You are at your home, and your cook hasn’t come for the day. Your hunger pangs are growing by the minutes and you would love to munch on to something. So who are you going to call? You log onto the internet in search for a sumptuous platter which can replenish your hunger. Your type your favorite dish on the search engine page. The search result comes up with the top rated restaurant serving that dish in your neighborhood. You click on the first link on the Search Engine Page, and land on a website which is filled up with utter confusion. You are clueless about where you are and how would you be giving the orders. You rummage through the different tabs on the site for sometimes and without any hope you bolt off from the site utterly disgusted. This is what happens for restaurant site gets a poor website design under its name.
An appropriate website design is essential for a restaurant. But in most cases these website designs comes with certain common drawbacks which hinders target audience to visit the site. There are several factors as well as certain elements which lead to the ruining of the site. Few of these elements are accounted for in this article
A) A bane for web designs called the flash animation
If you go through bunch of restaurant websites, 60% of the sites have it. The web site starts with a loading bar. After the user gets over the loading bar, the person lands on the page filled with music and animated images which becomes tad too irritating. Only if he overcomes this predicament, he would be able to face with the actual content of the site. If you are in responsible of creating the web design, keep in mind that the website designers are extremely fickle minded and tend to leave the site in a jiffy if they don’t find anything interesting within the site.
B) Tempting the crowd
The website is something which is meant solely for enticing the right target audience. A restaurant runs on the loyalty of the crowd. To keep the crowd loyal to the joint, the restaurant has to provide its fair share of mouth watering offers, happy hours, special deals anniversary offers and other perks. But in certain cases the site moderator tends to be much absent minded to display the offer on the site. So keep in mind not to put this offer on display.
C) Ignoring the SEO
Even in these times when Penguin and the Panda rule is on prowl and hunting down the shortcoming and the in ethical approaches of the websites, there are designers who would be forgetful enough to embed the SEO. These kinds of grievous mistakes would put the website in the lowest point of the SERP (Search Engine Ranking Pages).
So what are the essential things that you would be focusing on today, for building the ideal restaurant website? These are few elements which should be there in your website to make it an instant hit.
1] Embedding directions
With the advent of the internet, giving the precise direction for any location has become very easy. Web tools like the Google maps provide the most accurate direction for places one wishes to go. As website designer, why would you be providing only address, when you have the option of embedding the maps? Use Google map to give the accurate destination to your eatery.
2] A restaurant menu for the site
Your restaurant might comprise the best cuisine in town, but is it being properly revealed online? The menu acts as one of the biggest marketing tools for your website. So have some page in your website dedicated for the menu only.
Most restaurant sites have a PDF attached to it. PDF takes more of the surfing time to open. As the owner of the restaurant, you won’t want your valuable clients to waste time just for opening a PDF file for a menu. Thus an online menu is necessary for the site which not only has the description of the dishes but also the promotions and the special offers which would be changing from time to time.
3] An awe-inspiring homepage
The homepage of a site is the first impression the customers would be having about the restaurant. So it is the prerogative to make it nice and simple. The first thing is to put an image of signature item which is being served in the restaurant coupled with the image of the restaurant by itself.
The content for the page would be enough to churn up the gastronomical desire for the prospective clients. The words for the content should be delectable by itself. You should also keep in mind to keep the content short and simple. People have apathy for long tedious contents.
Finally it is mandatory to put the call-to-action for the home page where your users would be having access to the menu, the reservation page as well as a complete image tour of the restaurant.
4] Keeping reservations on all the pages
It is ideal to have a Call-to –Action for Reservation for all the pages which is there in the restaurant pages. If you are not keen making the reservation page to complex, you can always provide a contact number through which your customers could make the contact.
5] Images and photos
Every restaurant site should have a gallery of photographs which should talk about the ambience and food the restaurant serves. A professional photographer can come to your help who can capture the ambience, décor and delicacies which are being served in the restaurant.
6] Ordering on the move
With smart phones and handheld devices ruling our generation, it is essential that your restaurant website should be compatible with the handheld devices. There should be a mobile site version of the website as well apps which can help in taking the order on the go. Every special offer, discounts and happy hour deals can relayed to the clients through this apps.
These are merely few of the elements which can be discussed in the blog post. If you are thinking of a website for a restaurant, what are the different ideas can you think of? You can always pen down those ideas at our comment section. And if you are short of any ideas, you can always log on to a web design company in Sydney for some new ones.