Restaurants and Real Estate: Time to Get Mobile
“Where should we eat?” It’s a question I’m sure you ask your friends, family, etc. all the time. I typically find myself trying to answer this question when I’m out and about. So naturally I reach in my pocket, pull out my iPhone 4, and run a quick search for restaurants near me. Once I get the search results I typically end up with the same mind numbing outcome... restaurant websites.
The smartphone market exploded into the main stream 4 years ago with the release of Apple’s iPhone. By the end of this year smartphones sales are expected to outpace PC sales. That rate of growth is staggering... to say the very least. So the fact that I can still go to just about any restaurant website on my phone and get a terrible HTML experience (if I’m lucky) or see everyone’s favorite blue box is bewildering. The restaurant industry is one that could potentially have a lot to offer or gain from this rapid growth in smartphone adoption. However, the vast majority of the restaurant industry is so late to the mobile party that I’m honestly shocked.
I’m really not looking for a lot out of a restaurant’s mobile site, I just want some basics. I NEED to see the menu in a nice optimized format. Not an image that I have to pan around and zoom in and out of. I need to be able to find your address and contact information. It would also be great if the site could give me directions from exactly where I’m at (geolocation within mobile browsers is easy enough now-a-days). On top of that it would be nice to be able to make reservations…likely a link off to OpenTable, and to read some reviews... likely a link off to Yelp.
It’s extremely rare for me to walk into a restaurant if I know nothing about it, even rarer if I tried to find something out about it and couldn’t. I know I’m not alone in how I feel about this as I’ve discussed it with many friends and colleagues, all who feel the same way. If you happen to be a restaurateur reading this, not having a mobile website is costing you money right now.
Another industry lagging sorely behind modern times is the Real Estate business. My wife is a realtor and if you saw the “applications” and “technology” they use behind the scenes you might think it amounts to digital torture. When it comes to the mobile web two of the biggest realtors in the nation, Prudential Fox & Roach and Century 21, have no optimized presence at all. To their credit Century 21 does have a native app for the iPhone which is a start. Zillow, a popular online real estate marketplace, offers a mobile site as well as a native app for the iPhone.
I downloaded both the Century 21 and Zillow apps to take them for a spin. Both do largely the same thing as their respective websites do. The only difference I noticed was that the apps offered search based upon current location, a feature capable within mobile browsers. A nice feature offered by the Century 21 app was the ability to crash every time I tried to find an office branch using my location. The Zillow app definitely offers more features than the Century 21 one does, but again it offers nothing that couldn’t be done via a mobile site.
Why spend the time and money to develop a native app for a single platform when you could optimize your site for the mobile web and hit far more platforms and customers? In the case of Century 21, why force iPhone users to download an app that offers functionality you can provide via the web? It would make sense for companies in the restaurant and real estate industries to hop on board and optimize their sites for mobile browsing. Without developing a full app, you have access to everything a mobile user would need; geo-location, maps, and internet.
Whether you’re in the business of selling hot dogs or houses, when you’re ready for a mobile optimized site, just keep it simple. If you’re a restaurant, deliver your users directions, a menu, and the ability to book reservations... and if you’re in the real estate industry, specs on the property, directions to get to the property, contact info, and images would be the bulk of what you would need. In both cases, the ever-increasing number of smartphone users who stumble upon your site will thank you... and be much more likely to work with you.
Have a favorite restaurant or real estate mobile site? Feel free to share, we’re always looking for good examples out there... or, if you’re looking to build your own mobile optimized site, feel free to contact us.
Realistic article on why every business houses should have a mobile websites not just restaurants and real estate firms. I just wanted to share few statistics which throws light on the importance of mobile sites. In 2010 nearly 73 million Americans use the web via mobile browsers which shows increase of 31% in comparison to previous year ( Source Comscore) and sale of smart phones over the PC proves that next buzz word will be Mobisites. Mobisites will give improved user experience, improve brand identity, and gives better connectivity..I feel that mobisites will be more cost effective that application development due to the reason that mobisites have less barriers for connecting the business and target groups. My take from this is go for mobile optimized sites and improve your ROI.
I could not have said it better. More companies are starting to target these markets to try and bring it to the front of restaurant owner's minds. I think at this point in time, many owner's haven't ever looked at their site on a phone. The options available right now are build a full mobile version of the site, build an android app, build an iphone app, or use a plugin that pulls the mobile version from a remote site. The plugin version is the least invasive and requires the littlest time and money. We have developed such a plugin and are looking for web designers and consultants to partner with to reshape the restaurant industry's presence on all of our phones. Writing great stuff like this is a good start and is sure to win your company some contracts in the future. Good job!