You put your heart and soul into your dishes, but as every restaurant owner quickly realises that this only the half of the battle in the culinary business. A great restaurant website design should be attractive, useful and engaging. A great restaurant website doesn’t need much. But it should have everything a potential customer needs to know. A perfect restaurant website design will allow customers to find relevant information like:
- Menus
- Location
- operating hours
- contact information
With ease and without any distraction. Despite, customers prefer to know about the restaurant, quality of food and also the services they offer via the restaurant website design and development.
According to surveys, 2018 was a banner year for restaurants in the UK and US, where the restaurant sales have been raised from $798.7 billion to $ 825 billion. This growth is majorly due to the restauranteurs are increasing their margins and approaching their menu design more strategically. The restaurant business is on the upswing as customers are spending more which is an excellent opportunity for you to capitalise on. There is a belief that when the demand is more, the competition will also be more. In the UK and US, nearly 60000 new restaurants are opened annually among them 50,000 closing with a net profit of 10,000 new restaurants per year.
Here in the blog, we go through various questions such as
- Do restaurants need to have a website?
- When to create or redesign your restaurant website?
- What are the key elements to consider for restaurant website development and design?
- Tips for modern restaurant website development
- Top features to consider for restaurant website development
- What are the latest restaurant website design trends
- What are the factors that influence the cost of the restaurant website development?
Ready to create your restaurant website? Let’s do this!!
1. Do restaurant need to have a website?
Yes, the restaurants must need a website as it is a powerful marketing tool. Everyone knows that more ⅔ of the entire world connects to the internet. Many won’t satisfy just with this statement. Let’s see what Google said. Google commissioned a study with Shopper Science Collectively; they surveyed nearly about 5000 consumers to identified what affected their decision to make a purchase the most. With the concept of ZMOT, is a moment in decision making and purchasing. This is where we search online for more information before visiting a store and purchasing a product or service. ZMOT has usually had three features like
- Takes place online and begins with search engine research
- Gathers real-time information that is happening at all hours of the day.
- Customers always prefer to get information on their own instead of collecting from someone else.
- This is an emotional process. There are a need and the customer is emotionally involved in finding the best choice.
The same will happen even with the restaurant before visiting for dinner or lunch. The people will go through the restaurants’ previous reviews & rating, comments. Finally, they will come to some decision like whether to go to that particular restaurant or not. Potential customers will get information both from the search engine and social media.
As per ZMOT, the success of the restaurant will be only if you have an online presence. A useful restaurant website is the only thing to do to build brand success. So to be successful in the market, you must have a website for your restaurant.
2. When to develop or redesign your restaurant website?
Here are two cases to consider:
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Startups:
A startup must plan for an online presence when he is planning to open a new business. Most of the startups first start to open the business and then go for the development of the website, which is the worst things to go. When you plan to start a new restaurant business go with online restaurant website development which helps to find out what they want. This day’s people usually see for the online presence of any business; even it was a start-up.
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Obsolete Sites:
If your website is in an older version or not up to date with the technology, then your website won’t work correctly, which ultimately affects the growth of your business. So in such case, it is good to go for a redesign for the restaurant website. Here are some of the things to consider why you need to go for the restructuring of the restaurant website.
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- Want to add few more items to the restaurant website but you can’t.
- Your restaurant website is not mobile responsive
- Your search result was not up to the mark
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Inconsistency with brand identity:
Here are some reasons why you need to go redesign of your restaurant website:
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- Changed the logo, but not updated on the website
- Changed the theme of the restaurant, but the website still has the old pictures
- Targeting the wrong audience in the new market expansion.
3. What are the key elements to consider for restaurant website development and design?
Dining in the restaurant is an experience which one must suggest to others, and this begins with the restaurant website design and development. This is very important that the restaurant website must be pleasant and should encourage visitors to visit the restaurant again and again. To have such an encouraging and pleasing restaurant website consider these vital elements of a professional restaurant website.
- An appealing restaurant website must have a professional gallery of the restaurant
- A good restaurant website should easily access the restaurant’s location, contact information and operation hours.
- An appealing restaurant must-have social media pages
- It must-have platforms for online booking system.
4. Tips for modern restaurant website development
If you already have a restaurant business or if you are planning to open a new restaurant, then your brand will be the best asset for your business which will help you to carve out a unique look and experience for your customers. Here are some of the tips to consider for your restaurant website development.
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Determine your target audience:
Initially, you need to define your target audience for developing your restaurant website. If you are launching your restaurant, then consider the location type and also the type of food that you serve. This will work as great insight on the type of audience you are going to attract, basing the targeted audience and the type of location plan for the restaurant website look.
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Analyse competitors:
Before going for restaurant website development analyse your competitors’ restaurant website in your area and see how they have developed their website, what information they included, what type of menu they placed and many more. Consider all the restaurants that serve the same or similar type of cuisine and restaurant that are on the opposite end of the spectrum and also the restaurants that are outside of your immediate area. By this, you will get to know what information you should have on your restaurant website.
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Identify your advantage:
As it is a known fact that the restaurant is an exceptionally very competitive business. That why you need to figure out the most significant benefit and do what you can do to highlight this information on your website.
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Never use JPG or PDF versions of your menus:
The menu will be the most crucial page on your restaurant website. So try to provide your menu section more responsive, usable and engaging. Always avoid JPG or PDF versions of your menu as it is difficult for mobile users to read. As images or PDF menu will negatively impact your search engine rank. Re-typing of the list will be better as search engines parse it.
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Keep simple feedback and Contact form:
A restaurant website with contact form must be easy to fill out. A simple contact form must have fields like email, name and message. A simple feedback form must have the area field such as name, star rating and a brief explanation of their review. The more simple, the less intimidating it looks, so there is no need to spend too much of time on creating forms for simple tasks.
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Showcase your location and open hours:
Never forget to include your location with Google maps and open hours on your restaurant website which helps your loyal customers to know where you located and also how to get to your venue quickly. This will improve the conversion rate on your websites.
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Link social media profile to your restaurant website:
Before launching the restaurant website, first create social media profiles where your target audience spends most of the time. The social media networks include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, which are most famous in the Food industry. Creating a Google Business profile is one best thing, also create profiles on sites like Yelp and Foursquare which helps to allow you to stay connected with your customers as well as monitor your reputation and engage with customers by depending on them and addressing their concerns. Adding social media profile on your site will help you organically rank higher in search engine.
5. Top features to consider for restaurant website development
To have an active and beautiful restaurant website, it must have the following features.
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Menu:
Menu is the first and foremost thing to consider as most of the people get attracted to the way the menu displays. Now, most of the people browse the restaurant using their smartphones. If you use images of the menu, then the users feel it difficult to scroll. Even the PDF version is not advisable. Please re-type the menu while developing the restaurant website.
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Gallery:
The next best thing that users focus on is the gallery where the restaurants place their food images or the restaurant images on the website. This is the place where the restaurant can showcase their food items and the way of styling their food.
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Contact Information:
People visit your website to check your location, phone number, opening hours, make a booking or to ask questions. This might be the reasons for the users to visit your restaurant website, which helps the website visitors to become potential visitors to your restaurant.
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Online booking or reservation:
This is the one best and good practice that is implemented in most of the restaurant website these days. Even though if you don’t provide online booking or reservation, it would be an excellent thought to provide online reservation for placing catering orders which bring huge profits.
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About Section:
About us is the page where you can tell how you inspired to start the restaurant business. Make sure to mention what type of locally sourced ingredients you use in your recipes. How you inspired by your grand mother’s recipes? Tell everything in your about page.
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Place Social media Links:
Social media is one of the most effective channels that are in booming the world. Most of the users these days are active on social media. Make sure that you handle a dedicated page for your restaurant where the users can place reviews.
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Analytics:
Using which you can keep track of your business. They can track everything like from which location the visitors are coming to the website? , to which pages the most traffic gets the most views. Even you can know the bounce rate, keywords to focus, etc.
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Rating and Reviews:
Here, the user can rate the restaurant and can provide a review of the restaurant services. Most of the people rely on other people reviews to make decisions about whether to go to that particular restaurant or not.
6. What are the latest restaurant website design trends?
Restaurant website design is different from other business websites as they focus on a unique niche. This is why the design trends for restaurant website should be different from others. Here are the latest design trends of restaurant website development.
- More focus on high-quality photography
- Easy to navigate websites
- Easy to read and updated menu cards
- Personalising your restaurant
7. What are the factors that influence the cost of the restaurant website development?
The development of a restaurant website entirely depends on various factors like
- Restaurant website development company
- Website developers
- Technology stack
- UI/UX designers
- List of features to include
- Development team
- Third-party integration
Bottom Line – A Restaurant website
Restaurant website design is a powerful tool for restaurants to drive sales online and in-store. A great restaurant website design will make your restaurant website attractive and useful.
Need a restaurant website? We Krify is a leading website development company based in India and UK can design mobile responsive restaurant websites with online menus and integrating online ordering and reservations. Contact us to build your restaurant website fast.
