5 Essentials in Restaurant Website Design

In the last few blog posts, I talked about marketing and restaurant website design. But what makes the best restaurant website? In this article, I’ll talk about the 5 essentials to a good restaurant website.

1. Make sure that you can easily update your website.

You may want to change over to a WordPress or Joomla template that can be easily managed by you and your staff so that you can update it whenever you’d like. It also gives you options to add various types of media with an easy-to-understand editor.

1. Get a website design that allows for growth.

So many times, we see businesses buy the $99 special, but it doesn’t contain any way for you to expand it because you are limited to the number of pages that you have. It’s best to own your own domain and hosting.

1. Optimize your website so that your target audience can find you.

Let’s say that you are a restaurant located in the Loft District of St. Louis, you should probably have your website optimized with keywords that would reflect that, such as “restaurant loft district”, “restaurant St. Louis”. Don’t forget to optimize for the broader terms with consideration to Google Places and Google Mobile.

1. Be smartphone friendly.

If a consumer is looking for your location while out on the town, they will probably do it on a smartphone. You don’t want it to show up like a bunch of nonsense.

1. Tell the guests more about you than just your menu and location.

This is your chance to really reach out to your customer base. Tell them how you got started. Tell them about your visions. You can even have a staff page. Make sure that you include things that enhance the guest experience that they would otherwise not be able to know by just looking at the menu.

Granted, there are still some things missing in this restaurant website design list such as social media buttons, email signup for special offers, a blog, and many other features. Get these five things covered first, and you’ll already be ahead of a lot of your competition.

 

Does Your Restaurant Website Fail to Make the Grade?

Let’s face it: the restaurant website is often a bit of a dinosaur when compared to other cutting-edge technology online. Just having a website is not enough these days. You need to make sure that you have all your bases covered when it comes to this key element.

Print vs. Online

You’ve probably seen it before. The phone books pile up outside grocery stores, apartment complexes, and subdivisions. This ancient antiquity will soon be unrecognizable by our children. So why would you spend your money on advertising in phone books, newspapers, and magazines if you don’t even have a respectable website? Make sure that any of your marketing efforts are covered online first. Then if you have more of a marketing budget, you might want to try print.

The good news is that you can gussy up your business online even with a tight pocketbook. If you have to hire someone because you just don’t have the time, it will still only be a fraction of the cost that you would spend on a one inch ad in a phone book or other type of advertising collateral.

A Few Simple Solutions to Make Your Restaurant Website Design Work for You

Are you still operating your website with a static html page? It’s time to make some changes. Try switching to a content management system (CMS) that features sliders of your menu items.

Is your website compatible with smartphones? If it isn’t, you can get an app that will take care of that. Even if you just feature your address and phone number with the app, it’s better than not having a mobile website. In a recent survey conducted by Google, over 89% of people use their smartphones several times per day to conduct commerce and find phone numbers. It’s essential to be able to view your website on a smartphone—otherwise, it’s just on to the next business in the time it takes to click back.

Can your customers sign up for special coupons and offers on your website by email? You’re missing out on a golden business opportunity, especially with the extreme couponing craze happening right now.