Restaurants and food places have slowly but surely caught up with the digital age. Businesses in the food sector are now learning how important and valuable having a professional website can be. From increasing brand awareness to online reservation/ordering systems, a professional website can do it all. Here’s an insightful post on why restaurants need a professional website and some tips from us.

Increase brand awareness

A good website for a restaurant can be priceless. It can help cook up a lot of awareness and online presence for them. Most customers will want to see some information online about a restaurant before they spend their cash with them. This includes a website, menu, reviews and more. The number of internet users is at an all-time high, and continues to grow, so why wouldn’t you try to grab a piece of the pie? Perfecting your online presence is important, whether it be through the website, social media or both. It’ll help drive traffic towards your website, this will translate into more customers actually dining with you.

Set yourself apart from the competition

The food sector is highly congested with a lot of restaurants coming and going each day, it can be hard trying to capture footfall in the market. A professional website can separate you from the competition, allowing users to see you’re a restaurant that’s here to stay. Tell people what you’re about – you want users to have a taste of the experience they’d have in-store, online. You wouldn’t give customers a poor experience in your restaurant, so why do it online? Do more than what your competitors are doing, this will tell customers that you’re a leader within the food sector. It will help customers decide whether they should dine with you or not.

Recipe for success:

• 1 eye-catching responsive design
• 1 unified seamless user experience
• High-resolution images of food menu (add as many for taste)
• Luscious descriptions (add as many for taste)
• 1 easy to use online reservation system
• 1 quick and responsive feedback/contact form
• The iirth Company secret seasoning
• Add salt & pepper for the finish

Search engine optimisation

When customers want to dine out, they tend to use Google to find suggestions. Ranking good on Google is very important, as customers will find you easier and trust a high ranked website. A professional website will always have Search Engine Optimisation implemented, which will in turn help generate more business for your restaurant. Google also uses a quality score to help it decide where websites go in searches. Quality score is made up of many factors including how easily the website is accessible, how it performs on desktops and mobiles and how good the content in the website is. A quick search for your local steakhouse will deliver you hundreds of results – which one do you choose?

Your virtual storefront

Ensure that your online presence is the perfect gateway for customers and that their transition from online to in-store is seamless. This is why we sometimes call a website – a virtual storefront for business. You want the customer to enjoy their experience online and help them bring that experience in-store.

A quick tip – a storefront should have opening times, so remember to do the same for the virtual one!

Social media for restaurants

On top of a professional website, social media continues proving to be a great tool for online marketing. It is a great place to communicate with your current and potential customers. Have a new menu item you want to show off? Instagram is the place for that. Social media can help generate buzz and also tell your customer base you’re alive and kicking.

Don’t be fooled into believing you can get it all done – new website, increase traffic, increase customer base, improve search engine ranking and the whole works for a price that’s too good to be true. You’re more often than not gonna be left holding your head in your hands and in a worse off position than you already was. One developer cannot do all the above to the highest possible standard – it’s impossible.

Contact a team of professional designers and developers and see how The iirth Company can help you today.