Jon Rock's Blog (17)

It’s hard to believe the first cellphone call was made last week 40 years ago. Remember the scene in the movie Wall Street where Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, calls Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) from the beach on a Motorola DynaTAC, which was essentially a brick with an antenna attached to it? These early cell phones cost several thousand dollars and the airtime charges were typically $0.45 per minute plus $0.25 for long distance. If you were outside your metro area, there were…

In a recent article published in Gourmet Marketing, it has come to light that OpenTable made a change to their portal user interface. The restaurant URL previously was featured prominently on the Overview page; this was moved to the More Details section.  The article maintains that this subtle user interface change was done intentionally to capture reservations via the OpenTable…

MoFuse, a global leader in mobile web content management, just released its State of the Mobile Web Report. The report reviews mobile browsing activity across many different types of mobile sites, with a focus on mobile web audiences for small-and-medium size businesses (SMBs). The report is an effort to help organizations understand how, and when, to best…

A recent article titled “Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25” drew much criticism and fire from marketing professionals of all ages. In retrospect, hopefully, the inexperienced author probably wishes she could retract her negative and inflammatory comments. A number of the posted comments are worthy of sharing.

“So, by that argument, once social media is replaced by the next big thing, everyone your age should be…

According to a recent Search Engine Land article Why Restaurants & Other Local Businesses Need Mobile, “the keyword [restaurants near me] has almost 10,000 searches per month on desktop computers, but four times that on mobile devices.” The article also goes on to point out that desktop and mobile visitors have different end…

I was out to dinner at a Boston white tablecloth restaurant a few weeks ago with a coworker.  The waitress plopped down a couple of menus and a fairly extensive wine list over the usual pleasantries one would expect at any fine dining establishment. My coworker looked over the menu while I reviewed the wine list. The waitress promptly came over after about 5 minutes and asked us if we had any questions about the menu, the wine list, and to take our drink order. This created an awkward moment…

My company, Restaurant Sciences, has a research arm and we recently completed a survey of chain and independent restaurants to understand their internet usage.  The survey answers burning questions such as what percentage of restaurants have a main website, a mobile website or a various types of Social Media presence.



A portion of the survey results is featured in a Boston Globe article titled “Independent restaurants neglect…

Last week, Facebook purchased Instagram, the barely 2-year old photo sharing startup for $1 billion dollars. The New York Times recently chronicled Instagram’s road to success, struggling as a fledgling start-up to keep up with server demand as thousands downloaded the iPhone version of the app and began uploading pictures hours after it…

There’s been negative buzz lately from marketers regarding the switch to timeline that automatically occurred at the end of March. We need to take stock in the fact that Facebook is a free and powerful social media platform, thus the powers that be can affect changes, which means we as marketers need to creatively adapt to those changes. Recently, Facebook Marketing Solutions posted this question to its fans: “For…

In our blog titled Pinterest: How can restaurants use this online pinboard, we examined this virtual pinboard to understand how restaurants could use this platform in their efforts to connect online with new and existing customers. Since this blog was written, we had the opportunity to gain insight from…

There’s been a lot of buzz around Pinterest in the media lately. According to an article published this month in TechCrunch citing data collected by comScore, Pinterest hit 10 million unique visitors per month faster than any standalone website ever. Its rise to prominence can be demographically credited to 18-34 year old women from the…

There are many differing opinions on whether sites developed in HTML5 can display content on mobile devices as eloquently as they do in the desktop and tablet world. Before we examine the pros and cons of each, here is a little background on the two technologies.

HTML5

HTML5 will be the new standard for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), according to W3C. ("The World Wide Web Consortium is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the…

If you talk to a restaurant owner about going mobile (assuming they understand how pressing it is that they get on the mobile bandwagon pronto!) often the question will arise, “Should I get a Mobile App or should I go with a Mobile Website.” Surprisingly, you will find some restaurant operators are not doing anything because they just don’t know which way to go. Let’s try to clear things up by first examining each one:…

In our original blog titled “Google Analytics: Analyzing Mobile Website Performance”, we reviewed a number of reporting metrics provided by Google and possible interpretations of the data. In addition, we discussed best practices for setting up a Google Analytics account for your main and mobile websites. In this most recent blog, we will take a look back at mobile website…

Luckily, it’s a busy time of the year for many restaurants.  Trying to keep up with increased demand may have created an operational squeeze on your time.  Now here you are--in the midst of the holidays-- to find that you didn’t get to all of the marketing tasks you intended.  It is a little late in the game but there is still time for a few efforts that are pretty easy to tackle and inexpensive as well.

Gift Cards

Stay in the mind of your customers and shoppers…

Now that you’ve created your restaurant’s mobile website it’s time to think about tracking results. This will help you analyze the effectiveness of your content and ultimately help you optimize your sales. The beauty of Google Analytics is that it’s free and you don’t have to be an analyst to interpret the data, or act on it.

 Key Metrics in Google Analytics

Here is a breakdown of a number of key metrics provided by Google Analytics, possible interpretations of the data,…

Have you ever been driving home in the wee hours of the morning and suddenly had a massive craving for eggs with hash browns and a side of pancakes and a hot cup of freshly brewed coffee? If you are in familiar territory, you probably know where the all night diner or fast-food chain is located. What if you are driving on a major highway out-of-state where everything is dark, even the interchanges --how do you locate an all-night diner without getting off at an exit and driving around…