Mcdonalds Blog

I'm Lovin' It

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Recommendations to Management

When I looked at Mcdonalds’ different social media, such as facebook, twitter, and Instagram, I noticed how lifeless they appeared.  Many of the posts felt like ads, and all of their responses to customers seemed extremely generic, almost like a robot wrote it. I would recommend Mcdonalds to give their social media more of a personality, rather than being so generic. This makes their social media more entertaining, which attracts more engaged followers. 

Another thing that I noticed is that many of the ads for Mcdonalds are also generic and the target audience is so vague that nearly everyone can relate. Although this can be beneficial, I feel that making more ads that target a specific audience could greatly benefit the brand.  For example, making ads that target families could potentially be more effective than an ad that only advertises the BigMac.   

I would also recommend Mcdonalds to incorporate trust symbols on their website. Typically, I think that trust symbols look obnoxious, but if incorporated correctly, it can be very effective. I would recommend adding the trust symbol to their food’s nutrition page. This way, if any customer is concerned about the food or its ingredients, the trust symbol would be available, reassuring the customer of the brand. 

Other than their all-day breakfast deal, Mcdonalds has hardly advertised their other deals.  Since it is the holiday season, I would expect to see ads for their seasonal deals, such as their holiday drinks. However, I actually haven’t seen any ads for seasonal drinks. I would encourage Mcdonalds to put more effort into advertising products other than their all-day breakfast. 

Although Mcdonalds allows you to sign up for their email newsletter on their website’s homepage, I actually had not known that they sent out emails until I examined their website. Along with this, other than on social media, their app is hardly ever advertised. I would recommend advertising their email newsletter and app somewhere at the store.  An effective place would be to advertise on the receipt. This could be extremely effective, especially for older people or for people who do not use social media as often as others.

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7. Evaluate the content of the website and social media.

The Mcdonalds website’s content is mainly photos, along with short writings/summaries of whatever topic is being displayed. For example, on the “burgers” page, it shows pictures of various burgers, along with a brief description of their burger patties.  The website also contains short articles. These articles usually revolve Mcdonalds as a brand, rather than its food. For example, there is an article about McDonalds’ history and an article about benefits of working at McDonalds.  The website also contains several videos, which are used for the RMHC/HACER programs. Something that I found strange is that when you go to the page where the videos are, you are taken to a Spanish page, and when you leave the page, the website continues to translate to Spanish.  Although you can change it back to the English version, it is a little bit confusing to be redirected to a Spanish page.  In my opinion, it would be best for the page to be in whatever language the searcher already has set.   As for social media content, it is mainly photos and pictures. I elaborate more on this in my previous blog post.  

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6.  Evaluate the brand’s social media usage.

Mcdonald’s Facebook page has over 67 million likes. It is used mainly to share articles and promote various things, such as their all-day breakfast menu, holiday drinks, and their charity.  

The Mcdonalds Twitter account has 3.31 million followers. It is used mainly to interact with customers and build brand equity. Rather than promoting just food items, they promote different charities and organizations that they support.

The Mcdonalds Instagram has 1.9 million followers and is used to promote seasonal deals, along with their all day breakfast.

For Instagram and Facebook, videos typically gain more views than the photos gain likes, with videos on Facebook reaching over 1 million views and videos on Instagram reaching over 100 thousand views. On all these social media, photos focused on actual McDonald's food gain more feedback (likes and comments), whereas photos focused on people or landscapes gain less.

The McDonald's Twitter account could use more work creating content, as Twitter contains the least activity of these social media.  It mostly promotes the current deals, but since a person is unlikely to want to retweet a promotion, it could help to create more valuable content that people would want to share. An example could be “secret menu” item or “Mcdonald’s hacks.”

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5. $1000 budget for display ads

In my opinion, the most important part of a banner ad is the design. Nobody wants to look at a low-quality ad. So I would spend $300 on the ad’s quality.  I would use professional photos and include a unique value proposition. For example, I would advertise the Mcdonalds' happy meal, or promote the mobile app's coupons. Even if the ad is high quality, it won't matter if it nobody views it: I would spend $250 on ad targeting. Of this $200, I would spend $100 on keywords, $75 on placement, and $75 on interests and topics. Since the quality of the ad would already be taken care of, I would not spend too much money (probably less that $50) on the consistency of the banner ad. And since Mcdonalds is such a well-known brand, as long as the main colors (red and yellow) are incorporated, then that would be enough to make it consistent with the website and the brand. I would spend $150 on the ad remarketing.  The primary goal of my ad is to get people to see it, not necessarily to get them the click on it. $150 would be spent of paying for the ads.  Even though the ad's goal wouldn’t be to get people to click the ad, I would still use the CPC bidding method. This way, I would be able to show my ad to many people, without having to pay for everyone who had seen it. Although getting someone to click the ad and go to the website would be a bonus. In addition to all this, I would also do A/B Testing. I would find out what areas my ad needs improving in, and then I would use the remaining $100 to strengthen my ad even further.

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4.  Evaluate the use of landing pages on the site.

The Mcdonalds website has a navigation bar at the top of the screen. The navigation bar includes main categories such as “menu,” “deals,” and “about our food,” along with a “trending” section, a search bar, and a restaurant locator. Along with this, each main category includes several subcategories.  Although the number of subcategories displayed can be slightly overwhelming, the navigation bar is organized nicely, and it is easy to find anything you might need. The site is mainly monochromatic, with the black/dark gray navigation bar, which appears on every page, and the occasional splash of red. Mcdonalds has many buttons throughout its site. The buttons are visually consistent: each button is a long, red oval with white text. When you hover over the button, it changes its color to a more faded, pastel red. Style-wise, there are no other features to the buttons, making the website look simple and sleek. Every button has a unique call to action. For example, “Earn Rewards” or “See The Menu.” Mcdonalds uses high quality, appealing photos on its website.  Some of the pages use GIFs as the main image of the page, and although it’s a very appealing image, it can be very distracting, since there is text going over the photo. I think that a still photo would work best for the website. The Mcdonalds website has no trust symbols, but the site does have other trust factors such as professional photography, high-quality design, readily available contact information, and a large social media presence. On the homepage, there is a simple form that only requires your email address and your zip code.  By filling in this form, it allows McDonalds to send the search emails and promotions. There is also a short form for finding “locations near me.”  You just input your city, state, or zip, then select what features you want at a specific McDonalds restaurant. All in all, I think that the Mcdonalds website has quite good landing pages: they are simple, consistent, and functional.

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3. Conduct a basic SEO evaluation of the site

Mcdonalds.com SEO Evaluation — Pros and cons.

Pros:

Good meta-description and meta-title — Fits within all the requirements and recommendations. It uses keywords that are relevant and descriptive. Looks appealing on the SERP, which attracts more traffic.

Good keyword usage/optimization – Keywords are used in the meta-tags, which helps identify the topics of your page.

SEO Friendly URL  — Every URL on this page (other than the login/sign up page) is SEO friendly.

Contains page headings — Page headings can help with emphasizing the main subject of a paragraph/page.

Uses a robots.txt file – The file that crawlers access first. This file tells Google what is and is not allowed to be crawled on your site

Site has sitemaps – Contains two (2) sitemaps, which provides valuable meta data for each web page on a website. Which also assists search engine site crawlers in crawling more intelligently.

Uses the latest version of Google Analytics.

Is connected with social media (Facebook and Twitter).

Page loading speed is optimized – Page size, HTML compression/GZIP, loading speed, Page cache, and Flash are properly optimized, allowing for faster page loading speeds.

The server is secured – URLs are canonicalized, HTTPS is applied, Server signature is off, and the server has disabled directory browsing.

Has Mobile usability—uses media query technique (the base for responsive design functionalities,

Cons:

Inline CSS —   The site uses too many (23, to be exact) inline CSS styles. Inline CSS properties can increase page loading time and make site maintenance more difficult.

Page objects — Has more than 20 HTTP requests. Too many HTTP requests can slow down page loading.

Libwww-perl Access — Site allows libwww-perl access, which enables simple attacks on the website.  Disabling libwww-perl access would make the website safer.

Microdata Schema — The site doesn't take the advantages of HTML Microdata specifications to mark up structured data, which makes it difficult for search engines to understand the content of the site.

IP Canonicalization Test —  site’s IP address doesn’t redirect to the site’s domain name, which could cause duplicate content problems if a search engine indexes your site under bother its IP and domain name.

(2016, September 17). Search Engine Optimization Made Easy. Retrieved September 17, 2016, from http://seositecheckup.com/

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2. Evaluate the brand’s website.

The McDonald's website (www.mcdonalds.com) is very sleek and very simple. The homepage includes announcements and deals, and when you scroll down, they display the official Mcdonalds social media links to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The website has a drop-down header, where you can choose what category you would like to view. The drop-down categories include ‘Our Menu,' ‘About Our Food,' ‘Deals,' Trending Now,' ‘Locate,' and ‘Search’ tabs.

From looking at the homepage, it would not seem like the website as a whole would be interactive, but when you go into its ‘About Our Food’ tab, there is a very interactive food nutrition calculator. With this calculator, you can calculate all the nutrition facts of whatever meal you would want to create. It is an engaging, valuable tool for Mcdonalds to have on their website.

The McDonalds website is very responsive. Every announcement and deal on the homepage have a link that directs the user to a more detailed page.

In my opinion, I feel like Mcdonalds’ black header background causes the site look a little bit cluttered. A cleaner and brighter header background would make the website appear cleaner and more organized.  I also noticed that one or two of the header photos were a tiny bit blurry due to low quality. But other than the few low-quality pictures, every other picture was clear, crisp, and high quality.

Something that I appreciate about this website is that there is a ‘nearest location’ link on every page, where you can locate the nearest McDonalds, along with being able to view all their different features and information.

Overall, I feel like the usability of the Mcdonalds website is very good. It does its job, offers relevant features, and there are very few flaws.