adapt or die
I know it sounds harsh, but Covid-19 has changed the business model for restaurants over the past few months. Businesses that rely on walk-in customers and reservations are now looking for new ways to reinvent the way to generate income. The hospitality industry has turned to digital marketing and online ordering as their primary source of sales to generate revenue. Customers as well are looking online to research their next meal by looking for restaurant menus and social media updates before they decide to order.In the following article, I will discuss the 7 Absolutely Badass Benefits of Website for Restaurants in 2021, and our favorite hosting solution that is easy for you to get started.
This demand is why having a website today is a valuable asset that every restaurant must consider adding to their arsenal. Having a home base that provides all the details of your restaurant is more relevant now than ever. The following are six valuable reasons you need to solidify your restaurant brand with a fantastic website during the COVID pandemic. In the following, we are going to review the The 7 Absolutely Badass Benefits Of Website For Restaurants In 2021,
So why do restaurants need a website?
A study shows that 89% of consumers research online before selecting a restaurant. The primary source of information is social media, followed by online delivery services. While these platforms provide an excellent overview to your customers of what your restaurant represents, they do not create an intimate connection that a personal website can offer.
Before digging into the reasons you should have a website, I want you to ask yourself a question; how effective is my online presence? In other words, if you google your restaurant’s name, what comes up? Most likely, the search results start with social media, then Yelp, and then Trip Advisor.
Then maybe some local food guides or online food delivery services. Now do these sites have your business in mind? For example, if you have a Mexican restaurant and search: “tacos near me,” does your business appear in the top results? I’m sure that you will get similar site results as before, without social media sites. Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Online delivery apps will most likely appear. So how can you get these customers now?
Having a dedicated website for your restaurant will increase your business’s potential in the top results in search sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. A website will increase your restaurant’s visibility, and you will have full control over how to communicate with potential customers.
how effective is my online presence?
In other words, if you google your restaurant’s name, what comes up? Most likely, the search results start with social media, then Yelp, and then Trip Advisor.
Then maybe some local food guides or online food delivery services. Now do these sites have your business in mind? For example, if you have a Mexican restaurant and search: “tacos near me,” does your business appear in the top results? I’m sure that you will get similar site results as before, without social media sites. Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Online delivery apps will most likely appear. So how can you get these customers now?
Having a dedicated website for your restaurant will increase your business’s potential in the top results in search sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. A website will increase your restaurant’s visibility, and you will have full control over how to communicate with potential customers.
So what are the advantages of having a website?
- You can stop relying on social media for all of your advertising.
- Own your brand, and do not be held hostage by social media
- You can splurge your customers with specials and swag
- Sell online to take 100% of the profit for online ordering
- You can get organic search traffic with SEO
- Your competition has one. You need to go bigger!
- Its easy to get started.
Where to Start?
The first step in you journey starts here. Search for your .com, and reserve your place on the web.
Consistency is a critical part of your online success. If you have a social media profile name already, invest in a .com.
with the tool below, you can search the availability. Then make sure to purchase and reserve your future website.
What makes a good restaurant website?
Let’s be honest. Social media is limited. Suppose you are using social media as your primary source of advertising. In that case, you are not reaching the customer from all angles. If you really want to attack your customers like a badass, you need to give them more.
A good restaurant website gives customers the ins and out of your company. There are manu advantages to creating a website. You are not limited to 155 characters on a social media profile. You can provide them with an essay full of what makes you great and where you came from.
People love to hear a good story, and it makes more than pictures on a social media feed to relay that information. A good share can go a long way, but a good story can go deep into the customer’s perception.
Online ordering is the future.
Give the current situation with Covid, you are missing out if you are not involved in online ordering. The problem is that the big online ordering companies take a good chunk of your profits.
By installing an online ordering service on your website, you take full control of your sales, and most importantly, more profit.
restaurant management goes beyond your day to day customers. Now your customers are ordering online.
and they’re hungry!
1
create a homebase for your restaurant clients, do not rely on social media
Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants to close to the public, the primary tools used to communicate with customers has been social media. Let’s face it; it is 2020. If your restaurant does not have a social media account, that lack of visibility will hurt your business. Facebook alone has 2.6 billion monthly users, 1.7 billion daily users.
Important Tips: Not having a social media account is like not caring about any marketing for your business, especially since it is a free service, with endless possibilities for you to create your brand and image. As significant as social media is, you still do not have full control over it. Meaning that you are playing with their rules, their limitations and if you want to advertise their rates.
This detail is why social media should not be the primary outlet of advertisement for your business. It is one of the main benefits of website for restaurants. I am not saying that it does not work. It works like magic. But what if one-day social media went away? Or they change their policies and algorithms?
Having control over the marketing for your restaurant should be under your command 100%. A website gives you control over your brand image, advertising, promotional offers, and even online ordering, which gives you a level up with your customers. And having a restaurant website is also a professional way to brand your business to potential customers or partners.
2
boss your f*&#%!_g brand
Yep. All in caps. I did it.
So you’ve had a social media account for years now. You may even have a particular creative style to your posts on Instagram. You have created a uniform pattern with your story, which gives you uniqueness in the industry within an ocean of lame and boring food posts. Social media should be an extension of your restaurant website.
Put your originality on display, and let customers know the mind behind the creativity you have expressed in social media. Give your real story. Not the 150-character profile description that Instagram and Facebook limit you to. I’m talking about the full story that includes your restaurant’s history, background, and goals. On your website, you can expand on the brand you have created on social media to solidify your clients’ trust and loyalty.
So, own your brand. Do not be limited to social media boring formats that are designed to dull information so that you must pay to stand out. If you are going to pay, make sure you are getting your money’s worth.
3
everybody loves free shit
Who doesn’t? The best way to keep customers coming back is with free shit. It doesn’t have to be free, but with a website, you can set up a loyalty program. Or even maybe a 10% coupon for first signing up to your newsletter. Why would you do this? To create trust, loyalty, and increase your business revenue. You always have to give a little at first to get them coming back. With a strong brand and beautiful website that tells your story to your customers, you will begin to create a community. And even from there, you can create a store and sell merch. Having customer loyalty during COVID is extremely important. Sometimes businesses are not making the revenue to stay open. Or for security and protection of their employees, they need to close for a short time to get their bearings back.
With strong and loyal customers, you can be sure that they will be there waiting for you when you come back. I have seen this firsthand on various occasions. Shit, I have personally seen a restaurant back online, and I order from their menu immediately because they have something that I love. Trust and loyalty is everything.
4
stop giving up 25% of profit for services on a $10 hamburger to someone else
Yeah, but these delivery apps are bringing in 95% of my revenue right now.
Sorry for all the numbers. I know that this is supposed to be a fun show, guys. But seriously, I completely understand that online ordering apps are the lifeline for most restaurants around the world.
I know restaurants that are busy right now using online delivery apps but are barely paying expenses. And not only that but now you have to increase the cost of your products to cover the high transaction fees. For a restaurant that is trying to market itself around low priced meals, it becomes hard. Its high volume, but little revenue. But couldn’t these services just cut a brother a break with these high margins considering the situation? Nope. They’re rolling in it. And they don’t care. I’ve seen some local ones take weekends off for vacation. They just completely turn off the app, and you’re stuck.
Benefits Of Website For Restaurants
This falls into the homebase situation as well.
You need to take control of your business and don’t rely on other services. Do you know that there are online ordering services that you can control completely? Easy to install on your website, and even on your Facebook page. Your customers order and pay online, and it is all connected. You control the orders from a smart device (computer, phone, tablet) running a web browser. Out the gate, you can set up a carry-out service that gives your customers a full-service experience on your restaurant website.
Of course, since you have the control, you will need to set up your delivery. But the best part is that you can charge whatever fees you want to your customer for delivery services. And to who’s pocket does it go? Yours. And if you thought all that sounds too good to be true, you know what’s the best part? That you only get billed a monthly fee instead of a transactional fee. And this monthly fee you can charge it in your orders. So basically, you get the service for free.
NOW WUUUTT!
5
Magic SEO
Ah yes. SEO. The fabled magic unicorn that will turn your dreams and desires into clicks and impressions. So, what is SEO? I’ll wait 3 seconds for you to guess.
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization.
Huh? I’m still lost.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what it sounds like.
Here’s the Wiki definition:
Search engine optimization is the process of growing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results and excludes direct traffic and the purchase of paid placement. wiki
The blood and life that flows on the internet is controlled by search engines (unfortunately). Search engines meaning Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Baidu. There are others, but these few manage most of the traffic. SEO is a process of making your website stand out in these search engines. What do I mean by stand out? I mean, appear as high as possible in search results. By customizing the SEO for your site, you can increase the chances of appearing higher in search results, therefore more clicks and visibility, hence more traffic. I’m going to give you guys a few stats from Impact:
- Google accounted for 75% of search traffic globally
- Google has received nearly 2.3 trillion searches so far in 2020
And this is the stat that is the most important:
On the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks.
Say wuuut!
That means that each one of the top five search results gets 310,960,000 clicks. This reason is why SEO is so vital to your website. And the best part is that it is free. Of course, I recommend that you pay a professional to set up your site with top-notch SEO to get better results. But the actual installation of a useful SEO plugin for your website is free. You just need to know that you’re doing to crawl up the search results. So how does it work?
Without getting too technical, when you search in Google, their algorithm is looking for keywords in websites that match what you searched for to give you the best result. What SEO masters do, is analyze these keywords and associate them to your site so that Google can pick you out of the trillions and prioritize.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Google is looking for a few other things as well. But all the elements must be in perfect sync to get you on top of search results. The best part is that it is all under your control, and you can take advantage of it.
6
They already have one
The 6th reason why your restaurant needs a website during COVID; your competition already has a site. Don’t be the last in town to set up your website. I can guarantee that many other restaurants know these six reasons, but many do not. You can always call them out by asking them what SEO is. 😊
Having a website gives you all the liberties and possibilities that you can imagine. It is an extension and actual digital storefront of your business. How many Mexican food restaurants can you count around you if you type: “Mexican Food” into google maps? Now, research a few of the search results to see how many of the websites provide you with complete information, including their full menu and pricing.
I’m am going to drop one last stat from Impact:
“Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% in the past two years.
This position is where you want to be. In the top 5 of search results when potential customers search for “Mexican restaurants near me.” Be in front of your competition always and offer one of a kind experiences with your website. You have all the power to control your image, your brand, be the boss of your homebase, and master of SEO. Offer online ordering and take back all the revenue you have been giving to these online ordering apps. Don’t limit your advertising and marketing campaigns to social media. Direct people to your page, your home, offer them specials and talk directly to their appetites
7
Its easy to get started
Most people think that starting a website is really complicated, but it is not. You only need three things to get your dot.com online.
- You need the dot.com
- A web hosting service
- Website builder to design your site
We wrote a guide on how to get started on your restaurant website from scratch here:
How to Build Restaurant Website Today For Less Than $99 (2021)
We broke down how to get your website up and running today with free tools like Elementor.
Stay consistent with your dot.com.
Always try to match your social media profile names when choosing a dot.com. You must maintain consistency with your online footprint. This is particularly important for your customers so that they can find you quickly. But it is imperative so that Google can find you faster.
You can search to see if your dot.com is available with the below tool:
Pick the best hosting services for your restaurant website.
I am sure that you are asking yourself, “So what is a web hosting service?”
First, we need to explain a little better what a website is. A website is basically a bunch of files, folders, and pictures that are online. So, imagine that your laptop is always connected to the internet and people can access it.
A hosting service is basically a vast and powerful computer that is very fast and can transmit your files (website) online.
There are hundreds of hosting services, like Hostgator, GoDaddy or SiteGround. But my favorite is Bluehost. For a beginner, Bluehost is very user-friendly and easy to set up. And not only that, but they are one of the cheapest options. For less than $80 a year, you can have your website up and running.
Choose a website builder.
Now that you have a dot.com and a hosting plan, you can choose a website builder. A website builder is online software that you use to design your site. This is not as complicated as it sounds. Most website builders have drag and drop features that are easy to use. And all website builders have templates that you can use to get started quickly on your design.
Some of these templates are ready to go. Other you can use to get your idea of how you want to design your website.
With Bluehost, it is straightforward to get started with WordPress. It’s a matter of a few clicks, and your website is running. WordPress has a small learning curve, but it is a mighty and easy to use website builder once you get the hang of it.
Now its time to build you website!
And these are all of the badass Benefits Of Website For Restaurants
COVID-19 has been a world-changing phenomenon with all business owners confused and worried about their next sale. But I believe that COVID has simply opened the door to expand businesses. reinvent the wheel in a way that can be entirely under your control if you wish for it. The digital world has arisen. Face to face contact has changed to 6 feet social distancing and customers that have their mouths covered. Think about that one. The future is online ordering with as little communication and physical interaction as possible.
A website solves all these problems.
Take control and Build
Robert
What do you think? would you add more reasons to include a website in your restaurant’s ecosystem? or do you disagree? Do you think Social media is enough for your business?
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