Your Restaurant Website Shouldn’t Suck!

People like to have dinner in a calm, comfortable, and friendly place, without any disturbance from loud groups and music. People will not want to visit restaurants where the waiters ask for tip before service has been delivered. The above issues do not commonly occur in the real world, indeed; however, in the virtual world, most restaurant websites bring about bad experiences to customers worst than the above!

Most restaurant websites are poorly designed; filled with too much clutter on the pages making them too heavy to load. Customers need basic information on a restaurant website such as address, phone numbers and menu, most restaurant websites load unnecessary loud music and flash animations on the main page. Even worse, the intended information is not there! Another main issue is the restaurant menu itself. Most restaurant websites upload PDF files of their menu! Customers have to download the menu in order to see it. In most cases, PDF files take relatively long to download, especially when the file is accessed from handheld devices. This is a big NO NO for your business!

Simply put, your restaurant customers mainly need to see your address, phone numbers, menu and pricing. This simple information should be listed on the main page, without playing loud music, large heavy photos, or any other non-needed clutter. Most restaurant websites fail to deliver these basics; they tend to use large pages & unnecessary graphics that don’t contain any useful information for the customer. Restaurant owners need to realize that customers visit their websites with a specific purpose! Nowadays, people like to see where they might be going and look at the menu ahead of time to see what they’ll be eating. Most of this is even done using their phones. In fact, a good deal of research and ordering food is done online through people’s phones.

People compare different products, even the services from restaurants; furthermore, they make decision based on their research  online (Hint hint: Yelp Reviews!). Restaurants need to know that there’s competition between restaurants in the Internet world as well. The bad news for restaurant owners, people quickly leave poorly-designed websites where they can’t find anything and will try to find another place to eat. It is actually very simple; people see the main pages of the restaurant website and make a judgement about the restaurant itself. The necessary information such as address, menu, prices, and operating hours must be easily visible. Perhaps, some pictures of the building and interior furniture