I am meeting a former client for lunch today. As is the case so often, he suggested a local burger place to meet and I went to their website to check out the menu. It was a very pretty site – high quality photos, nicely written copy. Oh sure I have a few quibbles with it – why do I have to follow you on Twitter to see the specials? – but it’s a perfect example of what a site should have been about 10 years ago. Now? Not so much.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What’s my beef with the burger joint (I crack myself up!) site? It’s written in Flash. Why is this an issue? As you probably know, the number of smartphone users now rivals desktop. Most of the site I work with see a large and growing amount of traffic from mobile devices. A recent study about this stated that “Mobile is often the only tool used to make a purchase decision—this is especially true for restaurants and entertainment purchases.”
Sounds like good news unless your site is written in Flash. You see, no Apple device – iPhone or iPad – shows anything written in Flash. Many Android devices won’t either unless Flash is loaded onto the phone. In this case I tried to access the site via my phone’s browser and was prompted to load Flash. No separate mobile site written in a programming language understood by all phones.
By leaving development – even state of the art development – as it was in 2004 before the massive growth of traffic from mobile, this place is hurting its business. As the study found:
One data point is especially favorable for restaurants. Of the industries analyzed for this study, restaurants have the highest conversion rate from looker to buyer—80 percent. The factors that drive smartphone users to make a purchase at a restaurant after seeking information about it are:
• Right price: 15 percent
• Right brand: 18 percent
• Had a location in mind: 19 percent
• Reviews were good: 12 percent
• Close to my location: 20 percent
How is the potential customer to weigh those factors when they can’t see the site? When mobile is 51% of your potential traffic, isn’t it worth at last SOME investment?
Have you gone to your site on a mobile device? How did that work for you? 2014 or 2004?
Consult Keith 