Restaurants have been adding interactive technology to their tables allowing users to view the menu and order on a tablet – there are even games for kids. Some of these tablets allows diners to pay without waiting for a check to be delivered. Pretty convenient, right? It gets better. A Japanese restaurant in London has become one of the first in applying the QR code technology in the kitchen. ICHIBUNS has created the first burger bun branded QR code. The company has partnered with mobile-payment servicers, Zapper. The idea is supposed to allow customers to make easy, fast, and safe payments for the food by scanning the code on the bun with a smartphone. Diners can leave a tip and split the bill. Users need to download the app to pay which is made simple – all they need to do is scan the QR code on the bun.
To incentivize users, ICHIBUNS is offering customers £7 off their first bill and other exclusive rewards. Benjamin Goldkorn, CEO of ICHIBUNS, said: “Our goal with ICHIBUNS was to be a restaurant experience like no other, and our partnership with Zapper is a great way to achieve this, allowing us to be at the forefront of hospitality innovation by offering much more than just a payment service. Combining it with our own app also allows us to give something back to our amazing, loyal customers, with discounts and prizes available to win.” We think it is safe to say this would be an experience like no other. Our question was what if you’re starving and quickly bite into that juicy wagyu beef burger only to realize that part of the QR code is now missing? Fear not. Your QR code is also printed on the menu.
References:
foodserviceequipmentjournal.com/first-burger-bun-branded-qr-code-puts-a-new-stamp-on-kitchen-tech/
standard.co.uk/go/london/restaurants/you-can-pay-for-this-burger-with-the-qr-code-on-its-bun-a3927991.html (IMAGE CRED to this site).
In this post, we’re going to cover how to ensure you don’t get left behind in the dust with Google’s April 21st, 2015 “Mobilegeddon” update. Google will “[expand its] use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal” and if you don’t have a mobile website (or an improperly configured on) your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings will suffer. Here it is straight from Google:
Pay attention to this Google update if you fall into either of these two groups.
Website owners that currently don’t have a mobile-friendly website who want to avoid to the typically lengthy, expensive, and complex undertaking of creating a responsive website and can instead build a stand-alone, feature-rich, and mobile-compliant website in minutes with the Qfuse Mobile Website Builder. Alternatively, responsive web design services are also available to develop a single site that will scale across all devices – from desktop down to tablet and handheld smartphones.
Anyone currently using a stand-alone mobile website that has not yet “linked” their mobile and desktop sites together in the eyes of Google.
If you’re unsure whether your website is mobile-compliant, you can run a fast and free Mobile-Friendly test by Google to see where you stand.
What is a “stand-alone” mobile website?
A stand-alone mobile website is typically a non-responsive website is distinct from it’s desktop/tablet counterpart and often times has a separate URL (as in the graphic below, courtesy of Google).
If you’re wondering how responsive websites differ from stand-alone sites, responsive websites adapt themselves to mobile devices based on end-user’s device screen resolution (viewport size). Stand-alone sites are distinct and separate from their desktop counter parts. The key benefits of stand-alone sites include:
Faster Load Times: Website files and images that are optimized for mobile-only use are smaller in size and therefore have faster end-user load times (which typically improves important conversion and usability factors like bounce rates).
More Engaging Content: Length of content always a concern for mobile devices (think less-is-more mentality). By having a separate mobile page you have the option to trim down content length to better engage and convert mobile users.
How Do I Link My Desktop & Mobile Sites to Keep Google Happy?
The short answer is to create signals in your website code to specifically tell Google that your individual mobile and desktop pages are related and equivalent. How can you do this? Let’s dive into that next.
Let’s say you have a desktop page (http://www.website.com/page-a) and an equivalent mobile page (http://m.website.com/page-a) you would want to add the following code within the <head> tag of the respective pages.
Desktop (http://www.website.com/page-a)
<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://m.website.com/page-a" >
Maintain a 1-1 ratio between mobile and desktop pages. When using the rel=”alternate” and rel=”canonical” markups, don’t point multiple desktop pages to one mobile page. Only point one mobile page to one desktop page and vice versa.
Double-check your redirects. Be sure that your rel=”alternate” and rel=”canonical links don’t point to their parent page (the page you put the code in) or to an unrelated page.
Linking a Qfuse Mobile Site to Your Desktop Site
If you don’t already have one already, you can sign up for a Qfuse Pro account here. Once you have an account, follow the steps below to link your desktop and mobile sites to keep Google satisfied while simultaneously improving your search engine rankings.
Step 1: In the Qfuse Editor, click on the relevant page.
Step 2: Expand the “Edit Page-Level Settings” section and notice the “Header Code” area.
Step 3: Enter the MOBILE code in the “Header Code” section and click Save Update.
Step 4: Don’t forget to enter the DESKTOP code on the relevant desktop page in the <HEAD> tags.
Below is the code format you will need to use (replace http://m.website.com/page-a with the link to the appropriate Qfuse page).
<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://m.website.com/page-a" >
Now you’re all set to go and ready to take advantage of Google’s upcoming mobile update and avoid being penalized. Nice work!
“Mobilegeddon!”–as it has been so dubbed–is an algorithm that will make mobile-friendly websites in Google’s organic search a priority. As mobile usage increases by the multitudes on a daily basis, it is the logical choice for Google to want to provide their mobile users with mobile websites.
So now you’re asking… ”How do I know if my site is mobile or not?” Check things out for yourself by simply searching for your site on Google. With a mobile device, check to see if your site has the “Mobile-Friendly” label by it in the organic search results. In addition, the Google developers didn’t want users to feel completely alone in this, so try out their mobile-friendly test: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
If you get the “Mobile-Friendly” label by your site when you search, or if you receive the “Mobile-Friendly” analysis in Google’s test, then congratulations! You’re good to go for April 21st.
However, if you receive the ‘Not Mobile-Friendly’ diagnosis, then it’s certainly time to make some changes.
It goes without saying: ideally your website should be mobile-friendly. It is 2015 after all and more than half of all web viewers are surfing on a mobile device.
However, there are still a large number of businesses and organization that do not have a mobile website. With knowledge of Google’s recent announcement of a pending update, paired with the continued expansion of mobile usage, it is undeniable that your site must be mobile-friendly.
“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
So what does this really mean? In short, if your website is not mobile-friendly by the end of April, your site will suffer from diminished search rankings – which will lead to less site visits, and which will, in turn, ultimately lead to fewer customers.
To make things crystal clear: Make the change, or suffer the consequences.
There are a number of methods for creating a mobile-friendly website – one simple approach is to use the Qfuse mobile website builder to easily create a full-featured mobile-friendly website. Another approach is to invest in building a “responsive” web presence using responsive web design–an approach that scales a single website to the screen size of the device displaying it. Whichever option you choose, do it fast. The deadline is around the corner.
Contact us today if you’d like to learn more and how Qfuse can help you beat the clock and make the most of your mobile presence.
We’ve launched a video showing how Qfuse can be used as a mobile website and landing page builder. Check it out below!
Here’s a transcript of the video.
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Qfuse makes it easy to produce great-looking mobile websites and landing pages that are optimized for display and performance on smartphones, like iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile.
Our professional mobile website builder is loaded with features and allows you to see all of your edits as you work, in real-time
Quickly customize your mobile landing page to match your brand by uploading your logo and customizing your color scheme.
Choose a mobile website template from our template library or define your own custom style with a few clicks.
Create mobile pages with text content, image galleries, videos, and social media capabilities. Qfuse also makes it easy to add interactive features to engage your users, such as click-to-call buttons, customizable contact forms, and GPS mapping with Google Maps. Best of all, Qfuse has industry leading real-time analytics to show exactly how your mobile pages perform and what visitors do on your site.
Whether you’re a small business that needs a simple mobile-friendly version of your regular website, an agency that needs to efficiently build and manage thousands of mobile landing pages for your ad campaigns – or anything in between – Qfuse has you covered.
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Let us know what you think of our latest video below!
According to a recent Forbes article on mobile technology, 2014 is going to be ‘the year of mobile.’ What is meant by this is that mobile will finally become a “mainstream marketing solution.”
Mobile has been largely adopted by consumers, and yet it has taken marketers a few years to catch up, or really to even put themselves in the race. The numbers though are getting to a point where marketers must take this increasing gap seriously. According to data from IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, mobile traffic is driving 25% of total online traffic to retail sites, is accounting for more than 20% of all online sales, and mobile sales are up 55% over last year with exponential growth appearing very likely.
According to the Forbes article, the average firm invests only two to three percent towards their mobile budgets, but the leading mobile firms are beginning to increase their mobile budgets to 10 or even 25%. Indicating that some firms are finally starting to take mobile as seriously as they should.
As Jay Henderson, Strategy Program Director at IBM, states in the Forbes article, the best strategy for firms is “to take a ‘mobile first’ approach,” and he “encourages marketers to build mobile sites form the ground up, rather than force fitting an existing website into a smaller format.” This is also what we would advise at Qfuse.
This is an important point, because rather than viewing mobile as separate and relatively insignificant, it should be viewed as vital to how business will be done in the near future, and integrated into the overall business plan.
As Henderson is quoted in the article, it is forward thinking marketers that “are investing in their mobile apps to include maps of the store, special promotions, and location based targeting. Companies are adding QR codes and NFC to their in-store display to help bridge from physical to mobile.” These sort of integrated plans will go a long way for the firms which implement them earliest. Helping to increase in store sales, prevent lost sales from showrooming, helping increase brand interaction and awareness, and simply creating a better experience for the customer.
For marketers, 2014 should be a year of transition to mobile, and a year of mastering mobile technology and its existing tools. Creating a strategy to build mobile from the ground up, and then connecting mobile to your physical marketing plan—through tools like QR codes, NFC tags, and mobile apps—will greatly increase the efficiency of the overall marketing strategy and enhance the end objectives.
To read more on this issues check out the Forbes article here, and to get started on, or improve upon you existing mobile strategy, check out Qfuse here.
