

Restaurant website traffic now 40% mobile - joe_hoyle
http://www.happytables.com/news/restaurant-website-traffic-now-40-percent-mobile/

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BjoernKW
I don't get why many restaurant owners don't bother putting a decent website
online. If they actually do have a website, most of the time it's outdated,
ugly, doesn't offer any useful information (such as opening hours, specials or
a menu) or is just completely unusable. I'm not even getting started on any
'fancy' stuff such as usability on mobile devices or online reservation.

I know a few restaurateurs and they simply don't care, even more so than other
types of small brick-and-mortar shops. First, they operate on very thin
margins and most of the time simply can't or don't want to afford extra
services such as a website. Moreover, most of their first-time customers still
get there by word-of-mouth. It's as if most of the sector marketing-wise is
still pretty much stuck in the early nineties.

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netcan
As much as getting a website up and running for a small business seems _so
easy_ for the median reader of this site, the reality is different. Restaurant
owners don't know how to do it. Regardless of the software you put in front of
them, they probably won't come up with a good result and chances are that if
they select the software themselves it will be a poor choice.

The internet is full of bad advice and the phone book is full of bad
consultants. It's actually quite hard to be a good consultant to this kind of
business. They're hard to work with and aren't willing to spend very much.

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egwynn
It's so sad/frustrating when you need to look up a restaurant's page on-the-go
and then you find out it's flash-only.

~~~
jevinskie
Or the PDF menu is embedded in an iframe, making scrolling a pain.

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ryanx435
This is an interesting market that you are targeting, but I'm curious what
your revenue looks like. It looks like you are banking on people upgrading to
a premium account to make money, but to me it seems like you are giving away
fully functional websites for free. You are giving so much away that there
really isn't an incentive to upgrade.

> There is no setup fee or minimum term (even for our free plan).

>Can I stay on the free plan forever? Definitely. If you operate a small
business or are simply growing, we want to support you. Our premium features
are aligned to those of a larger restaurant, so once you’re more established
you’ll have the ability to upgrade, but it’s all up to you!

and you don't put ads on the restaurant's site either, so there is no revenue
coming in to you on that end. Maybe I missed something when I was digging
around?

~~~
noeltock
Hi Ryan, so there are number of restrictions on the free website, but the main
one they end up "converting" on is the "powered by happytables" logo at the
bottom of each page (in other words, removing the branding).

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josh33
46% of apartment traffic is now mobile as well. I work for a company that
hosts 10,000+ apartment websites and pulled the google Analytics that we
aggregate across all of them.

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jrochkind1
i am frustrated by the number of restaurant websites that simply _don't work_
on iOS at all. Like you can't even look at a menu or figure out the hours.

Of all the websites I look at, restaurant ones are the most likely to fail
horribly on mobile.

I guess it's because restaurant owners/managers 'buy' a website from a small
contractor, and what they look for and are willing to pay for is something
that looks 'pretty' \-- lots of flash, lots of big graphics, etc.

~~~
aw3c2
You mean they don't work because they use Flash? As much as I hate saying it
but if you did not choose a mobile OS that limits your choice of software, you
could simply install flash. You cannot really blame the restaurants for using
technology that was hailed for its interactivity by some people and
webdesigners for so long.

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kristiandupont
>As much as I hate saying it

It sounds as if you love saying it.

Anyway, I agree with gp: so many restaurant websites seem to focus on being
cool more than on providing the information I need: address and menu. And yes,
Flash is a big part of this but even if that worked on iOS, these websites
would still be annoying.

~~~
noeltock
That's exactly our goal with Happytables, focusing on: accessibility,
information and engagement. All the additional fluff can really bog down those
sites.

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calbear81
Doesn't everyone just use Yelp? Gives me review highlights, hours, and often
the menu too not to mention undoctored photos from other customers.

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daemon13
I presume that to use "connecting to domain" feature a restaurant owner would
need to alter DNS records, which does represent an extra hurdle.

So my questions are:

1\. In reality is utilizing this feature a real hurdle?

2\. Any other way to do this w/o mangling DNS records?

~~~
noeltock
Founder here. Indeed an additional hurdle! It's probably the hardest part of
setting up the website. Handled via CNAME (similar to Shopify), this way they
can still control any other services (i.e. e-mail).

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rschmitty
Man... my stupid childish head... I can't unsee the "butt cheeks" in their
favicon now

