Open Table is an online reservation system that allows restaurants to offer their guests the option of finding and reserving a table from their web site. To date, their site has seated over 70 million guests across the US in major markets like NYC, San Francisco and my backyard, Washington DC. They’re just announced the release of their mobile web interface for finding an open table on the go.
How It Works
Just point your mobile browser to http://mobile.opentable.com to get started. From there you can choose your City and general region. The Neighborhood field isn’t readily apparent, but you can use that to narrow down your search a little further. You also fill in the time slot you’re looking for and number in your party and it gives you a list of options.
Their interface is very simple and clean. it makes the navigation easy, but I think the results page could stand to have a little more information without it being too cluttered. It would be really helpful to see what kind of cuisine and the price range right on the results screen so that you don’t have to click on each restaurant individually.
Another cool feature that I think would be awesome is the ability to search by cuisine. That way I can ask Open Table to find me a table at the closest Japanese restaurant based on my neighborhood.
Immediacy and Location on the Mobile Web
Open Table’s reservation system is a great example of one that becomes even more useful on the mobile web. By providing instant and immediate options for our restaurant needs, they provide even more relevant information to satisfy our needs on the go.
The other major advantage that the mobile web can offer is location. As location based services become more prevalent based on GPS becoming more available on phones and the upcoming iPhone 3G release, services can help us satisfy our immediate needs and return the results closest to our current location.
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[...] It would also be a very handy acquisition for the Yelp Mobile interface or for Opentable’s mobile web reservation system. The one thing that they might adjust is the number of results they will return on one page. [...]