Over the past few months we’ve been talking to many restaurants about their mobile marketing strategy. Many of you simply want to upgrade your existing websites to add support for mobile phones like the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. We have heard your feedback and have been working hard to build a service that suits your needs.

Today we are proud to announce the launch of our new service: ChompStack’s mobile website builder for restaurants.

Why Mobile Websites Are Important

With the mobile internet growing at an exponential rate, it is now critical for every business to establish a mobile web presence. Customers are increasingly turning to their phones to search for nearby restaurants, read reviews, look up menus, and find directions. By 2012 there will be more mobile devices connected to the internet than desktop PCs*, and that is an audience restaurants cannot afford to ignore.

Currently, very few restaurants have websites that are mobile enabled. Most websites designed for the desktop don’t work well on mobile phones: they take a long time to download, and navigating the site is a frustrating experience requiring lots of zooming and scrolling. If the website was built in Flash (and many restaurant websites are), they simply don’t work at all.

Our mission at ChompStack is to make sure that every restaurant has a mobile website that your customers can easily access from their phones. We want you to have a fast loading, fantastic looking mobile website that lets you reach a whole new audience. We want to make it easy for your customers to pull up your menu, to find out about your latest promotions, and to get driving directions to your nearest location.

Mobile internet usage is exploding, and consumers are getting more savvy. 42% of consumers in the United States currently have smartphones*. Every day, millions of consumers use their phones to look up nearby restaurants to find a new place to have lunch. We want them to easily discover your restaurant through your mobile website.

What Makes ChompStack Special

ChompStack’s mobile websites are very different from traditional desktop websites. We want your customers to have the best possible experience when they are viewing your website on the go. To achieve this, we have designed a mobile website interface that has been specifically optimized for phones:

1. Built for phones. Many websites built with desktop technologies such as Adobe Flash simply don’t work on smartphones like the iPhone or BlackBerry. All of our websites are built with technologies that work beautifully on the phone, so you never have to worry about whether or not your customers can see your site.
2. Designed for small screens. Desktop websites require lots of zooming, pinching, and scrolling when viewed on a phone. This can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Our mobile websites are specifically designed for smartphone screen sizes. We use large fonts to make things easy to read, and big buttons to make navigation simple.
3. Optimized, fast downloads. On a mobile device, websites need to load fast. Users don’t have time to wait around for websites to download large images, PDFs, and other files. We have carefully optimized our websites to load as quickly as possible by minimizing our file sizes and compressing all downloads. Your customers will notice the difference.
4. Takes advantage of smartphone features. Modern smartphones can easily integrate one-click calling and Google maps directions from your website. We take full advantage of these features to make things as easy as possible for your customers.
5. Supports thousands of mobile devices. We have carefully ensured that our mobile websites are supported on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and other smartphone devices. As new phones come out, we will keep making updates to ensure that your website loads and works great on every device.

If your restaurant does not yet have a mobile optimized website, we encourage you to give ChompStack a try. You can get up and running in less than a day. Your customers will thank you.

* Source: Morgan Stanley Mobile Internet Report