Advantages of Having a Website for a Restaurant

If more businesses understood the advantages of having a website for a restaurant, they wouldn’t think twice about choosing designs that include profitable features like online ordering, menus, reviews, and social media.

Oddly enough, only half of small businesses have websites. Many of the businesses that don’t have websites try to advertise their products and services on social media platforms like Facebook. A social media page, however, falls short of what you can get from a dedicated website.

Restaurant owners need to understand the competitive advantage of restaurant websites, and how they can build sites without any technical knowledge.

Why Do People Visit Restaurant Websites?

Before you start thinking about how to build a restaurant website, you need to consider why your customers need them.

Why would a person come to your website?

Customers visit websites for a variety of reasons. Many people want to know:

• Your working hours
• Your location
• What foods you serve
• If you have any special events on your calendar
• What kind of ambiance you offer
• Whether you accept online reservations and online payments
• Whether they can place online orders for food delivery.

Local restaurant websites aren’t all about giving people information, though. A website also helps you improve your business’s outreach and build a larger customer base.

Let’s look at some of the advantages that your restaurant gets when you create a food website.

Does a Restaurant Need a Website?

Yes! You can’t overestimate the importance of restaurant website. Here are some of the reasons that you need a dedicated website for your restaurant.

Search Engines Love Local Websites

Search engines don’t give social pages much attention. However, Google and other search engines care A LOT about well-made websites that give their users reliable information.

What does this mean for your restaurant business?

Let’s say you own a taco restaurant in St. Louis. You have accounts on Instagram and Facebook, but you don’t have your own website. However, several of your competitors, have websites that advertise their menus, taco specials, location, and hours.

When someone searches “tacos in St. Louis,” Google will give that person links to restaurant websites first. It may include a link to your Facebook page, but users will have to scroll far down the page to find the link.

Since your competitors get higher rankings, THEY will attract more customers.

Research shows that about 92% of search engine users only look at the first page of results. If you don’t reach the first page, potential customers will never even know that your business even exists.

When you ask “how important is a website for a restaurant?”, know that you’re asking whether people will ever find out about your restaurant business.

It doesn’t get much more important than this.

Learn more: How to Make a Food Ordering Website with GloriaFood in Different Website Builders

Websites Give Customers Crucial Information

Your website needs to include crucial information that patrons want to know. Ideally, your restaurant website UX should help people learn:

• Where your restaurant is (give them an address, map, and directions!)
• What items you have on your current menu and your prices
• How to reach you by phone, email, and social media
• What types of drinks you serve
• Whether you have any specials or promos

If you have more than one location, you may want to create an individual site for each one. At the very least, you want to build separate landing pages for each location. Doing so will help customers see what’s closest to them.

Your Website Provides a Common Ground for All of Your Promotions

Your website needs to have an active presence on social media. Your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other accounts exist in different spaces, though. A person following you on Facebook may never see your Instagram posts.

However, having a restaurant website creates a common ground where all of your promotions and news can share the same space.

Suddenly, you have a spot where your Instagram pictures and Facebook posts mingle with each other. You can even have them appear on the side or bottom of your homepage.

When people visit your site, they will see all of your marketing promotions in a single location.

Read more: Restaurant Website Promotion Ideas

Watch the video below to learn how to set up profitable promotions for your website:

Advantages Of Having A Website For A Restaurant: You Can Increase Your Carryout & Delivery Orders

People don’t use their smartphones to hold conversations. They’d rather send text messages, use apps, or access businesses online.

It’s not just young people following this trend. Older smartphone owners don’t like making phone calls either.

Your website can let customers place orders without talking to any of your employees. People read your menu, select the items that they want, and submit their orders. You can even enable them to pay online.

Make it as easy as possible for people to spend money at your restaurant. It will only boost your revenue.

Learn more: How to Increase Restaurant Website Traffic for Online Ordering

Show the World What Other Customers Think of Your Restaurant

Researchers studying consumer behavior find that people put a lot of trust in online reviews.

Most people (about 84%) believe online reviews as much as they believe reviews from their real-life friends.

Your website gives you a place to show off positive reviews that will bring more people through your door. You can’t

control what people say about you on social media. However, you can control which reviews you post on your website!

Related: Essential content for restaurant website that you should consider adding

What Are some of the Most Important Features for Online Restaurant Websites?

By this point, you probably see how a website could make your restaurant more popular and profitable.

Just throwing a website online, though, isn’t going to cut it. You still face a lot of competition from other restaurants in your area.

With that in mind, you need to ask yourself “What should a restaurant website include?”

To some extent, that depends on how you want to present your restaurant to the world.

More often than not, you get the best results from having a simple website that focuses on a few key features.

The best restaurant websites usually have the following traits.

Clear Contact and Visiting Information

Make it very, very easy for people to contact and visit your restaurant.

We touched on this above, but it’s worth repeating! Make sure your site has your:

• Phone number
• Social media links
• Address(es)
• A map of your location(s)
• Email address

Related: How to optimize your restaurant website

An Online Reservation and Ordering Page

Smartphone technology has transformed the way customers place reservations and order food.

Give your customers a simple way to do all that. Reservations should only take a couple of steps. Ordering food for carryout or delivery should be just as simple.

Related: Mobile responsive restaurant website templates that you'll love

Your Food, Drink, and Specials Menus

Your loyal customers already know what foods and drinks you serve. People looking for new experiences, though, want to learn more about your restaurant before giving you a chance.

Your website needs to include current menus for your foods and drinks. If you have any specials, create a separate menu or add them to one of your existing menus. Just make sure you advertise the specials. Otherwise, people might not know about them.

The purpose of a restaurant website is to help customers choose you over other eateries. If you include the above features, you make it easier for diners to choose you.

Related: Restaurant website design tips

How to Build a Restaurant Website That Improves Your Business

Okay, restaurant websites are important. How much does that matter, though, when you don’t know the first thing about building a website.

That’s a common misconception that prevents restaurant owners and managers from developing sites that will tremendously benefit them.

The truth is that you don’t need any tech or programming skills. If you can create a Facebook profile, then you can make a website for your restaurant.

Related: How to make a restaurant website in less than 30 minutes without any coding skills that’s easy to navigate. You don’t need fancy videos or interactive menus. If you add too many features, your website will slow down and frustrate visitors for having to wait too long for pages to load.

You want to give them a terrific experience before they order your food.

A lot of people are surprised to learn that they can use a one page restaurant website template to build their sites.

When you have a template, you just add your pictures and text. The template can include:

• Social media links
• Your contact information
• A delivery map
• An “about us” page
• A gallery of pictures to show off your foods and drinks
• Reviews that make your restaurant look like a great place to spend time

Related: How to have your own Squarespace restaurant

Templates from GloriaFood give you the easiest way to make a personalized website that integrates with Facebook and other social platforms. You can take orders online, accept reservations, and show potential customers why they should choose you!

You know how important a website is to your business’s success. Now that you know what are the advantages of having a website for a restaurant and why you don’t need any special skills to create one, let’s take your restaurant to the next level.