restaurant website design tipsA restaurant website is the best visiting card for your restaurant. Make sure it attracts customers as opposed to scaring them away. We have prepared several tips for you on how a restaurant website should be designed to earn money for you and attract more customers.

1. Key information

An eye catching Homepage design is important, but not key. Customers will forgive you if the graphical layout is not top-class as long as they can find the basic information about your restaurant on the website.

You have to be sure that customers will be able to find you. Remember to include contact details in an easily visible place on the restaurant website, primarily the address and business hours, as well as telephone number and email address. Adding a small map with the location is a great solution that will make it easier for customers to find you.

Add photos of your interior and the dishes you serve. Keep in mind to take photos when the restaurant is busy and most of the tables are taken. This is how you will create an image of your restaurant as a place where you can spend quality time with a good warm meal.

In the header or footer of the restaurant website, include links to your social media profiles. By doing this, you can let your customers know about promotions, new items on the menu, special offers, on their favourite social networks.

2. Online ordering system

An online food ordering system will turn your website from a restaurant online marketing tool into a platform that actually makes money. It will add new customers to your database, attracting people who are not fans of eating at restaurants.

Together with the UpMenu system, you can create a platform that will make it possible to order food without the need to call the restaurant. You will also present your menu and special offers to Internet users. Your customers will now be able to book a table at your restaurant through the online ordering system.

3. High-quality photos

Photos of served meals are an integral part of restaurant marketing. Thanks to good photos, customers will have the possibility of seeing what they can expect to eat at your restaurant. An image will affect the imagination a lot more than words.

You should not have any doubts about employing a professional photographer to take care of this task. You can also use images from stock photos, however, they will not be adjusted to your specific offer.

4. Clear and transparent restaurant website

Simplicity of use and speed of finding the necessary information are the two main aspects that customers are looking for. Make sure your website does not feature too much content. Make the key elements stand out, including contact details and your offer placed in an easily visible area.

Intuitive navigation is also important. If you ask your customers to find out what a given button is for, you will lose them for good.

5. Adjusting mobile devices

In these times of huge popularity of smartphones and tablets, browsing websites on computers is becoming less popular. Sensible entrepreneurs should react to this phenomenon by adjusting their websites to work on the small screens of mobile devices.

According to data for this year, as many as 56% of users globally browse the Internet on mobile devices. If you ignore such data, you will lose potential customers.

6. Speed of page loading

This is something restaurant owners often forget. Page loading time is very important for generating traffic and positioning in the search engine.

If you force the customer to wait even less than 20 seconds for all components to load on the website, you need to be aware that they will most likely close it.

So, be careful not to overload your website with heavy templates and ensure you optimise the size of any graphics and photos prior to their uploading.

Conclusion

A website is not just your restaurant visiting card, it is also a platform where users obtain the required information. Keep in mind that a functional and intuitive panel is more important than a fancy design.

Author

Michał Cybulski is specialist in online marketing for restaurants in UpMenu, specifically social media and increasing sales with the use of online orders.