Creating a professional showcase site is a must for restaurateurs and, in general, for all tourism professionals (restaurants, brasseries, hotels, etc.).
The creation of a restaurant showcase site is the ideal solution, as long as it respects certain rules, both in terms of web design and referencing, to guarantee real efficiency.
Whether you go through a web agency or decide to do your website alone, the tips for building an effective restaurant website that we detail in this guide, apply.
How to create a restaurant site? Web solutions available
As a local craftsman, you will quickly gain notoriety thanks to word of mouth.
But you may have just moved in, and that reputation has been built over months and years. And above all, tourists and foreigners do not necessarily use the same levers as the local population to obtain information.
Hence the indisputable interest for a restaurateur in an online presence, to reach a maximum of audiences, the most different possible.
To create a restaurant site, you have two main methods:
- Either you use a web professional. But beware, this will cost you dearly, and above all, you will have to seek the assistance of your service provider each time you have a modification to make to your site.
- Either you use online software, that will allow you to build your restaurant website yourself, for very little or even for free. It is you who will make all the modifications of the pages, easily, even if you have no technical knowledge. Because of this type of tool, everything is done simply using a computer mouse, by moving the elements by Drag / Drop, a bit like a construction game. And if you have a question, just contact technical support by email.
In any case, here are our tips for designing a devilishly efficient restaurant website.
Create a website for a restaurant: the essential information
An Internet user who visits a restaurant website will be interested in priority:
- At the location of the restaurant. A highly visible location map, such as Google Maps, is therefore essential. Ideally, locate points such as parking lots, sports or cultural facilities, or transport around your establishment. Take the opportunity to create your Google My Business account. It’s free, and allows you to have good visibility on the search engine results page,
- To the type of cuisine. Your message should be clear, and you should devote a full web page to talking about it. A traditional restaurant site is not structured the same way as a pizzeria site. You should always present your menus, the menu of dishes, the selected wines. This part of your restaurant site should inspire envy.
- At rates and availability. It is important to immediately give a reference price, in order to allow the Internet user to judge if it corresponds to his budget. Likewise, indicate the means of contact in a legible way (email and telephone number).
- Has the atmosphere of the restaurant. In addition to the characteristics on which it is necessary to be precise (terrace, air conditioning, wi-fi, disabled access, opening hours, group meals, etc.), make the Internet user salivate with beautiful images of the room, your main dishes, your kitchen. These pictures should be sufficiently enormous to be noticeable on tablets and cell phones. Be demanding on their quality, including the format, which must be at least 960 pixels wide.
- On the contact page. It must be clear and precise, with your email, your phone, the address of your restaurant, a link to your social networks (Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram ), or even a subscription proposal for a newsletter.
Depending on the website creation software used, you will be able to use templates dedicated to the creation of a restaurant showcase site. The most important thing is to make sure that these restaurant templates are really and easily modifiable, in order to allow you to create a beautiful website, and above all a unique site.
Make a restaurant website: the graphic charter of your restaurant
An effective restaurant site is first and foremost a beautiful site, in which essential information is easy to find, and which is pleasant to browse.
However, between a gourmet restaurant website, an inn website, and a pizzeria website, we can imagine that the presentation is different. Take the time to think carefully about the web design of your site or you could hire professional web designers to plan it for you.
Choose from the templates that are offered to you, but do not hesitate to copy the colors of beautiful websites. It’s super easy to do, using free software, such as Color Picker, and it allows you to create your restaurant graphic charter very simply.
Build a restaurant website for mobile use
Over 60% of visitor traffic comes from a tablet or smartphone. Today, having a responsive design site is essential and must be accompanied by a process of optimizing the content of your pages. Google considers that a responsive design site allows a web page to load in less than 2 seconds, regardless of the network.
To make a responsive design restaurant website, this means that you must, in particular, compress your images and choose the right format, in order to reduce their weight (without altering the quality). Free and professional software exists and will allow you to reduce the weight of your images by 70 to 80%, such as TinyJpg or TinyPng.
Be sure to choose a site design provider that automatically includes responsive design, and helps you create a display that’s perfect for mobile browsing. This is the case on our platform, as well as on SiteW: all our templates are natively optimized for smartphones and tablets.
Create a well-referenced restaurant website
Restaurant websites compete with portals. This competition is not incompatible with your own SEO approach. Moreover, more and more customers are using these platforms, then visit the restaurant’s website directly for other information on the gastronomy, the teams, and the services offered.
To be visible to your customers, search engines need to present you. Google decides to present this or that restaurant website, depending on the quality of its reference.
This phase of creating a restaurant website, although crude, is the most essential. By neglecting your SEO, you run the risk that your website will not be seen by anyone.
This is particularly important on a restaurant website because Internet users’ searches are done by the city, or even by neighborhood. The local SEO takes for a restaurant site, paramount.
To make a restaurant site effective in SEO, here are 4 rules to put into practice:
- Offer links to partner sites (hotels, tourist attractions, etc.), and ask in return for an inbound link to your restaurant website. By doing this, you will demonstrate to Google that your website is a must in your neighborhood. In the world of tourism, this approach is certainly the best way to be effective on the internet,
- Buy your own domain name. The cost of a domain name is low (approximately $10 per year), or even supported by the restaurant website creation software that you are going to use (this is also the case for all our web designs, which automatically include the reservation of a domain name).
- Once the main web pages are created, write the content specific to your business. Talk about yourself, what led you to set up this restaurant, offer your recipes (which your customers will share, thus making your restaurant owner’s site known), and promote events and exhibitions. Thus, you will be able to work on your local SEO and provide quality information to your visitors. This can take the form of a blog or an event page, on your restaurant site. Do not hesitate to write long texts. Moreover, Google considers that a web page must have a minimum of 300 words,
- Make sure you understand how to set up a Google SEO strategy. There is nothing complicated, you just need a little method. Do not hesitate to consult our many guides on the subject.
Make a responsive website for a restaurant
By regularly producing new information, you will be able to work on your reference, but also to remember the good memories of your former customers.
A great way to create content is to animate the calendar with offers just for your customers, offers around calendar events. You can go further, and associate with other tourist establishments in your region.
You can also present the dish of the day, the wine of the week,…. and thus have new content on a regular basis.
Once uploaded, you can publish a summary of this information on a social network, but also by regularly sending a newsletter to your former customers.
How to create a restaurant website, the summary
Now you know how to create a professional restaurant website. Make the most of these tips, to be visible on the web, and make your establishment known to as many people as possible, without depending on portals.
—————————————————————————————————————————————- Author Bio
Name- Raunak Pandey
Bio- Raunak is a Mechanical Engineer by qualification & Marketer by passion. He is the founder of Maiden Stride, a leading digital marketing company that provides world-class search engine marketing services and website & application development.
