10 Rules for Students and Teachers (and Life) by John Cage and Sister Corita Kent
Restaurant Industry insights a must read for interested in this domain !
Quick Industry Overview: The US restaurant industry includes 480,000 restaurants with combined revenue of $400 billion. Companies like McDonald’s, YUM Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) and Darden restaurants (Olive garden, Red Lobster) are considered as major players. It is highly fragmented. The top 50 largest companies hold just 20% of the market. Demographics, consumer tastes and personal income drive demand. Large companies have advantages of purchasing; finance and marketing while small companies offer superior service or food. On whole restaurants compete with companies that serve meals or prepared foods, warehouse clubs, delis and convenience stores. In addition they compete with home cooking.
Restaurant industry’s marketing is simply and clearly based on the following “four Ps as Wikipedia says Product, Price, Promotion and Place”. All these four Ps are interconnected and determine the outcomes of the rest. Restaurant industry gets the major chunk of retail food dollar because of the differentiation factor and value added service it provides. The promotional dollars spent in developing, pricing and placing their products separates a restaurant from the rest in terms of brand recognition and quality.
Digital Impact: Evolution of web2.0 has had a significant impact on the restaurant industry. It has not only increased the reach of a particular restaurant but also has increased the competitor base of the same restaurant beyond its imagination. Customers tend to provide feedback about their experiences in various social platforms and these inputs have become an influencing factor in the decision making process. Yelp.com is the major source of these discussions and plays a major role in promotion or de-promotion of a restaurant.
Every restaurant has to have their presence in Internet; Website, Facebook page and digital marketing especially in Google are compulsory ones. Reaching out via email once in a month or during special circumstances such as new product launch, new branch opening and promotion in the form of deals keeps the customer engaged. Customer retention increases significantly because of these activities. Living Social Deal and Group On are other deal providers that increase the customer traffic and help in reaching out to new customers.
Key performance indicators of restaurant industry can be identified from the number of visits made directly to the restaurant URL, visits driven from Google, visits done to look for the location of the restaurant, home delivery orders taken from websites such as eat24.com. Calculating these numbers will depict the clear picture of how traffic is driven and what sort of promotion works for the particular restaurant. The numbers of emails opened and resulted in business are also an indicator that shows the customer interest in particular restaurant’s happenings
Solving the customer’s indifferent [bad] experiences and getting feedback consistently from them to improve the quality of their experience are the important factors that effect businesses in a positive way. With the evolution of Digital media it is strongly advised for every restaurants to develop their own friends’ circle that actively engage in Internet discussions and spread a good vibe. I do feel that there has to be someone within the restaurant or a consultant who keeps track of the things that are going about the restaurant in the Internet and update their activities such as menu, newsletter, and ambience according to them.
Bottom Line: Customers happiness comes before everything!
![DON’T MAKE ME THINK- A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability
Grade: A
Pages: 216
Rating out of 5: 5/5
The book is mainly about answering the following questions how web is used? How websites are constructed? And what it is meant to us? The “us” refers to the entire eco-system of e-world [Website owner/ Web consumer/ Programmer/ Designer etc.]. Steve Krug, the author has immense experience as web usability consultant and he has worked with companies like Apple, AOL, BarnesandNoble.com, Excite@Home and Circle.com. Krug’s book is full of “simple practical techniques” for developing a user friendly website that doesn’t simply attract users but it makes them attached to it “forever”. The book is very short and crispy by design, which makes it an easy read. The author style of writing made me engaged, entertained and curious about our Internet usage pattern.
The author starts with a brief narration of why he decided to pen down a second edition and what has changed from the first edition and why it is changed? After passing this info he gets into Krug’s way of defining web usability should be and then lists some websites that has instigated such skins. He states why these attributes make these websites better than the other in the e-world.
Krug portrays some pictures of websites and describes the features in those websites and while doing so he explains a attribute ‘s specific reasoning as a web designer and how it is perceived by a web user. The intriguing aspect is designers tend to think that users will access each and every word that’s on the website’s homepage whereas as users just scan and skim it. In the pursuit to find their [user] required data; they tend to spend a lot of time or sometimes they never quit until we find the info but in this process they do follow a specific pattern. He talks about how these patterns are formed and how it influences a user’s mindset in a search.
One important aspect from the book is Krug maintains a line between what is the correct way and what is the best way to construct a website. At the same time he keeps this to very minimal and focuses more on what are the needs of a user. He articulates the importance of focus groups and details the role of these focus groups time to time in product development phase. He did touch a bit about office politics involved in the decision making process. He then jumps into the importance of “Home” tab irrespective of which page the user is in, user should always have the option to go to the home page. The book has lot of cartoons then and there which are self-explanatory and at the same time humorous.
The other identical chapter deals with some example websites and illustrates .the importance of a “search” button. Then he touches upon the best way to design the search tab and with some examples he clearly portrays how it should be done and how it shouldn’t be. One more aspect is the highlighting that is needed to let the user know where they are and if they want to navigate back it’s help to do so. All these stress the essentiality of a good navigation design and how it creates the emotional connectivity bond between the user and the website.
One thing Krug has clearly established by the book is he has quashed the myth around conducting usability testing which is always considered as very expensive and not everyone can afford to do it. In the process of doing this, all we have to spend is $300. He doesn’t stop there and digs in deeper by providing simple steps that you can use to conduct a usability test on your own and what can be expected out of this.
My professor Dan Weingrod for Digital Marketing recommended this to me; I loved reading this seriously amazing book and a big THANK YOU for my professor. Normally it’s hard to focus on e-book for hours but this book had all the essence that kept me pushing one more chapter. I loved the transition and spacing throughout the whole book with a right mix between pictures and words. Some parts kept me laughing for minutes, some parts made me think how did I miss this difference in these sites that I have been using everyday. I strongly recommend this book to all web developers at any level because it instills little tidbits of information in your head and changes the perception next time you sit to design and build a web. All in all, if you are new to web usability and need simple, user-friendly solutions this is the book.
Bottom Line: Improve the usability tools of your site and it will improve your site overall.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7460582gl1raa00xo1_250.jpg)
