How to build a restaurant website
Is serving delicious food enough to call yourself a successful restaurant? Not in the 21st century. Nowadays, the competition among restaurants is so fierce that only 1 in 5 restaurant owners is certain to make it through the year, according to the Independent Restaurant Coalition. The only way to survive these days is to make your restaurant recognizable, and this is where online promotion helps. Recognition can be achieved in different ways, but creating a dedicated website is the thing to start with.
Recent research shows that nearly 90 percent of guests are checking out a restaurant before they dine - more than any other business. What's more, 57 percent of those guests browse restaurant websites before choosing where to dine. The first thing you should pay attention to is the menu. However, at this point, many restaurant owners make two opposite but most common mistakes. Some consider that it is sufficient to mention the name of the dish and add random photos taken in a hurry before serving, while others, on the contrary, pay attention to long descriptions and forget that their customers are hungry.
To create a good menu, it's important to remember how the human psychology works. When visiting a restaurant's website, customers are already imagining how they eat the dishes. Therefore, you should first take 1-2 professional, appetizing photos of each dish. Then, you should add a short description to each of them, from which the customer can learn about the ingredients and the method of preparation.
It is no secret that a good overall impression of a restaurant also consists of the decor and atmosphere. That is why it is worth adding photos of the restaurant itself. This action will not only help attract new customers but also encourage them to become regulars.
After the client has decided on the menu, make sure he has access to such important information as your contact phone number, address and working hours. Essentials: working hours. No one wants to come to a long-awaited dinner and see the closed doors. In general, make sure your site not only contains all the necessary information, but also reflects the overall style of your restaurant. Do not miss such important features as creating a memorable logo and domain.
So, is it possible to finish creating a website at this stage? Well, yes and no! All the features mentioned above can be considered basic. Due to the large selection in the food industry today, some customers are becoming more fastidious. They want to feel special when choosing a certain place to eat-out. In order to win over the client more on the restaurant's website, you can add a special section dedicated to the exciting history of your restaurant, the idea of its creation, or, for example, slightly reveal the secret cooking technology that is unique to you. After reading this section, your customers will feel not only the taste of the dishes, but also the rich history behind them.
Once the design of the site is finished, you should think about its promotion. In order for more people to learn about the existence of your restaurant, you’d better use diverse SEO tools. Having your website linked on other authoritative websites will help give your business a search engine boost. Pay attention to local SEO, which is becoming increasingly important as more and more people use mobile devices for search. These days, 57% of all searches are performed from tablets and smartphones, and half of those searches have local intent.
Encourage your customers to leave reviews of your website. Near 33 percent view other guests’ reviews prior to dining. According to research, previous customer reviews are a key factor influencing the attitude of potential customers toward your restaurant. Moreover, if you take the time to comment on the reviews left, you will show how important the opinion of each client is to you and thereby win over yourself. And finally, constantly follow the trends of your industry. Implement an online ordering system in your website, develop a delivery system and make your website mobile-friendly. After you have correctly built your website and developed a system for your promotion, all you have to do is regularly make sure all the information is up to date.
