Websites today need to have just the perfect amount of everything to entice the audience, and we seem to know a little too much about websites and their designs.
With a goal-crushing strategy, research, and knowledge of what your restaurant’s targeted audience wants, you can create the perfect website to capture goals and skyrocket your restaurant’s growth.
Although we have years of experience in crafting amazing WordPress themes for restaurants, still we’re capable of coming up with new methods and approaches just to help a brand distinguish itself from its competition.
We’ve built stellar and persuasive websites for restaurants too, and today, we’re going to share the 12 most important tips to ensure the creation of a restaurant’s website.
So, without any further ado – let’s start.
Understanding The Audience’s Need
Before getting directly on designing the perfect UI or UX, you should consider having a clear goal of what you want to build. Hence, figuring out what your audience demands will enable you to lay the foundation of the perfect website.
A great way to understand your audience and why they should be on your website is by dividing your audience into the following categories:
- Local customers. (new)
- Returning customers.
The local customers are generally the ones who don’t know your brand. These customers may also be tourists. Hence, when they’ll search for a place to eat in your city, they’ll probably search on Google for the best place to eat.
Also, since there are tourists involved in the situation, you also may need to make your website responsive because tourists are more likely to use their mobile phones in their hotel rooms to search for the best restaurant.
Having a mobile responsive website will enable you to get such customers because once they get on your site, they’ll be amazed by the visuals that you’ve incorporated there, and they would eventually visit your restaurant.
Hence, once they’re on your website, they’re a high probability that they’ll visit your restaurant, and if they do, this means that your website is performing exceptionally well in the digital realm.
Moreover, their visits are directly proportional to your marketing strategy and branding so, we recommend you update your website twice or thrice a week and incorporate all the necessary information there.
The second type of customers that you’ll encounter are returning customers. These are the customers that are already in love with what you do, and they’re more likely to recommend you to their friends.
Hence, I recommend that you integrate an online booking feature on your website just to make the process of pre-booking or order placing more feasible for your returning customers.
In a nutshell, the more convenient the process is, the better it’ll attract and engage customers.
Think Of Your Website As A Physical Store
As a restaurant owner, you’re always conscious about your restaurant’s environment, the lighting, the aroma, cleaned tables, and much more. However, your website needs to be as clean as your physical store. Luckily, there are many ecommerce platforms that are perfect for showcasing your products.
You need to welcome your audience on your website, and to do that, you may need aesthetically pleasing visuals or an engaging banner. There are literally several things that can make your audience feel welcome.
Moreover, as a business owner, you already know that your customers will most likely judge the quality of your food by analyzing the presence of your restaurant.
Let us tell you that they’ll follow the same approach while on your website. They’ll judge the quality of your food, location, and service according to the presentation of your website.
Hence, your website should be engaging and enticing. It should also look perfect not just in terms of visuals but also the functionality.
High-Quality Visuals
Since you’re going digital, it should be better for you to understand the power of visuals from the start. Having clear and striking images on your website can literally make or break your online brand.
Considering the competition your restaurant faces in the digital world, having amazing pictures of your staff, food, services, environment, and much more on your website will instantly entice your audience into visiting your website.
The best way to showcase some of the best shots of your restaurant is by incorporating the pictures behind the textual content on your website. Don’t feel shy if your restaurant is small.
We also recommend using sliders on top of your website showing your main plates. You can use some free restaurant slide templates that can be found for free on Slider-templates
If you are offering quality-oriented services and you have a clean and soothing atmosphere and interior, you should really share it with your audience. You can also showcase how neat and clean your instruments are or how good your cook is.
There are literally thousands of things that you can show on your website to your audience. You can incorporate video testimonials on your website, you can show your audience how you’re cooking the food.
This approach of showcasing and sharing everything through your website would also form a bridge between your audience and your restaurant, which would further strengthen your connection with your customers.
Moreover, another great way to engage your audience and make your website stunning is by incorporating high-quality images on the top of your web pages.
Plus, I would recommend that the images that you’re taking should be professional, and you should highlight some of the key aspects of your restaurants in your images.
You know what they say, “A single picture speaks a thousand words.” Hence, you would need incredible images that have a purpose and not just random images that you can upload anywhere.
Be Clear About Your Food
Having a credible online presence is incredibly important today, not just for your audience but also for search engines. Today, you need to have an informative presence in the digital world.
The most convenient way people share information on their website is by sharing their mission and vision on their website; however, we want you to go beyond this.
Assuming that you already have high-quality images on your website, why not explain to your audience what you were thinking when you took those pictures.
You can tell them about your services, what you believe in as a restaurant, how you want your customers to feel, and much more. The combination of images and textual information will indeed leave a lasting impression on your audience.
Moreover, the key is to stick to the point. Don’t over-exaggerate. Don’t include the stuff that’ll turn your audience’s detective mode on. The key is to captivate the user by uploading realistic images and content.
Incorporating Your USPs
Your unique selling propositions are the ones that’ll do the magic. However, they should be perfectly aligned with your audience’s demands.
To learn about your audience, you can simply opt for market research and competitor research. Through this approach, you’ll have a better understanding of what appeals to your audience the most.
Moreover, you can incorporate these details just below the introduction paragraph on your homepage to instantly inform your audience about why you’re different from your competition.
Since we have experience in creating websites for restaurants, we’re going to tell you about some of the most important USPs that your customers want to know about:
- Speed of service.
- Cost of food.
- Quality of food.
You can share the information about the above-mentioned aspects on your website to not only help your audience to learn more about your service but also to tell them about your quality of services and why you stand out.
Show Them The People Behind The Brand
Trustworthiness is one of the most important qualities that your brand should focus on in the digital world, and to build credibility and trust online, you need to show your human side to your audience.
There are literally millions of restaurants out there that are losing customers because they’re making fake claims on their websites. This approach is leading them to their downfall.
However, by showcasing the people behind the restaurant, you can form a more personal connection with your customers. Moreover, although having a business story or what makes us special is good, it is difficult to write.
Instead, you can simply share the following people’s information with your audience:
- Who are you?
- When were you founded?
- Why are you doing what you’re doing?
- How are you preparing the food?
- What’s your vision/goal/inspiration?
- Who’s the boss?
- Who’s the cook?
Providing the above-mentioned details to your audience will instantly form a connection between them and your restaurant.
Change Your Menu Style
We’re literally not in the 60s anymore. This is 2021, and today we should capitalize on any opportunity we get to delight and engage our audience. So, in this heading, we’re going to tell you how you can create a stunning menu.
A good, responsive, clear, and engaging menu is what you need today to grab your audience’s attention. However, we’ve listed two points that you should avoid while creating a menu for your website.
Don’t Upload Your Menu As An Image.
Don’t just simply upload your menu as an image file to get rid of the job quickly; instead, our recommendation would be to type everything that you’re offering in your restaurant on your website.
This approach would not only affect the search engine rankings in a positive way, but also your readers will have a clearer concept of what you’re offering and at what prices.
Don’t Make Your Menu Precise.
Although your menu should be clean, making it shorter or placing it behind a click is not recommended. You should also make your menu look professional and responsive.
For example, if a user is willing to select a burger, then he needs to select fast food, then the type of burger, this cluttered approach is confusing and frustrating.
Hence, our suggestion would be to upload your entire menu at once so that the audience can easily select what they want from an entire menu and not pieces of it.
Also, uploading this type of menu would help you increase your customer experience.
Having Menu Photos
If you don’t have photos in the physical menu of your restaurant, you can easily incorporate pictures in your digital menu, the one that is on your website.
This strategy would help your customer to make a decision faster by looking at the images present on your menu. Moreover, this would also be a competitive advantage for your restaurant.
Commonly, your customers look at the picture of the dish they’re ordering just to see how good the food looks; hence, having images on your menu is important.
Mention Your Hours & Location
What if your audience is looking for you? What if they need your phone number to order? What if they’re willing to come to your restaurant, but they want to know whether it’s open or not?
How can they get all the answers to the questions mentioned above? Well, through your website of-course. Hence, displaying the most essential information on your website, i.e., phone number, address, open hours, and much more.
A revolutionary approach would be if only you would incorporate Google Map into your website for your users so that they could find your location more quickly.
Tracking Your Users
Where you’re making sure that everything is under check and going according to plan, you may also need to analyze where your traffic is coming from and where it is generally going.
However, physical tracking of your users who are at your restaurant is not allowed, so you may have to track them on your digital restaurant website. Moreover, here are some of the tools that can let you track your visitors:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics will enable you to track your bounce rate, traffic, leads, and much more. By utilizing the information provided by Google Analytics, you can easily create metrics and ensure more quality for your website.
Webmaster Tools.
Webmaster tool allows you to incorporate important keywords into your content/website to make sure that it ranks higher in the Google SERPs.
Setting Up Social Profiles
Social media has become a necessity for businesses, and you should also have a groundbreaking presence on social media.
Moreover, having a social media presence will enable you to rank higher in the Google SERPs because the signals sent by social media channels to Google are considered as a ranking factor by several marketers.
Look For A Good Web Design Agency
Finally, when you’re all done with the website, you’ll notice that more audiences are coming to your website. They’re enjoying not only the physical experience but also the digital experience.
Know that more modernizations and technological advancements have enabled us to create more robust strategies to convert and engage your restaurant’s customers.
Moreover, if you’re someone who is not technical and is looking for a web design agency to get his/her restaurant’s website ready for your business, just reach out!