Make Your Restaurant’s Website Stand Out

Make Your Restaurant’s Website Stand OutNearly every restaurant these days has a website (and if yours doesn’t, it should!), meaning there’s no shortage of competition—or great ideas—out there. Here, we’ll talk through several ways you can maximize your restaurant’s website to make the customer experience as great as possible.

Master Mobile Friendly

Ensuring your website is top-notch on mobile is critical to the success of your online reach. According to Grub Hub, 77 percent of restaurant searches are started on a mobile device. We’ve all seen our fair share of terrible mobile experiences when trying to order food from our phones. Menus that are impossible to read, phone numbers that require several inches of scrolling, photos that take up the entire page, and text that necessitates a magnifying glass. When designing your mobile-friendly website, take these factors into consideration. Buttons and links should be prominent enough to tap with a finger, and pictures should strike a balance between visual appeal and unobtrusiveness. The more flexible your layout, the easier it is for your website to adapt to varying screen sizes. Google even offers a mobile-friendly website test where you can instantly learn if your site fits the bill.

Nix Page Load Lethargy

Page loads that take an eternity are a nightmare to contend with. It’s a true test of patience and your customers’ loyalty when they have to wait an exceptional amount of time for your site to appear on their screen. In a study, Google revealed that 53 percent of visitors leave a page after 3 seconds if the content hasn’t loaded. Optimize your pages so they load as quickly as possible by choosing the correct image type, combining files, getting rid of redirects, and more.

Reviews and Media Kudos

We can’t say it enough: customer reviews are essential. We previously reported that 60 percent of individuals read reviews before they choose a restaurant, bar or café, so it’s simply good business to have them hosted on your website. Media mentions, if your restaurant has any, are also ideal to share with the public. Be sure to have a dedicated home on your website for all the great praise your restaurant gets.

An Easy-To-Navigate Menu

With so many destinations out there to help you build an amazing restaurant menu for your website, there’s no reason you should be serving up anything but the best digital experience for potential diners. Try to keep it to the least amount of pages possible, and make sure it’s current with new offerings and prices. Your phone number should also be visible on all pages so folks can quickly call to make a reservation or ask questions. Include information on your menu that a guest would usually ask their server, such as the type of broth a soup is cooked in, or whether or not nuts are in a particular dish. And to our prior point, your menu absolutely has to be mobile friendly.

From behind-the-scenes to front-and-center, your restaurant’s website needs to stand out to your customers. These simple tweaks can help bolster visits and conversions, giving you a leg up on the competition.