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Best Restaurant Website Design Tips

June 6, 2017

Chances are, the first interaction guests will have with your business is online—specifically, on your website. What can you do to ensure that your website is designed in a way that best serves visitors, and, most importantly, turns them into actual guests?

 

Looks Matter

There was a time when restaurant websites were loaded down with music, flash animation, and heavy graphics. Today, it’s more important than ever to have a simple, fast-loading site with a few beautiful photographs and branding that reflect your overall style. This gives both prospective guests and potential employees a sense of what to expect when they walk in to your restaurant or apply to work with you.

 

Anticipate Your Guests’ Needs

Just how you anticipate your guests’ needs inside the restaurant’s four walls, think about what they want when they visit your website and design accordingly. BentoBox’s data shows that when it comes to restaurant websites, visitors are looking for the basics about who you are and where to find you. That means they’re looking for: menus, logistical information (location/hours/phone number), reservations, and online ordering (if available). These are the most important pieces of information your website can have, so they should be easy to find as soon as your guests land on your homepage.

 

Don’t Forget About Mobile

With the rise of smartphones and tablets, people aren’t confined to their desktops to browse the web anymore. Often, people visit restaurant websites while they’re on the go. BentoBox data shows that 50% of restaurant website visitors come from mobile and that number spikes just before mealtime, which means that people are turning to their phones to figure out where to eat when they’re hungry. It’s super important to have a website that’s designed to adapt and respond to mobile devices automatically so that your website is as useful on a phone or tablet as it is on a desktop.

 

Keep SEO In Mind

Search Engine Optimization is how Google and other search engines find your website and show it to people who searching for it. For restaurants, one of the biggest SEO drivers is the menu, so it’s important to post your menus as HTML text on your site rather than uploading a separate PDF that search engines can’t “read.” That way when someone searches for “best pizza” in your area, the search engine “sees” your delicious thin crust pizza with fresh mozzarella and basil and bumps your website to the top of the list!

 

Get more restaurant website tips and goodness from the restaurant web design pros, BentoBox, here. If you’re a restaurant owner or operator, get a BentoBox demo here.