Building a Restaurant Website

We like to be straightforward and avoid to over promise outstanding results. Mainly because they never show up without efforts. In the end, building a website is just the beginning of the journey. Besides setting it up (from choosing the right WordPress theme for your business, the right hosting, and any other technical details), you need to constantly dedicate time, energy and money to keep it up and to kicking. Let’s take it one topic at a time and walk you through the main steps you need to follow in this challenging journey. We’re here to help.

How can you make it happen?

Choose a trustworthy and easy-to-use platform

There are a bunch of options for creating a website: from working with a dedicated agency and building it from scratch until trusting existing solutions like WordPress. Unless you have a generous budget and previous experience to go with the first option, we highly recommend you to save valuable time and money and stick with WordPress.

Besides the fact that you immediately start with a solid infrastructure, you have a lot of freedom in fine-tuning your upcoming website and make it yours. WordPress wins in so many regards, but one that is very much different is the ease of use. In the end, you’d want to be autonomous and make changes on your website without hiring a developer.

Find a theme that highlights the real you

The digital puzzle is full of WordPress themes of all kinds, but make sure you take an informed decision regarding which one fits your business best from multiple points of views. Don’t be naive and do your homework regarding the team who developed that product, if they offer o solution or just eye-candy pixels, the experience they provide regarding customer service, if they maintain a relevant documentation, or the way they keep up with WordPress’ standards.

Due to our continuous involvement, we can affirm that our restaurant themes is are example that checks all the previous requirements. A stunning restaurant WordPress theme that can be adapted to any food business, such as restaurants, coffee shops, or bakeries. It helps you draw a story in a dynamic and engaging way, and it’s fully packed with everything you need to launch your website as soon as possible.

What would a restaurant be without having a digital menu on their website? Not much we’d say. Is like having a great plating creative concept without any fresh food to make it count. You should treat menu not only as a way of letting people know about the goodies you cook but also as a chance to make a statement. Do you promote your restaurant as a place where you use only local and seasonal ingredients, or you don’t have any interest in that and you’re money oriented first? Either way, it says something about your way of doing business.

Thanks to the way we envisioned the menu system, our themes offer you the chance to create your meals options in no time. You simply make things happen by using a shortcode and the WordPress editor to add sections and product titles, descriptions, prices, and more.

Add a reservation system

Eating has become much more than satisfying a primary need from Maslow’s pyramid. Choosing the table with a view is the first step into the process of creating a cutting-edge experience. That’s why reservations are gaining weight and people are genuinely interested in getting the right spot in your restaurant (at the right time).

Fully aligned to your business goals and strategies, you should know that you can achieve even more with our products. We’ve gone beyond what’s obvious and created a custom shortcode to allow you to integrate with the famous OpenTable system. This way you make sure you manage reservations without efforts, and keep everyone happy on board.

Use appropriate images and content

Any website without content (images, text, multimedia, you name it) is useless. In fact, we sustain that too often people tend to forget that their business environment is dynamic: it evolves in time, and you need to wisely adapt.

The first step is to use high-end photos to showcase the product and services you provide. You don’t want to sink in the crowd and take over the same free-to-use images that are available on the Internet. They must fully resonate with the overall attitude of your business and to showcase the reality as it is. Don’t look for shortcuts because people will notice in minutes and they will never come back. Once you lose a battle, you have big chances to lose the digital war as well.

Besides that, make sure the stories you write on your website resonate with your brand. If you run a family business restaurant with ten tables and a menu dependent on seasonal ingredients, and eager to craft a memorable experience, then you definitely should write as you act and behave. This means your tone-and-voice should be warm, friendly, approachable and honest.

Sell your gourmet goodies

The digital area offers limitless options to vary the revenue streams for your business. We encourage you to get out of your comfort zone, meaning only managing the restaurant per se, and start aiming for more by selling your culinary gems. Basically, you give your audience a chance to order online their favourite dish, and, of top of that, you consolidate a community of food lovers are your brand’s ambassadors.

This being said, our themes come with custom styled integration with the famous WooCommerce plugin. This way you can easily build an online shop that is an integrated part from the entire digital experience, but it also brings huge perks.

Go even further

There are a wide range of witty solutions to make the most out of your restaurant’s website and your business as well. In the end, you invest into creating a platform that brings real added value: brand awareness, good PR, extra money, a solid audience, you name it. However, we think is essential to let you know that you can achieve more and increase your chances to build a platform that is outstanding from top to toe.

Why speed matters in terms of websites?

In 2010, Google made this statement: ”Faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed—that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”

A decade later, things are even more compelling: 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Speed is not a nice-to-have feature anymore, it’s a must-have approach.

This being said, make sure that your restaurant or bakery’s website is fast and runs smoothly. You need to grab attention in the right way at the right time by using trustworthy services which offer you an in-depth analysis of the current site speed, and how you can improve it.

Nowadays, people need more than one touchpoint with your brand and business in order to remember you in the long run. You need to go where your potential customers like to spend time and talk about topics you’re interested in. Social channels are a great way to discover them and start digging about their preferences in terms of food, and any other relevant topics.

Treat the social media funnels with responsibility and curiosity, and use them as a gateway to reach the audience you’d like to attract for your business. Engage with them through smart content about your activity, and consider building a community of fans. Don’t forget, sharing is caring.

Why should I care about image optimization?

Using relevant images for your website is the first step. Nonetheless, according to recent stats, images account for over 50% of your web pages total weight. In other words, if you use large image files you can directly impact the loading time. And we get back to the first question regarding why speed is important.

If you want to have an eye-candy approach you need to start looking after premium plugins that optimizes all the images from the Media Library, and still have backup for the old ones.

However, you can either do it by your own if you have the time and know-how for it, or you can work with us in order to accomplish the best possible results.

Why is security important to your website?

Digital security is the equivalent of trust and good practice. There are a bunch of case studies regarding how big merchants took it for granted, and lost an amount of money and other resources.

Starting from here, we suggest you to not underestimate your actual and potential customers because most of them are interested in how they’re protected online. You can start by establishing your site as an authority in terms of online security by using dedicated services for security improvements.

We have solid knowledge regarding the top solutions to make your website as secure as it could be so it stays far away from being hacked.

Updated on May 6, 2022