New restaurants are always competing against one another for customers’ attention. Building a thoughtful and effective website for your establishment can not only increase brand awareness, but also help you to gain new and repeat guests. So, how do you capture a visitor’s attention the moment they land on your homepage and get them through your doors? Learn all the steps for crafting a successful restaurant website, including:
- Securing a domain name
- Mapping out the user experience
- Crafting copy and design
- Planning for and tracking success
Download this free e-book today to arm yourself with the best practices of successful restaurant website development.
Excerpt from Chapter 3:
Bringing Your Website to Life
You’ve selected a theme for your website, now it’s time to flesh out the rest of the content and design components. Copy and design need to work together to provide a visually enticing and emotionally compelling experience for the user. The longer a user stays on your page the more apt they are to take the actions you want them to take, like “Reserve a Table” or “View Menu.”
Concise Content That’s Built to Convert
When it comes to writing for the web, less is always more. You have a short amount of time, 0.05 seconds to be exact, to grab a visitor’s attention and encourage them to stay on your site. A homepage should have an obvious and strong headline with an even stronger CTA that’s front and center — the first thing a user’s eye is drawn to. Best practices deem that the top navigation menu should be as simple as possible with the titles clearly defining the type of information that can be found on that page. A restaurant’s brand voice and personality should take center stage on the homepage as it’s a customer’s first introduction to your establishment.
Take the time to run an SEO keyword audit to see what words and phrases people in your area are searching for as it relates to your type of restaurant. If you or your developer are unable to perform an extensive audit, there are some great free tools that can help. Google Keyword Planner can help you research how often certain words are searched and how those searches have changed over time as well as which keywords are the most relevant for your business. Then, you can use these findings in the copy on your website to ensure that your website bubbles to the top when the applicable search terms are entered.