting from technology. According to a recent study performed by Hospitality Technology the following features are popular for restaurant Apps:

• Almost all restaurants world-wide are using an App of some form to display their menus (96 percent).
• GPS technology, more commonly referred to as location-based marketing is used by 65 percent of the restaurant executives surveyed.
• Nutritional information is a growing concern which is proven with 52 percent of restaurants using Apps to post their menu’s nutritional values.
• Social media integration is also important with 48 percent integrating their social media through Apps.
• Allowing customers to order food using their Apps was also popular with 43 percent reporting ordering as a feature.

Location-Based Marketing
Location-based marketing allows businesses to convert mobile users based on their current location. A person searching for the best pizza joint within a four block radius of their current location will provide them with choices they can travel to easily and immediately. If your restaurant is not currently online they will not find you. Increased use of mobile Apps and mobile sites are growing in leaps and bounds by digital marketing savvy restaurateurs with more than half of those surveyed providing online searches with a mobile site and 30 percent more having their own mobile App to capture the increasing numbers of clients using location-based searches to find their next meal.

Mobile Friendly Web Design
Making sure your website is mobile friendly is important so that clients can read your menu easily without having to adjust for your PC format. A fluid design allowing your site to adapt to the device your visitors are using is also effective. According to “The Mobile Marketer” 65 percent of customers use their phones to find a restaurant that is within walking and/or driving distance of their current location. Features such as click to call for reservations or click to locate for a map are the new way your business can seal the deal with new clients.  The traffic analytics your website captures also provides essential customer analysis data needed for future marketing initiatives.
If you want to increase profitability, helping people find you is the basic route to take. Work with your restaurant accounting firm so they may budget for digital marketing expenditures this year

Sources:
http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/February/Pew-Internet-Mobile.aspx
http://themobilemarketer.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/how-restaurants-can-increase-sales-and-profits-with-mobile-marketing-90-conversion-rate/
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Restaurants-Up-Their-Use-of-Social-Mobile/1010229