Your restaurant’s website can speak volumes about your brand. Living in a highly digitised world, it is little wonder that a lot of customers’ first point of contact with restaurants is through its website or other online platforms. A website is no longer just a means of finding out information on the brand, its use has grown to provide a highly interactive user experience. Here are a few pointers as to what constitutes a great restaurant website.
Contact information should be easy to find
Ideally you want people who visit your website to become your customers and in order to do this they should be able to contact you. You can help your site visitors out by displaying your contact information clearly, in the same position on every page. If potential customers find it difficult to access your contact information they may lose interest and head over to your competitors instead.
Example: ilili
Menu
Another item that should be easy to find is your menu. Bianco’s website has the menu link displayed in a way that allows customers to see it immediately when they open the site. Avoid having your menu in a PDF or jpeg format as these might lead your customers away from your website, and you may lose the opportunity to engage with them more. Your menu should be informative and allow customers to click on either the text or pictures to find out more about each dish. Information such as a list of ingredients used or whether the meal is suitable for vegans should be included on the menu. An efficient menu would give customers the option to order what they want by clicking on their desired item.
Reservations
Your website should also have a link that customers can follow when they want to make a reservation. Like the contact information, the reservation button or link should be easy to find. A calendar showing available dates and times should also be there to make it easy for customers to make their choice. Example: Quay
Optimised for different platforms
Since a lot of people access the internet on their phones, your website should be optimised for mobile. This basically means that your site should look the same and function efficiently, even on any mobile phone. Example: SusieCakes
Mailing list
Email campaigns are a great way to reach a wide audience within a short period of time. However, you can only email people that have opted to be on your mailing list. In order to get people on your list, you can have a pop up box on your website, where people can submit their email addresses and other information. Give people an incentive to get on your mailing list such as a free recipe book when they sign up or information about your events and specials. Example: RubyTuesday
Keep content fresh
To keep your content fresh, have a blog that you update at least once a week. This should have topics that your customers may be interested in such as nutrition tips, staff profiles or even recipes. Another way of providing engaging and fresh content is to have feeds of your social media accounts on your page. This will show people what your brand is currently discussing and may prompt them to join the conversation. Example: Dutch’s
These basic points are an absolute necessity for an effective restaurant website. By incorporating these suggestions, your website may become a sales and marketing tool that helps boost your orders and reservations.
At Napkin, regardless of whether you want a super simple or super slick design, we cater for all. Our developers code mainly in PHP and HTML which means we can be flexible and easily custom designs to fit your needs. Drop us a line and let’s get your restaurant the website it deserves.
