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What Does a Restaurant Website Need?
December 7, 2015
By Team Hello
Every business has its charm. The things you do best are what people look for, in search and on your website. Working with that unique value is important, as it’s what will make the difference between an idle visitor, and a new customer.
For restaurants, this means building focus and tools around their best asset: their food.
“Does this place serve food I’ll like?”
There’s no excuse for missing some kind of menu on your restaurant website. Even if your entire offering changes quarterly because of an innovative chef or seasonal ingredients, letting people know – when they’re looking for it – whether or not they can actually eat in your dining room is worth the energy.
Some details are more important than others here. For example – potential allergens, such as nuts or gluten contents may be key to lay out if the dish has an uncommon name. Pricing on the other hand doesn’t always need to be on your online menu at all.
The job of the menu is to let people know roughly what they’re getting into when they make the trip to your restaurant.
Until we have smell-o-vision, pictures are your most powerful appetizer.
Just look at these images. Look at them! Feel your mouth watering!
Ok, so your mouth probably isn’t watering unless you like East Indian food – but Clay Oven does this very well, with images of their best dishes sprinkled around their website.
From the first slide on the homepage, right into the menu and ordering process, we built Clay Oven’s website to show off their food as a central piece of the site’s value.
Order in a take-out system and serve up some convenience.
If your budget allows it, building an ordering system into your website can be a great way to attract customers to take-out or delivery options.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, including gadgets like a delivery time tracker, but it does have to be reliable.
Creating a system where people can choose how they interact with your business is immensely valuable. Allowing for online ordering and payment, take-out or delivery options as you’re capable, as well as the usual phone and location directions, gives people the opportunity to interact in ways they prefer.
Treat social media as an opportunity to display your art
Restaurants have some unique social media opportunities, especially on visual media like Instagram.
People on instagram love food. They post about what they’re cooking, share recipes, snap their meals while out with friends… Huge number of likes, comments, and mentions on the platform come from people’s love of food!
Even if your restaurant isn’t on Instagram (and it should be) people will be taking photos of food you serve and posting them there. Connecting your restaurant website to an instagram feed may be worth looking into!
Social media is very much the new town square.
And, like our lack of smell-o-vision, filling the spaces we can with visual ambience instead of wafts from the cookpot makes a great impression.
Source: Hello BLOG