Creating the Perfect Restaurant Website Design
As with any website, a successful restaurant website should connect with its target audience on both an emotional and intellectual level. It's absolutely vital your restaurant's website, like it's dishes, be beautifully presented, easy to digest and updated regularly to showcase the best you have to offer.
Your Restaurant website needs to deliver on your business objectives, effectively and efficiently.
Push Interactive offers a specialised website solution for restaurants, cafés and eateries called PushRestaurant. We combine impressive graphic design and photography with top-level functionality, tailored to meet the needs of busy restaurants.
Contact Push Interactive to give your Sydney or Australian Restaurant a hardworking and professional web presence that adds value to your business.
Quote 'Our Manly' when you call Push Interactive on (02) 9975 2006
or email info@pushinteractive.com.au and receive a year's hosting worth $400 when you book a new website design and hosting package.
View an Example of a PushRestaurant Specialised Restaurant Website Template
So, how should you go about creating the perfect website design for your restaurant or cafe?
Create Appeal with your Restaurant Website's Look & Feel
Most restaurateurs go to great expense to carefully craft a distinctive look or atmosphere. Your restaurant's website should complement the style and ambiance of your restaurant. This can be done by using the same colour palette, choosing an appropriate design style and displaying appealing imagery.
Investing in quality photography is especially important. Website visitors primarily use visual cues to establish the quality of a restaurant's offering. If your dishes are relatively commonplace, suitable stock photography can be purchased quite inexpensively. More distinctive establishments — with specialist chefs or trademark dishes, for instance — should strongly consider investing in professional photography. Good quality shots of your dishes and your premises are an invaluable resource that can enhance all of your other marketing activities.
Display Up-To-Date Restaurant Menus
Every restaurant website should show an interactive, up-to-date menu that can be viewed in the visitor's web browser.
A well-designed restaurant website should make this process easy for the restaurant's management, with a dedicated interface that lets you create and update your menu items. It should also offer some way to export the newly updated menus to a variety of formats suitable for printing - so there's no need to write the menu twice!
Many customers make decisions about where and when to dine based on a fairly narrow set of criteria. This is particularly true of customers who have particular dietary requirements. Your restaurant website should allow you to tag specific menu items with attributes like Gluten Free, Kosher or Vegetarian to highlight suitable options.
At the very least, an up-to-date menu gives diners the opportunity to evaluate what dining options are available to them, and it gives you an opportunity to create critical "flavour appeal" by showcasing images of your dishes, venue and service.
Keep Your Restaurant Website Content Fresh
The web is a living medium that changes constantly - so keeping your website up-to-date should be a priority. With the daily rigors of most businesses, it's probably not surprising that website maintenance is often a long way down the "to-do" list for most business owners. This is a real shame, because your website can be a fantastic tool for reaching out to new customers, or to educate consumers about other products and services you might offer.
Even restaurants who change their menus infrequently (if at all) can benefit from occasionally reordering their menus, refreshing their photographs or running seasonal messages.
Use Social Media to Promote Your Restaurant
Many restaurants conduct regular degustation events, while a number of cafés host coffee-appreciation or barista training courses - these sorts of events are an excellent way to showcase your product and your credentials, and can form the basis for a very successful social media marketing strategy.
Since the advent of social media services like Facebook and Twitter, it's never been easier to connect with potential customers quickly & easily. Twitter can be a quick and effective way to broadcast news to and receive feedback from loyal customers. In fact, many restaurants and cafes use Twitter as a way to offer exclusive discounts to followers - a wonderfully convenient way to reward regular customers.
When discussing your requirements with a web company, you should ask for advice on how best to keep your website relevant to your target market. Since different styles of social media tend to attract particular demographics, carefully selecting relevant services can greatly improve the return on your investment.
Keep your Restaurant's Customers Informed
If you have a lot going on, having an event calendar on your website can be a great way to highlight upcoming special events.
A blog or a regular newsletter can be a good way to introduce new dishes or products, and they can often be supplemented with in-premises materials for improved effect. Gathering material and writing copy for a blog or newsletter can be time-consuming, so be sure to ask your web company for their advice on how best to manage regular customer communications.
Make Finding Your Restaurant Easy
Making it easy for customers to contact you is extremely important. Your website should prominently display a contact telephone number (if you take bookings), and you may want to consider providing a secondary method for making and taking bookings. This can be as simple as a dedicated e-mail address.
A common mistake some websites make (and not just restaurant websites) is simply providing the street address of your restaurant. There really is no excuse for not including an interactive map these days, and a Google map doesn't cost anything!
Not only can visitors use this service to obtain detailed turn-by-turn directions, but it also allows them to plan for parking. Showing this kind of consideration on your website gives the user a sense that they will get this same standard of treatment when they arrive to eat.
Your website needs to deliver on your business objectives, effectively and efficiently.
Push Interactive offers a specialised website solution for restaurants, cafés and eateries called PushRestaurant. We combine impressive graphic design and photography with top-level functionality, tailored to meet the needs of busy restaurants.
Contact Push Interactive to give your Sydney or Australian Restaurant a hardworking and professional web presence that adds value to your business.
Quote 'Our Manly' when you call Push Interactive on (02) 9975 2006 or email info@pushinteractive.com.au and receive a year's hosting worth $400 when you book a new website design and hosting package.