A new report being released today gives Papa John’s the highest score among leading restaurants for its fast-loading mobile Web experience.

The average score in The Search Agency report, “The Mobile Experience Scorecard – Restaurants & Catering,” was 2.57, suggesting restaurants have some work to do to improve the mobile Web experience. Overall, the company found that the top 50 restaurant mobile Web experiences are often slow and too focused on location over streamlined conversion processes, resulting in poor user experiences.

“Brands in this vertical are indeed reformatting their Web sites with Google-preferred Responsive Website Design, however further findings indicate flawed implementation,” said Brandon Schakola, group director of earned media at The Search Agency.  “The move towards responsive design is slower in these areas than we would expect.”

User interaction
Papa John’s, with a score of 3.815 out of 5, received the highest score in The Mobile Experience Scorecard – Restaurants & Catering report. The chain also garnered the fastest load time.

Rounding out the top five are Panda Express with a score of 3.715, Dominos at 3.38, Wendy’s 3.305 and Jimmy Johns 3.25 rounded out the top five.

The bottom three rankings went to Dave and Buster’s with a score of 1.53, Chipotle 1.465 and Golden Corral 1.075.

The User Experience Scorecard graded Web sites served on mobile devices on user interaction features such as site format, load time and account sign-in accessibility. The company also evaluated the presence of click to order or reserve buttons, geolocation support, social sharing functionality and app download availability.

Responsive Web design
Many marketers across sectors are moving to responsive Web design to address the need for strong user experiences across devices.

The Search Agency found that 32 percent of the top 50 restaurant and catering sites analyzed use responsive Web design. However, none of these passed a speed test on mobile, suggesting that these businesses are struggling with properly implementing responsive Web design.

The sites using responsive Web design had an average load time of 73.9 seconds while those using dedicated mobile sites loaded in an average of 46.34 seconds.

Geolocation
Additionally, the report found that 96 percent of sites had a manual or automatic geolocation API. However, only 40 percent had a click-to-order or click-to-reserve button, suggesting restaurants are more focused on optimizing their sites for location-specific queries on mobile devices than they are on streamlining the conversion process.

In terms of the report’s SEO Ranking Scorecard, Texas Roadhouse, Denny’s, EAT2, and Allmenus tied with the highest scores, a 5.

Other findings include that 47 of the 50 sites were crawlable. However, 87 percent were missing meta descriptions and 64 percent showed click depth warnings.

“Restaurants and catering brands should approach their mobile experience development more holistically, focusing efforts equally on frontend and architectural design for uniform mobile experience optimization,” Mr. Schakola said.

“These brands should also optimize their mobile experiences for as many conversions points as possible, rather than limiting themselves to strictly on-app or in-store conversions,” he said. “Instead, optimize for every experience, and let users convert wherever they feel most comfortable.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York