How to Create a Restaurant Website

Creating an effective website for a restaurant can be challenging. A website is not simply a static place to show off your food, but also an important marketing tool. If you don’t have a properly branded website, then you’re not in the game — so to speak.

A website is where potential customers can find your company and make reservations. Plus, it’s where you can tell your story, provide customer service details and have a presence online that’s visible to online searches.

Customers expect that restaurants will allow them to place their orders online. You're missing out on a great opportunity to grow your restaurant if you don't have an online website where customers can place orders. Here are some of the benefits of online restaurants:

• Order online
  For people who are in a hurry, it would be a lot easier if they could place an order online, instead of having to call the restaurant or order take-out. Additionally, when making orders on the phone, sometimes mistakes can occur.

• Low-cost marketing
  By having an online presence for your restaurant, you won't have to spend money on expensive billboards and media advertising. A decent social media engagement on social platforms and a user-friendly website can go a long way when marketing your business.

• Mobile ordering
  Your restaurant needs to have a mobile-optimized version of the website. There are times when people cannot make a phone call to order food, whether they're in a crowded area or at a meeting. With mobile ordering, customers can quietly make an order without any hassles, which will ensure that you will never lose a customer.

• Customers' data
  Using analytics and insights from your website, you can get valuable data like phone numbers and emails and use it to send targeted promotions. You can quickly know if customers prefer ordering from a website or an app, which food items are popular, and who are your regular customers.

• Fast and easy
  One of the main reasons why people order food online is because they can save time and money. Just about anyone with a smartphone can use it to order food online.

• Reduce staff costs
  With an online ordering system, you can reduce staffing cost. Orders will appear on the kitchen display system, eliminating the need for an employee to sit by the phone and take every single order manually.

• Less abandoned orders
  A restaurant's online ordering system helps to eliminate abandoned or fake orders. Customers can make online payments when placing their orders, which helps to avoid the inconvenience of having to deal with abandoned orders.

1. Display Your Menu Prominently

Customers always look at the menu of restaurants which is why you need to include your menu on your website. Ensure that the menu uses HTML instead of an image or a PDF format since this makes it easier for searching.

2. Display Your Hours of Operation and Contact Information

Your hours, phone number, and address should be clearly visible on your homepage. Make it as easy as possible for customers to get your basic information. Don't make people look around your site to find it. If you want to avoid losing customers to other online restaurants, make sure you provide a pleasant user experience.

If your restaurant has several locations, make sure you display them all. Besides giving an easy user experience, listing this type of information also improves your rank in Google search results, which is great for your restaurant.

3. Offer Online Reservations Through Your Website

What will make your website appealing is offering visitors a chance to make reservations online. To set up an online reservations system, you may need some plugins installed on your website.

This will make it easier for customers, so they don't have to phone your restaurant every time they want to come in, and this will also lessen the workload of the person in charge of reservations.

4. Show Off Your Food with Beautiful Imagery

One of the most effective ways to entice your potential guests is to include beautiful images. Images can show guests what to expect when they order your food or come to your restaurant.

5. Make The Site Mobile Friendly

You must have a restaurant website that is optimized for mobiles so that you can reach your audience on mobile devices. The mobile version of your website should have clear messages alongside images without overwhelming or boring the users with too much text.

6. Stay True to Your Brand

You are more likely to connect with people when you tell your story. Make sure you stay true to your brand in every aspect of your website and be sure to include an About Us section in your restaurant's website, where you talk about the values and the restaurant's inception.

7. Don't Forget About TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is one of the world's largest restaurant websites, so it's crucial to optimize your TripAdvisor restaurant listing. Ensure that all of the details on your listing are correct, register as an owner, upload photos, and get your listing on the map. Make sure you add your menu and encourage customers to write reviews.

8. Select Your Social Media Sites Wisely

Connecting your social media to your restaurant's site is an easy way to make it possible for guests to keep in touch with you. No matter what the channel is, keep your social media pages true to your menu, culture, and brand.

9. Avoid Auto-play Items on Your Site

Avoid auto-play items on your website, like videos, since it annoys visitors and slows down your page load time. If the users want to see the video on your website, they can decide on their own and play it.

1. Domain And Hosting

First and foremost, to create a website for your restaurant, you will need to buy a domain name and hosting plan.

Some of the features you should look for from the hosting provider are:

At Verpex, we offer 24/7 support, and we're here whenever you need as well as excellent speed and performance, storage capacity, and security features.

2. Email Security Service

One of the top priorities for your website is email security. Emails are often a target for hackers who want to get a hold of your brand's private data. Make sure you look at email security gateway platforms.

3. Installing CMS

A Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress will help you create a functional website without any developer knowledge and without having to build every page from scratch. Choose a CMS platform and quickly build a responsive website for your restaurant.

4. Web Design

Your website needs to look attractive and enticing, but at the same time, it needs to convey the quality and integrity of your establishment. Find how to balance style and substance in order to produce a positive impact. You can use restaurant website templates on your CMS or hire a designer for your web design. The design is a vital component of your website, so make sure it's done right.

5. Logo

Your logo should portray your brand's story. With an appetizing restaurant logo, customers will be hungry before they even open the menu. Generate a logo that appeals to different tastes. Or hire a freelance designer with the help of online job platforms like UpWork or Fiverr.

Many online tools like Canva and Crello offer you a wide range of colors, symbols, fonts, icons, and templates, and they are free as well.

6. Select Plugins to Expand Your Site's Feature Set

With so many plugins available for WordPress websites, it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you want to engage users through email opt-in forms, add social sharing buttons, compress images to improve website speed, or optimize your content to rank in search engines , there’s a plugin for just about anything you can think of on your website.

7. Create Engaging Content

Engaging content is something new. It offers a new perspective, an unexpected laugh, bits of knowledge, or something helpful, inspiring, or entertaining. It gives your reader a peek at something he or she hasn't seen before and can relate to in some way.

To create engaging content for your website follow these simple tips:

• Easy-to-read content
• Add images
• Post original content
• Stay true to your brand.

8. Optimize for SEO

To optimize your website for SEO, make sure you use tools, such as Semrush, to identify the best keywords for your restaurant. Use your keywords into copy in a natural way, and avoid keyword stuffing. Optimize your images, meta descriptions, URLs, and headings.

9. Growing And Promoting Your Restaurant Website

Once you've set up your website, connect the restaurant's website to social media pages in order to promote it.

A solid social media presence will inspire customer loyalty, and it will grow your restaurant.

Another way to promote is by pay-per-click advertising.

You can also collaborate with an influencer to promote your website. Influencers can help bring a whole new audience to your restaurant by endorsing your restaurant or food.

To create a brilliant restaurant website, you need to invest in the best tools. Impressive design, good content and memorable elements will help get your customers’ attention. Providing useful information can also improve conversion rates.

We've gone over some of the critical steps of creating and launching your restaurant's website. Make sure you take the time and build a website that you're proud of, just as you're proud of your restaurant.

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