We are living in an era where we look for answers to almost all our queries online. From purchasing clothes to visiting restaurants, we check everything online to avoid disappointments.
The trend emphasizes the importance of having a prominent online presence for every business including restaurants. If you still do not have a restaurant website or you wish to revamp the old one with some amazing restaurant design elements, this article is for you.
In this article, we have shared 10 essential elements to design a successful restaurant website along with the importance of keeping these elements in mind while designing a restaurant website.
Importance of having a well-designed restaurant website
The restaurant industry is flourishing and as a result, more and more competitors are filling up the market making it essential for you to stand out. Today’’s smart dinners prefer to virtually visit a restaurant before stepping into it physically. So your restaurant website needs to be attractive enough to convince your target audiences to order food online or visit your restaurant.
Here are the things that make it important for you to have a successful restaurant website:
- Visibility: Having a website for a restaurant adds visibility to it online as your target audiences can find you there. For better online visibility or to secure a higher rank on Google, consider reading our previous blog on SEO for restaurants.
- Accessibility: When you have a dedicated restaurant website, you make it easy for people to find the details of your restaurant online.
- Enhancing audience reach: Having a website exposes your website to a wider audience and increases the chances of turning your potential customers into real customers.
- Improving functionalities: You can easily improve your restaurant functionalities by accepting online orders, managing table reservations, initiating deliveries, and more.
Now that you know why it is important for you to have a successful restaurant website, let’s find out the essential restaurant design elements.
10 Essential elements to design a successful Restaurant website
While designing a restaurant, make sure you include the following elements:
1. Choosing the right theme
Your WordPress theme is the heart of your website design. So you need to make sure that you choose a theme that perfectly suits the type of restaurant you have like a bar, cafe, bakery etc.
For WordPress users, there is a plenty of restaurant theme options to choose from.
Here are the things to look for in a restaurant theme:
- Responsive designs.
- Cross browsing support.
- Multi-language translation facility.
- Compatibility with WooCommerce.
- Support
If you are a WordPress user and looking for a suitable theme for your restaurant website you can turn to the WP Food Manager themes because it covers all the features that are mentioned above. The best part about these themes is that they are perfectly compatible with the plugins they offer.
2. Accurate basic information
While designing a website, make sure that you accurately add all the basic information about your restaurant. These information include your contact details, about us information, location, time of operations and more.
- Such basic details should always be added with accuracy and prominence on your website.
- Dont forget to update the information on regular intervals or in case of any changes.
- It is also good to update your restaurant’s basic details on Google my business profile as most people search for restaurants on Google.
So besides adding authentic information, you also need to update them regularly.
A descriptive food menu is an inseparable part of a restaurant website. After All your food items are the main attraction of your restaurant. So how to create a food menu on your website?
Well, you can easily create a menu using the right WordPress plugin. WordPress offers a huge array of restaurant menu plugins and each of them carries different types of features.
We recommend a plugin like WP Food Manager. It carries some amazing features, easy to use and customizable. You can easily add edit or delete food items in your menu using the plugin. Discover its other features now!
You can also read our article on restaurant menu design tips for a detailed guidance.
4. An impressive brand story
Let your website visitors know about the story behind your brand or what your restaurant is all about. You can creatively narrate your brand story in a dedicated section on your website such as “about us” or “our story.
Share a brief history of your restaurant along with your vision and mission to attract more and more audiences to it.
5. Professional food photography
Having impressive food photos offers a great way to convince people to order food from your restaurant. Use high resolution images to make a good first impression because people always appreciate original photos rather than downloaded ones.
Hiring food photography professionals is recommended here but If you are on a tight budget you can also do it through your social media channels by sharing photos there with people and food from your restaurant. .
6. Social media links
Don’t forget to add social media sharing button to your restaurant website. This helps your website visitors share your web page with their friends and family which ultimately increase its exposure and audience reach.
A major portion of people rely on their social media platforms before trying a new restaurant.
7. Efficient food ordering and delivery system
Online ordering is the new trend that most food lovers prefer as there is no hassle of visiting the restaurant. That is why every restaurant owner must incorporate the online ordering and delivery facilities to its website.
Here also WordPress users get a lot of advantages in terms of plugin options. Try using the online order and food delivery addons from WP Food Manager that are exclusively developed to take care of your food ordering and delivery requirements.
8. Flexible reservation system to handle rush hours
Having an online table reservation system is essential to handle rush hours. It also helps you avoid long queues outside your restaurant and annoyed customers.
It is advantageous for both you and your customers as you can manage your manage your table arrangement at your restaurant and customers get the opportunity book tables even before they arrive.
You can use the Table reservation addon from WP Food Manager to add a dedicated table reservation system to your website.
9. Offer discounts and coupons to attract more customers
Everybody loves discounts including your customers. Give them occasional discounts, run a contest or a flat price on a few items to make your customers happy and attract new ones to try your flavours.
Make sure that you highlight these offers along with their time duration on your website clearly to get maximum attention from your website visitors.
10. High-quality content
Content is regarded as the king of your website. So you can understand how important it is to create well-structured content on your restaurant website.
Always try to deliver content that carries the following qualities:
- Engaging subject
- Post regularly to keep visitors engaged.
- Create descriptive menu details.
- Offer authentic details of your restaurant along with the story behind it.
Besides textual content, you also need to ensure that you put right images and videos to represent your content messages.
Restaurant Website Design
Build a Winning Restaurant Website with WP Food Manager
Create a visually stunning, user-friendly restaurant website using WP Food Manager’s powerful and customizable tools.
Wrapping up
As the competition is too high in the restaurant industry, you can not afford to miss any important element from the list. It is necessary for you to stand out in the crowd and establish your unique restaurant identity online. To achieve that you need to add the above mentioned elements to your website. It might initially be challenging for you but if you have a dedicated WordPress website for your restaurant you can rely on WP Food Manager for the same to get a comprehensive solution for your online restaurant business.
