Restaurant Website Features: What You Need To Include
This article will discuss restaurant website features and what ones you need to include on your restaurant’s website. The restaurant website is one of the most essential tools for branding, growing the business and effectively engaging customers.
It is an essential part of the restaurant’s digital marketing plan. Your restaurant absolutely needs a website.
This is how new customers will find you because people regularly Google restaurants near them to figure out where they want to dine. We live in a digital world where it is no longer acceptable for a business to not have an online presence.
Restaurant Website Features: Responsive Mobile-Friendly Design
One of the most crucial restaurant website features is to ensure you have a responsive mobile-friendly design. Most people access your restaurant website from their mobile device.
Smartphones are already ubiquitous and people on-the-go typically search for restaurants on the mobile browser or mapping apps like Google maps that directly link to your restaurant website.
The greatest challenge is the limited screen size when accessing the restaurant website on mobile devices. Therefore, we need to spare the website visitor from having to pinch and zoom in to read the screen.
Therefore, a mobile-friendly design is absolutely necessary, your website should be responsive to the device your customer is accessing your site from.
As a result, not having a mobile-friendly site is what will cause customers to leave your website as having to take extra steps to view the information is very irritating from a customer perspective.
Restaurant Website Features: Have Accurate Information On Your Website
Your restaurant’s website should be the main source for accurate information regarding your restaurant. As a result, potential customers looking for information about your business often land on various platforms, mobile apps or local directories.
You can manage the information on these websites and keep it up to date, however, there are a lot of them. The good news is that they get much of their information from your website initially.
It is vital to provide accurate information on your website so that these platforms, mobile apps and local directories will follow suit and not confuse your potential customers.
Therefore, you should include this information on your website and regularly update it if it changes: address and directions, opening hours, menu and nutritional information, phone number and an email address or contact form.
Restaurant Website Features: Usability
One of the most important restaurant website features is usability. When visitors land on your website, they will stay or leave depending on how easy your website is to use.
As a result, you should ensure that users are not having to bend their backs to find the information they are looking for.
Therefore, you should keep page speed in mind as people are not known for being patient and a slow loading website will lose their interest.
Ensure your website loads quickly. Therefore, ensure your website design is inviting, keep it simple and encourage them to explore and engage with the content.
In addition, there are many usability testing tools to help you find out how user-friendly your website is.
Restaurant Website Features: Provide Social Proof
Once potential customers have discovered the factual information about your business on your website, now they are looking for social proof to help them decide whether to visit your restaurant.
The restaurant website should provide some ‘proof’ to help potential customers to make the decision. Therefore, it is advised to provide integration of reviews, ratings and testimonials from review sites and social media platforms.
Easy integration to social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google provide a quick way for diners to visit the restaurant pages on these platforms and like and share it with their friends.
Through this, they can also see what people on social media think of your restaurant. The main benefit for restaurants using social media is to show off tasty snapshots of your offerings so make sure to keep your social platforms up to date and enticing.
Consider Email Marketing
Ideally, you want the first-time visitor to the website to continue to engage with the restaurant digitally. However, sometimes it does not turn out that way. Therefore, connecting with your website visitors is a great way to engage with them and potentially turn them into customers.
Social media and email are excellent online mediums to start and have an ongoing connection with your diners. Email lists are one of the most important online assets restaurants must grow and nurture.
As a result, each restaurant website needs to provide ways to subscribe to the restaurant email list. Therefore, email signup forms need to be placed in many relevant locations. You can then create email content to encourage customers back again or to visit more frequently.
Include Online Ordering
Giving your customers the option to order food online is really important. Many restaurants will include menu pdfs or links to third party portals on their website.
However, what is more beneficial is to provide your own menu available for ordering online. As a result, there are numerous benefits to offering your customers online ordering.
For example, online ordering can help you to reach a new customer base. It can help you reach the people that only order food online.
In addition, from a customer point of view, online ordering makes their lives a bit easier by offering them an option to order food at their convenience. Also, it is not difficult to get started with online ordering.
How MENUU Can Help
MENUU can help you to get up and running with online ordering within 48 hours. It provides an easy to use interface for your customers. In addition, it offers lots of flexibility in product and service settings.
Therefore, you will be able to offer your customers as much or as little customisation as you like. MENUU offers a smooth and reliable ordering platform for both the restaurant and the end user.
As a result, the restaurant owner can make changes in the CMS easily and quickly. In addition, customers can browse a great looking branded menu filled with enticing product images and place their order with ease, including secure payment processing.
Conclusion
This article discussed restaurant website features and which ones you should include on your restaurant’s website.
As a result, restaurant websites come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are outdated and some are inaccurate. However, these are easy issues to solve.
Therefore, use the features listed above to make your website more effective. Your website needs to be a place that converts potential customers into customers.
So, provide them with the social proof and website design elements that will encourage them to order from you. Don’t stop there, keep them coming back for more.
