Is Your Restaurant Website Mobile Friendly?

Restaurant customers are constantly on the go — and they typically use their mobile devices when looking for a good meal. In fact, the use of mobile searches has outnumbered searches made on desktop computers in the U.S. since 2015. And the food and beverage industry remains the biggest target — with 77% of online searches initiating from a mobile device.

Search engines like Google now consider the mobile-friendliness of websites as a ranking factor when customers are looking for dining options. With the increasing usage of mobile devices, a mobile-friendly website can help you get more customers through the door and boost your business.

How to Know if Your Restaurant Website Is Mobile Friendly

Below are two examples of restaurant websites. One features a traditional desktop layout, while the other features a mobile-friendly design.

Important things to note for a desktop site.  

• One of the biggest problems with websites that aren’t mobile-friendly is that users must zoom in to see small text. It’s tedious, time-consuming and may cause users to leave a site.
• Typically, non mobile-friendly websites take too long to load images and content. Keep in mind that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take over three seconds to load.

Mobile-friendly websites tend to have a few notable features.

• Designed to automatically fit a user’s mobile device screen — regardless of the phone or operating system they use.
• The most relevant, useful information is displayed above the top half of the screen before users scroll down.
• May include tap elements, like an “Order Now” or “Download Menu” buttons. These features are easy to tap on and don’t require users to zoom in or out.

Resources to Help Create a Mobile-Friendly Website

Processing around 5.5 billion searches every day, Google is the leading authority on the best practices necessary to create responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites. Here are some of Google’s helpful tools for crafting a mobile-friendly site.

• • Mobile-Friendly Test — Enter your restaurant website to run it through Google’s mobile-friendly test. After analyzing the page, Google determines whether your website is mobile-friendly or not, giving you actionable insights into what can be improved.

• Mobile Speed Test — Mobile-optimized websites quickly load images and content to help get visitors in, out and on their way. Test how fast your website loads and how likely it is you’ll lose visitors based on loading time. You can also gauge how you stack up against industry competitors and will have access to a detailed report on how to improve your online presence.

Having a mobile-friendly website is important as you continue to reach new customers and grow your business. Make sure your online presence is not only optimized for mobile but also ready to enable mobile-friendly services like online ordering.

Want to learn more? Check out how Grubhub connects restaurants to hungry diners through convenient mobile ordering.