Mobile apps have become a vital part of our lifestyle, and it seems it is here to stay for a very long time. They have enhanced our lives and the business world; mobile apps have appeared to make a lot of money, starting from booking movie tickets, cabs, online groceries, bitcoins to restaurant apps.
Mobile apps can offer tremendous benefits to the entrepreneur dealing with such eCommerce or other online businesses. In this article, we will highlight the significant services mobile apps provide to restaurant owners. There are several advantages, therefore here we have compiled a list of top essential ones that will help you improve your services as you decided to go mobile.
1. Quick & Easy User Experience
A mobile app helps restaurant owners build a quick and comfortable client experience, which means less wait time & more sales.
Table booking is the first feature that occurs to mind while thinking of mobile restaurant apps. However, it isn't the best strategy to solely focus on table reservations. Firstly, they do not promise any ROI for restaurant owners. Secondly, for giant & crowded restaurants, if online bookings are not organized well, it can lead to hell-like situations at the restaurant. In a case when a restaurant mostly has free tables, the booking feature is totally redundant.
Meal ordering is a more precious feature that is, unfortunately, less used by restaurant
app developers 2021. But enabling app users to select & order their meals beforehand, thus reducing the customer's wait time, will help establish a better customer experience at your restaurant and even make the staff's work easier & quicker.
You can add more value to this feature by allowing app users to browse their order history & save their favorite orders. This will quicken the ordering process and make it more convenient.
2. Grow Your Target Audience With Active Mobile Users
According to the latest surveys, people between the ages of 25 to 34 tend to use mobile apps to find restaurants & make bookings. Moreover, 25% of respondents have at least one restaurant app downloaded on their device.
Keeping updated and implementing the latest trends will make the restaurant's services better for the existing client base and attract the younger crowd who look for a good restaurant mobile service. Lastly, to retain this audience, you'll need to make sure of 3 things: the restaurant, the food, and the app.
3. Better Finds
Better finds can mean making restaurants more visible to the customers in all possible ways through a mobile app. Mobile technologies can help deliver information on a restaurant menu, location, and emotional connection with the audience through memorable restaurant mobile application development and design.
The most glaring thing is finding a restaurant's location with the mapping services. This feature is essential for food and restaurant app finders like Urbanspoon & OpenTable and large chains' branded apps.
However, besides the restaurant's location, people also need to know what the restaurant offers. A mobile app solves this riddle by rendering users with easy menu access. The menu is more attractive when the meals are depicted with tempting pictures. Just remember that reality must correlate to what people see in the app & vice versa.
Restaurant owners can exhibit their places, providing attractive interior pictures or even 3D tours to the place. With beautiful images aside, a restaurant app design helps build visual communication between customers & restaurant owners, make an app and a restaurant distinctive, thus building brand awareness.
Including social sharing features can grow the brand reach to users' followers and friends on social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can integrate this feature, rewarding users with loyalty points for each share.
4. Retain Users More Effectively
Mobile apps can retain their users through various successful approaches. Among such features, loyalty programs & user notification are the two features that restaurant mobile app developers can embrace.
Loyalty Program: Table booking services & restaurant apps retain their users often due to their loyalty programs that offer exclusive rewards and discounts. Gift cards & coupons are what users tend to lose so adamantly, and mobile app loyalty programs are the most excellent solution to this problem so far. For instance, the Starbucks app got a major rise in its user base after introducing a new loyalty program, including gamification elements & a transparent reward system.
Notifications: Irrespective of building your restaurant app or rendering discovery & booking services, you can keep your app's users informed of the latest deals with emails & push notifications. If the deals are regular & fair, and the notifications are customized, users will anticipate them and thus appreciate alerts as a handy service instead of annoying spam.
5. Delivery
Expanding a restaurant service with the food delivery feature becomes the best option for restaurant mobile app developers. And it might not be the main feature to include in a new app; it's still a possible direction for restaurant services.
Some restaurants also cater to their users only with food delivery using mobile apps & websites for ordering. Ando, a part of a big US-based restaurant chain Momofuku, is one of the most successful delivery-only restaurants.
6. More Payment Options
Online payments are a big deal now. All kinds of digital solutions dealing with commerce have embraced it, so have restaurant apps.
There are 2 types of online payments you can embrace as a restaurant app developer to make restaurant services more successful. The 1st is mobile payments processed through payment gateways like Stripe or Braintree.
But restaurant owners may despise the idea if a booking platform renders mobile payments service since it would mean extra fees that might have a negative impact on the ROI.
7. Adequate Feedback
Another important thing for a business's success is collecting customer's feedback. Most restaurant apps & food discovery platforms render users likely to leave a good review on their restaurant visit.
User feedback plays 2 crucial roles simultaneously. First, as a business owner and/or service provider, you can get reviews on your services to know how to enhance them, thus satisfying your clients even more.
Final Words
Mobile apps can offer several advantages to restaurant businesses, as viewed in this article. Hence, it would be of great benefit for you to develop your restaurant's mobile app to boost your sales and deliver exceptional customer service as a restaurant owner.