News

The power of social media and mobile helps Giraffe better serve its customers

30 August 2011

As part of its advanced digital and social media strategy, Giraffe has adopted the market leading online reservations and marketing platform, Livebookings, to drive more diners through its doors and meet growing demand for mobile bookings.

Giraffe receives over 130,000 unique visitors to its website each month and in order to turn online traffic into diners, it adopted the Livebookings online reservations portal. The system, selected over rivals Open Table, provides customers with a simple way to book tables in its restaurants, online.

Livebookings fully integrates with Giraffe’s Facebook page, which means its fans can book directly through this social media channel and gain access to exclusive offers. The group, twice awarded for its market leading social media strategy, also uses Twitter to drive followers to both online and mobile booking channels. All Giraffe restaurants also feature on Bookatable.com, Livebookings’ consumer restaurant reservations website, which is designed to make finding the right restaurant in the right place at the right time and price easy.

Not only did the restaurant group need to respond to the social media habits of its customers, it also needed to cater for diners wishing to locate, research and book restaurants on the move. Giraffe has benefited from Livebookings’ Pocket Diner platform, which compliments its existing web presence and creates a mobile optimised version perfect for customers using devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone. Pocket Diner has generated a 226% increase in visits to the bookings page on Giraffe’s mobile site while the recent Livebookings Restaurant Index predicts that mobile restaurant booking is an increasing trend, with one in every five online bookings to be made on mobile by 2012.

Vikki O’Neil, Marketing Manager at Giraffe said: “It’s all about making it easier for the customer to book a table – more and more we’re seeing that people make plans on the go and online, we simply make it easy for them to book a table in our restaurants by having the Livebookings reservations interface in a prime position on our website and Facebook page to capture that call to action. Many of our customers are web-savvy it makes complete business and brand sense to engage with them on these platforms.”

For more information on Livebookings, please visit http://www.livebookings.co.uk/
For more information on Giraffe, please visit http://www.giraffe.net/

*Livebookings Restaurant Index, May 2011

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