Updated: Three Tasty Must-Haves For Your Restaurant Website

Video, blogs, pictures, colorful design – those are all some great perks to having a great restaurant website. However, there are several features that your new site cannot do without.

Announcements and Promotions

Anything truly goes with this page as you are able to deliver important real-time news and promotional events to your customers easily. Yes, that means that you can hire a new head chef, run a fundraiser, or have a great meal promotion at your restaurant and announce it to your customers that day without waiting. However, there are several ways to include the announcements page into the site. Take a look at these three ideas:

An entire page dedicated to your announcements. I would suggest this if you plan on having a significant number of announcements.
An innovative sidebar widget. With this idea you would be able to either keep the sidebar as a separate entity and update it individually, or you can connect this sidebar with a blog category dedicated to your announcements (contact us for more information on this).

Directions and Contact Information

This is almost too obvious for everyone to mention, but you would not believe the number of people that forget to include directions or direct contact information for customers! There are some great innovative ways to include directions and contact information in your restaurant website:

Directions — The best way that you can integrate directions to your restaurant is to include a detailed interactive map that pinpoints your exact location as well as allows your clientele to plug-in their address to get instant directions without having to venture off to a different website or their GPS.
Contact Information — The ability for your customers to directly and immediately contact you is of the utmost importance. However, just having a contact form is not quite enough. I would suggest including all contact information (name, address, phone number, fax, e-mail) along with a simple contact form on your site. Another great idea would be to include a “Provide Feedback” sidebar widget for your clients to immediately and easily provide feedback of your services.

Online Menu

Even though this is the most evident feature to include on your restaurant website, it is sorely overlooked (or under-delivered) by many restaurant owners. Yes, you absolutely want to put your menu out there, but how you go about that is a completely different topic. So, let’s take a look at a few ways that you can spice up your online menu:

Attractive Pictures and Video — Capture your food at it’s best with a high mega-pixel camera (I would suggest professional photos to amateur photos as well). Along with this, you might want to professional record (and edit) your head chef cooking your signature dish. This will give your clientele a much more personal insight into your restaurant.
Descriptions of Meals — Vividly and tastefully describe your meals in two short and concise sentences. Make sure that you include tastes and/or ingredients to provide your potential visitors with a sense of what your food makes your customers experience.
Interactive Experience — Include areas of your menu that will engage your visitors. A great example of this is to have the images enlarge as you scroll over them with the mouse. Remember that you want your visitors to feel like they are a part of the experience through the interactions they have with your site.

As you move forward with upgrading the features of your restaurant website, keep in mind that you want to have the best of the best when it comes to your announcements and promotions page, your contact information, and your online menu. Now, step it up in the kitchen and contact us when you think you are ready to handle the heat with your website.

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Sources:
“The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”-E-Book
SlideShare.net
Image Source: HubSpot, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing”, E-Marketer.com

About Andy Scherer

Professionally blogging and designing top search engine ranked web logs and websites for the past 5 years, Andy has published thousands of articles throughout a broad scope of topics. With a degree in both Psychology and English, he consistently ties his work into the behavioral and emotional responses of his audience through specific writing techniques and formulas. Along with his writing ability, Andy also specializes in Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing, and brand marketing. He is technically sound with XHTML, CSS, WordPress, and all social networking platforms. Through his experience, Andy innovatively creates blog articles that keep audiences coming back for more..

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