It’s considered by many to be one of the few things that brings society together – good food. The way to a person’s heart is often through the stomach and so when it comes to dining out, customers love perusing a restaurant’s website. In this article, we’ll learn the recipe for a great restaurant website with 7 design essentials for page success and results.
Whether the user lives locally or they’re searching for a food hotspot as a tourist, your website plays a big role in getting them through your doors.
In this guide, you’ll learn all of the design essentials that are required to sell your food business to new and existing customers. Through the use of high-visual imagery and videography, to tantalizing keywords, the perfect recipe for a great restaurant website is attainable.
Table of contents
- What makes a great restaurant website?
- 7 design essentials to consider for your restaurant website
- 1. Use a scheduling app for online personalization
- 2. Create a brand story that grips your customers
- 3. Make the booking process simple but dynamic: Restaurant website design essentials
- 4. Invest in professional photography and videography
- 5. Make it accessible to all types of customers
- 6. Ensure it’s mobile-friendly and consider an app
- 7. Offer eCommerce opportunities like gift vouchers and delivery
- Focus on web development and design for your restaurant website
What makes a great restaurant website?
According to a recent restaurant industry statistics report, 88% of patrons trust the online reviews over personal recommendations. Many diners will therefore post their feedback on a restaurant’s social media page. Keep reading to learn the recipe for a great restaurant website with 7 design essentials for page success and results.
For any restaurant business looking to improve its online presence through social media and its own website, it’s important to know exactly what you need to get noticed.
Appearance is everything and it’s the first thing that will capture your audience’s attention. From eye-catching visuals to intriguing elements that make up the layout of the page, you want the design of your website to hook the user in.
Aside from that, it’s important that the UX of the website is top-notch, offering mobile-friendliness and easy navigation. Whether it’s ordering gift vouchers for use in the establishment to online reservations, everything your user does on your website should be without friction. As a result a recipe for a great restaurant website.
7 design essentials to consider for your restaurant website
As design is the most integral part of building a great restaurant website, it’s where you should spend the majority of your time perfecting. Here are several design essentials to consider for your restaurant website.
1. Use a scheduling app for online personalization
Personalizing the user’s experience online is a key part of creating a successful and engaging website. One way of adding a personal touch to your website’s design is within the online reservations section of the site.
By incorporating a scheduling app for restaurants, you could allow customers to see which employees will be working a shift during their visit.
In a digital domain where even the average person is able to become popular on social media. You might have patrons who enjoy the services from certain waiters to the multiple chefs that you may have in your kitchen.
It’s a personal touch that isn’t really done much online. But with applications like this one, it adds more to the personalization of your restaurant website.
2. Create a brand story that grips your customers
A good way of capturing your audience’s attention online is to provide a riveting brand story. Nowadays, when a customer is looking to buy something, whether that be a service or product, they often like a brand’s story or the meaning behind what they’re selling.
Whether your restaurant was inspired by a family member with a love for cooking, to an experience that you had while traveling, these often relatable stories have a big impact and sway on a customer’s willingness to spend their hard-earned cash.
A compelling website design isn’t enough visually. It also needs to have heart, which is where the brand’s story comes in. Create a separate landing page that explains all about the journey of the restaurant and how it came about. While some origin stories might seem lackluster to restaurant owners. They might just be something that your patrons love about the restaurant.
3. Make the booking process simple but dynamic: Restaurant website design essentials
UX should be a big part of the design process when creating a great restaurant website. The booking process is often one of those pain points that patrons have and how easy you make it. Will determine their initial first impression of the business before they’ve even stepped foot in your restaurant.
The booking process should be simple but dynamic. From pop-ups to animation, your designers should be getting creative with this section of the site.
For some restaurants, having a reservations button is simple enough. However, you might want the option of a pop-up reservation form if the user is lingering on the site for longer than usual.
Some users might browse on another tab, forgetting about the site they were just on. Adding a sound effect to draw the user’s attention back to your website might be useful to incorporate.
While you shouldn’t overcomplicate the process. You want to get patrons to fill in that reservation form and make a booking. How easy that is, should be assessed during the development of the website and the design.
Make sure to use A/B testing in order to confirm that certain elements and features are working properly. Otherwise, you might have customers dropping off.
4. Invest in professional photography and videography
According to one survey, poor design and content drive 38% of web visitors away. That’s a significant portion of your traffic, which is why your attention to detail and quality is imperative.
Professional photography and videography aren’t cheap but it’s an investment worth making, particularly when food content is digested ravenously by users online. As a result, a recipe for a great restaurant website.
When you’re trying to appeal to the user’s hunger, the better the imagery and videography you capture, the more likely they’ll be led by their stomach to book a table.
There are specialist photographers and videographers within the food industry who are worth spending the money on in order to capture all of your menu options. Don’t forget to continuously share food content on your social media pages too for additional influence.
5. Make it accessible to all types of customers
Accessibility is still lacking online and when it comes to web design, your efforts to make the website accessible-friendly, could attract or put off new patrons from dining.
Making your website accessible is pretty simple, which makes it frustrating when many of the top-ranking websites lack it. It’s worth brushing up on your knowledge of accessibility principles when designing online.
A few basic tips when making your website accessible include:
- Using alternative text (Alt tags)
- Avoid colors that clash visually
- Make your website navigable by keyboard
- Add video captions and transcripts to the content
It’s these simple additions that you are easily able to incorporate into web design, that will make your site more inclusive to everyone who lands on it.
6. Ensure it’s mobile-friendly and consider an app
Mobile-friendly websites are a given nowadays but it’s still surprising how many websites aren’t optimized for mobile use. Despite there being 5.61 billion unique mobile phone users at the start of 2024.
Therefore, it’s worthwhile looking into how your website and its design are adapted to make it mobile-friendly. There’s also the option of providing users with an app version of the website, which proves effective for those looking to make quick bookings or purchases. There are also incentives you might want to provide in exchange for the user downloading your app.
A few basic tips when it comes to ensuring mobile-friendliness is to have a responsive design. Be sure to optimize the site for speed so that content loads quickly on the screen and simplifies navigation even further for mobile use.
7. Offer eCommerce opportunities like gift vouchers and delivery
Some restaurant businesses have been able to take advantage of the global interest when it comes to food delivery services.
Nowadays, many households opt for a weekly or monthly takeout. Being able to offer your culinary delights in the patron’s own home is a great way to expand your food business further. It might even turn your establishment into a household name amongst the local community and beyond.
Offering eCommerce opportunities within your web design is a great way to entice your patrons into spending more money. From gift vouchers to food delivery services, these are the added elements to your site that are upselling opportunities.
Focus on web development and design for your restaurant website
In a digitally dominant world, restaurant businesses should be taking full advantage of what the online domain provides them. Therefore, creating fantastic visuals and a web design that pulls in your users from the moment the page loads, is crucial for your restaurant’s growth and success.
The post The Recipe for a Great Restaurant Website: 7 Design Essentials appeared first on Visualmodo.
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