In the era of Internet, your restaurant customers’ appetite can be quenched long before they come to you. A well-built restaurant website is able to inspire real visits to the place. So restaurants are a vivid illustration of why every business absolutely needs a website. Like a restaurant chef knows good dishes, our website development company knows good restaurant website features to build your website with. Discover them right now!
Important restaurant website features that inspire visits
An easy-to-use online menu for your restaurant
Potential restaurant guests often want to see the menu before they arrive. It is necessary to put the menu in a conspicuous place, so they can easily find it.
Your online menu shouldn’t be just a photo of your paper menu. It should be presented as a web page in a style that is consistent with your website’s theme. Reading a web page is much more convenient than having to download a PDF, especially on mobile devices.
In addition, with a menu in HTML, you can have search engines index it. So it’s always a good idea to enrich the menu with keywords — people often browse for specific dishes.
However, you still can have a PDF as an additional option. For example, it could be convenient for someone planning a banquet at your restaurant.
Your online menu needs to be clear and understandable — with dish ingredients, photos, and prices. It is also important to make the menu and its images optimized for people with disabilities. Web accessibility, ADA compliance, and other issues are on the rise today.
Attractive images of your food and interior
The power of imagery is overwhelming in food business. Your visitors will be enticed with the photos of irresistible dishes that they can almost smell the scent of. In addition, they will feel the atmosphere of your place from the inspiring photos of your restaurant interior.
The photos should be both beautiful and authentically. That’s why you will strongly benefit from hiring a professional photographer. The photos can be used both on the website and on social media accounts like Instagram.
While providing for attractive and high-quality photos, it is necessary to keep in mind image optimization so that your restaurant website loads fast.
Your restaurant’s contact information
Contact information is among the most important restaurant website features, so it should be found at the snap of a finger. All its textual elements should be available to copy and paste for better user experience.
Your visitors will want to see your address, Google map, business hours, telephone number, email, and other channels that you are available through.
If there are different locations, or different contacts for different actions (delivery, reservations, etc.), this should be clearly specified.
Online restaurant table reservation feature
Your customers will be delighted to be able to reserve a table with a few clicks instead of having to make a telephone call. So the convenient table reservation feature with a calendar of days and hours is awesome for restaurant websites.
Online food ordering (if you offer it)
If you offer delivery services, your customers will appreciate the ability to put the desired items to cart. The payment options are up to you to choose — it can be cash upon delivery or online payments.
For the latter, there is an awesome choice of payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and plenty more. In addition, you can choose to rely on modern payment options like Bitcoin, Google Wallet, Dwolla, and so on. Everything is possible with our web developers, who specialize in third-party integration.
The “About” section
The “About” page is the chance to tell your unique story to your audience. It should emphasize something that differentiates you from others. Maybe you are using ancient family recipes for ice cream, or your restaurant was the favorite place of some celebrity. A good combination of convincing text and eye-catching images will do its job.
Social media integration for your restaurant website
“Socialization” is a must for restaurant websites. Your site needs links to your active social media accounts, as well as social share links for anyone who wants to share, for example, an attractive food image. Your users will appreciate reading the feedback of other customers on social media, participating in discussions, seeing interesting updates on your new dishes or planned events, and so on.
Website optimization for mobile devices
Last but not least is the perfect website layout on mobile devices. Many people browse places to eat when they are already outside. Restaurant searching is also popular among travelers, who mostly rely on their mobile devices.
Good mobile display is achieved either by a mobile website version, or by responsive website design. The latter is especially popular. According to it, website layout elements are programmed to adjust themselves to various screen sizes.
Build a restaurant website that your visitors will love!
All these restaurant website features will make your restaurant website really attractive and useful. You can entrust our development team with building an awesome restaurant website for you or optimizing your existing one. Everything will be “tasty”! ;)