Monthly Archives: September 2014

September 22, 2014 · 11:34 am

So 2004

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.

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 (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?

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September 19, 2014 · 8:12 am

Why Saving The Pots Is Bad Business

I’m not a fan of The Olive Garden which is our topic this Foodie Friday. I grew up eating (and cooking) Italian food and Olive Garden is pretty far from the cuisine I love. That said, I appreciate that it’s a lot easier for one to find authentic Italian food in New York and other big cities than it might be elsewhere in this great land of ours. The Olive Garden might have to do for those poor souls.

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A hedge fund recently produced a very lengthy report on Olive Garden’s parent company.  You can read the entire report here – it’s a fascinating look at how a company can lose its way.  I want to focus on one very specific aspect of the report: the food at Olive Garden.  The lessons we can take from it are very instructive for any business.

One main criticism the deck makes is this:

Olive Garden has seemingly lost its Italian heritage and  authenticity.  (It) lost ties to suppliers that offered authentic Italian ingredients and Italian wines at compelling price points. Now Olive Garden serves dishes that are astonishingly far from authentic Italian culture, such as burgers & fries, Spanish tapas, heavy cream sauces, more fried foods, stuffed cheeses, soggy pasta, and bland tomato sauce. Olive Garden has moved away from its authentic Italian roots and now offers what appears to be a low-end Italian-American experience.

The deck has photos of dishes as advertised and as they actually show up on the table.  The difference is amazing.  But it was one last complaint – along with the reasoning behind why the situation is the way it is that really got my attention:

According to Darden management, Darden decided to stop salting the water to get an extended warranty on their pots. Pasta is Olive Garden’s core dish and must be prepared properly.

Uh..duh!  Which is the lesson for any brand.  Diluting your brand causes consumer confusion.  Olive Garden for tapas or a burger?  I think not.  Saving the pots to reduce costs at the expense of the customer experience is lunacy.  Damaging the product – especially the signature product – is a big step down the road to brand destruction.

Many companies lose their core identity in the chase for revenues.  That’s bad.  Hurting the products that got you to this point is worse.  It’s not, as the report points out, just one instance. Breadsticks are another signature dish.  “The lower quality refined flour breadsticks served today are filled with more air and have less flavor (similar to hot dog buns).”  Can your brand survive while committing this sort of product suicide?

Without a brand identity, you’re done.  When any home cook knows more about making your product than you do, it’s time to pack it in.  That’s true if it’s pasta or clothing or web sites or anything else.  Agreed?

 

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September 18, 2014 · 11:13 am

Polymaths

An item came across my inbox this morning that concerns what college kids are studying.

English: Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. R...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No, not their phone screens. Instead:

A new study from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences on course-taking patterns of undergraduates finds a significant lack of crossover by majors in the humanities and majors in STEM fields. According to the data, engineers earned approximately 11% of their credits in humanities courses. Meanwhile, humanities majors completed just 8% of their credits in STEM fields.

That’s from the folks at Phi Beta Kappa and the rumor is they’re pretty smart.  STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  What this is telling us is that something is happening in colleges that, frankly, seems to be happening to society as a whole.  Kids are tuning in to what is of primary interest and tuning out almost everything else.  That’s a shame.  What if Leonardo daVinci had stuck with one or the other?

Higher education is the one chance that those who are lucky enough to experience it have to explore everything.  That’s not happening:

  • Students who received undergraduate degrees earned more credits in humanities subjects than in STEM. Humanities credits represented approximately 17% of the total credits earned by the typical graduate, while the STEM share was 13%.
  • Approximately 37% of credits earned by humanities majors were for humanities courses.
  • Both in terms of absolute numbers and share of all courses taken, engineering students earned the fewest humanities credits (11% of median number earned by these students in all subjects) while social scientists earned the most (equaling 22% of all credits).
  • Humanities majors tended to earn fewer STEM credits than STEM majors earned humanities credits.

College should breed polymaths – a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. Such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.  In other words, they’re well-rounded.  They have critical thinking skills and a broad range of knowledge from which to draw conclusions.  Those are the sort of people I want when I’m hiring (or making friends).  You?

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