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The hospitality industry in general, and restaurants in particular, is all about your guest’s experience. Whether it be the food you offer, where your restaurant is located, the way your staff interacts with customers or the overall restaurant ambiance.
With more and more businesses turning to online ordering channels, your restaurant’s digital presence becomes a major part of this customer experience. At times, your restaurant website will be the only touchpoint customers have with your brand. This was especially true during global lockdowns imposed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Therefore, the way your restaurant website is created, what it includes, and how user-friendly it is, is of critical importance to your restaurant’s success. This is all the exposure your brand customers may get.
Taking the time to optimize your restaurant website for your customers can benefit your business in great ways. Here are some tips you can employ to help your brand make the best website possible.
Why You Need a Restaurant Website
A restaurant’s main online home is its website.
It is the first place customers will go for information about you. It is also the primary method potential customers will find out about you.
However, your website is about more than just providing information to visitors. A website may also assist you to expand your consumer base and boost your business’s appeal.
Here are some of the reasons your website needs its own website.
Google’s Impact
Having a website plays a huge part in how easy it is for customers to locate you on the internet.
When a potential customer is looking for a place to eat or a location for a special event, Google is frequently the first place they check.
You are virtually invisible to numerous prospective consumers if you don’t have a website. Having an internet presence will vastly boost your visibility.
Without an internet presence, your business is the modern equivalent of not having a phone book listing or a sign on your building.
Highlights the Legitimacy of Your Restaurant
A professional-looking website with appropriate information communicates to potential consumers that you run a credible business.
Many people consider a website to be clear evidence that a company is established and trustworthy.
By not having a website you may appear unprofessional or questionable.
You Have Complete Control Over How Your Brand is Portrayed
You don’t need a website to establish an internet presence for your restaurant. Without ever having a website, your restaurant may be featured on different review websites. It can be tempting to just stick with these options and allow customers to discover you there.
The problem is you have no control over how you appear on other sites. The amount of information you may include is restricted. You can’t present the version of your brand that you want people to see.
When you establish your website, you have complete control over your brand’s portrayal. You pick the color palette to fit the rest of your branding. You talk about your restaurant in words that you know your customers care about.
Rather than depending entirely on customer feedback, which is valuable for its reasons, a website allows you to convey yourself, your business, and your cuisine to potential diners, rather than having it all be filtered via other people’s experiences.
Your website is the place where you can present your finest online face to the world and persuade customers to select your restaurant.
The Website Serves as a Central Hub for all Important Information
Visitors to your site will be able to see all of your marketing promos in one place. Having your own branded website offers a common ground where all of your promos and news may be shared.
Customers can also use your website to find answers to their questions such as what you offer, where you are located, your restaurant timings, etc.
Things to Include on Your Restaurant Website
In order to make your website for your restaurant as effective as possible, and have the impact you want it to, here are some of the things you should include on your website.
Relevant Restaurant Information: Contact Details, Address, Opening Hours
Begin with the essential details.
On your homepage, your address, phone number, and hours should be prominent. Customers will find it easier to acquire directions to your restaurant or place an order if this information is readily available on your website.
Similarly, if your restaurant has many locations, make a list of them all.
Aside from providing a positive user experience, including correct important information on the homepage will help you rank higher in Google search results.
On Google My Business, your information should also be current.
Because Google is generally the first place a potential consumer will find your website, make sure your listing is current and includes correct information about restaurant hours, locations, and ordering options.
Your Menu Should be Centre Stage
Let’s look at some statistics:
- More than any other business type, 90% of visitors conduct internet research before dining at a restaurant.
- After seeing food-related content online, 86% of Millennials will try a new restaurant.
- Approximately 93% of customers will check a restaurant’s menu before deciding where to eat.
Your menu should be included on your website and these statistics highlight exactly why.
However, there is a precise method of achieving it that will make it as accessible to your visitors as possible.
Visitors to your website, particularly those using smartphones, want to be able to browse your menu quickly and effortlessly.
Menus should be listed in an easy-to-find, and share, the web page that can be accessed both on the homepage of your website and in Google results.
Rather than having a PDF, dedicate a full page of your website to showing your menu so that no further clicks are required. On a mobile device, scrolling through your menu is faster than clicking and being sent to other sites.
This adds to your customer’s experience with your brand. It also helps your website rank higher and thus be visible to more people.
Enticing Photographs
The food sector is a very visual one. One of your restaurant’s most powerful marketing tools is photographs.
On your website, you want to promote your restaurant’s top attributes. It might be an indicator of the atmosphere your restaurant provides to consumers, the people who work there, the location of your restaurant, or the delicious foods that will draw guests.
Using minimal language and supporting it with outstanding photos will do a better job of expressing your main points than using a lot of text.
Make sure you’re working with high-resolution photos. If necessary, hire a professional photographer to complete the task.
Online Ordering
It is more convenient and faster to order food online than to call beforehand. In fact, approximately 42% of food purchases are done online, over 60% of US consumers order online from a restaurant each week highlighting just how important online ordering for your customers is.
The easier it is for consumers to order meals from you, the more probable it is that they will purchase what you have to offer.
It’s also more convenient for your employees to have customers order online. It frees up their time so they can attend to customers who are already eating in, while also lowering the number of misunderstandings and miscommunications that might occur when ordering over the phone.
Allowing your consumers to place orders online puts you in a position to compete with major businesses that already provide this service. You may also gather customer information if you have your own branded website, which will be useful for conducting promotions throughout the year.
Placing an online ordering option on your menu is one of the most efficient ways to do so. You will increase conversions by doing so since you are giving people an easier way to order your meals.
To grab the exact moment someone decides they want to try your restaurant, place online ordering buttons on every page to ensure they are easy to discover.
Tips for Optimizing Your Restaurant Website
To ensure that your website is the perfect online front for your brand and your restaurant there are certain steps you can take to optimize your restaurant website.
Ensure Your Website is Well Branded
Your website’s logo, colors, and photographs all convey a story that visitors can relate to and remember.
Have a unique identity that is reflected in your font selection, logo, and template, but doesn’t go overboard with it to the point that a visitor is diverted from taking the next step on the site.
Share culinary photos or the backstory behind a popular menu item. Just be cautious not to overdo the decoration – your website should have a good mix of style and function.
Remember, your website is the first online interaction your customers have with your brand and could be the first impression of your brand they have at all. You need to ensure that you showcase your brand and portray the brand as you want it.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices
More than 80% of customers have used their smartphones to look for restaurants. As a result, it’s even more critical that your website be mobile-friendly.
Almost half of the internet users use a portable device such as a smartphone or tablet to access the internet, and if your website isn’t mobile-friendly or sluggish when viewed on a handheld device, you’re losing half of your potential and existing clients right immediately.
Making your restaurant’s website mobile-friendly is part of optimizing it. It is critical to have a mobile-friendly restaurant website.
Customers should be able to simply read and navigate your website on mobile devices as well as desktop computers.
Because of the current shift in browsing behavior and Google’s endorsement of mobile-first, the best approach to build your website is to prioritize the mobile experience. It’s also sensible, given that the majority of your clients use their phones to view your website
Therefore, take a look at your various multimedia features and explore alternatives if they are slowing down the load speeds of your website on mobile devices.
Keep in mind that you can also increase website speeds by switching to another host provider. For example, you can get VPS plans offered by NameHero that are powered by AMD EPYC processors, ensuring blazing-fast performance.
Not everything that works for your desktop version will work for your mobile version; nonetheless, the overall appearance and feel of your mobile site should be similar to your desktop version.
Your Website Should be Easy to Navigate
Users establish an opinion about your website in roughly 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds), which affects whether they like it or not and if they will remain or go.
The navigation on your homepage should emphasize the most important aspects that site visitors would wish to locate.
The navigation of your website is crucial to its success. Place the most useful promotions or resources at the top of the website to direct their attention.
57 percent of internet users said they won’t suggest a business with a mobile website that isn’t well-designed.
Use Blink to Create Your Restaurant Website
Blink is an all-in-one quick commerce software that offers branded assets in the form of mobile applications for both Android and iOS devices as well as a branded restaurant website. What makes Blink a great software for your restaurant is the comprehensive back-of-house merchant portal that the branded front-end comes with.
When you use Blink, be rest assured that your restaurant website will be the ideal online front for your brand and offer your customers a smooth ordering experience.
Blink’s team has extensive experience and expertise to put into offering your business the website it needs so that you don’t have to worry about having one developed.
With Blink, you can focus on key aspects of your restaurant business such as operations, customer service, and sales, and leave technology to the professionals. You also have complete control over the way your brand is portrayed to customers while engaging directly with them which is not the case when you sell through third-party aggregators.
All your customer data is your own without you having to pay hefty commissions so that you can expand your restaurant, reach your customers directly and retain them.
With a website designed for online orders, secure order processing on web and mobile platforms, and guidance through access to informative resources on achieving sustainable business growth, Blink can set you up for success.
