Most of the time, visitors visit restaurant websites to look at their menus. Therefore, any food business owners should create visually appealing food menus to capture their audience’s attention. A well-crafted online food menu design can whet customers’ appetites and entice them to either dine in their restaurants or place an order.
In this article, we’ll share with you some amazing ideas to make customers feel hungry as they navigate through your online food menu.
But, before we proceed, you need to know why you should focus on creating a well-designed food menu and how it can impact your sales.
How Can a Well-Structured Online Food Menu Design Impact Your Sales?
A well-structured food menu layout can increase your online orders and customer engagement. Here’s how.
- Creates First Impression: Your online food menu design creates the first impression of your food business on your customers. A professional food menu design will leave a positive impact on your customers. Consequently, they will explore your menus and place orders.
- Shows Brand’s Professionalism: A well-designed restaurant menu layout has high-quality food images and easy-to-read typography, which can go a long way in enticing customers.
- Boosts Sales: Having a good-looking restaurant menu layout can help you influence the ordering decisions of your customers, thus accelerating your orders and sales.
- Enhances Customer Experience: It allows your customers to navigate through the menu easily. Hence, the customers will easily find the food they want.
- Ensures Convenience: An online food menu helps customers browse your offerings and place orders from the comfort of their homes.
- Increases Online Visibility: A proper and optimized food menu design can improve the visibility of your restaurants in search engines. Therefore, potential customers can find your restaurant online easily.
Now, you know why it’s crucial to have an outstanding food menu design. The next question that comes is, ‘How can I create an attractive online restaurant menu?’ To answer the question, we have shared some effective food menu design ideas below. Check them out.
Find out some of the most effective online food menu design ideas below.
1. Mobile-friendly Design
Optimize your online menu design for mobiles. A recently published article, “Restaurant Readiness Index” highlighted that approximately 67% of restaurant sales are generated by orders placed via phone. Therefore, you should ensure that your designed menu is easily accessible from mobile phones to drive in more sales.
2. Design Thematically
Every restaurant has its theme. Make sure your selected visual menu design aligns with your restaurant’s theme. For instance, if you’re running an Italian restaurant, use rich colors like green and red to showcase your classic cuisines while reflecting the colors of Italian culture.
3. Master Menu Photography
Use diffused artificial or natural light to highlight the textures and colors of your food. One of the most effective menu photography tips is to ensure that the background is not too distracting. Your food is the focal point of the photography. It is a crucial part of online menu aesthetics. The photo should represent the dish accurately. Never use low-quality images. They will distract the menu’s appeal.
Place props in a way that avoids cluttering the scene. Experiment with various perspectives and angles to make the food appear appetizing while taking the snap.
4. Organize Menus Logically
Organize menus logically to help your customers navigate around the menu easily. Therefore, you must categorize similar items while creating a food menu design. For example, you can create headings like ‘Ocean Delights’ or ‘Farm Fresh Salads’ and place the relevant food menus under these categories. Write clear headings and subheadings to categorize your food items.
5. Place High Margin Dishes at the Centre
Keep high-margin dishes at the menu’s center to make those dishes appear more appealing to the customers. Studies show that customers’ eyes first go to the center of the menu and then the top left and top right consecutively, thus creating a triangle-like shape.
If you place your signature dishes while presenting your menu online triangularly, you’re more likely to draw your customers’ attention to those dishes. It will boost your sales, leading to the restaurant’s profitability.
6. Highlight Special Offers
Shine a spotlight on savings by highlighting special offers. You should highlight special offers (if giving) like discounts, limited-time offers, etc to catch your customers’ attention. Therefore, use vibrant colors and icons that align with your brand.
7. Use White Space Properly
Negative space or white space is crucial in designing online menus. It creates a sense of organization and balance. Using the white space properly can guide customers’ eyes to the key items. It will make the menu appear clean and easy to scan. By incorporating the white space strategically, you can drive sales, allowing each food item to stand out.
8. Describe Your Food
Detailed descriptions of your displayed food items can tantalize the taste buds of your customers. Reading the description will enable them to imagine the textures and flavors of their selected food. Highlight unique ingredients and the cooking methods to evoke cravings.
Keep the descriptions informative yet concise to avoid overwhelming your customers. Doing so will improve customers’ dining experience and encourage them to try new dishes. It, in turn, will increase your online orders.
9. Select Easy-To-Read Fonts
Use clear and legible fonts to help your customers scan and navigate around the menu easily. The fonts you pick should match with your restaurant’s theme. Choose fonts having proper spacing between letters to improve readability. Avoid overly decorative fonts as they may appear small on some devices, making the items hard to read for your customers.
10. Pick Colors Strategically to Evoke Appetite
Choose colors carefully for your online food menu design to influence your customers’ choices. Use cool colors for freshness like greens and blues for your healthy food options. On the other hand, you can go for warm colors like yellows, oranges, and reds to highlight your main course. The warm colors are ideal for stimulating appetite.
Furthermore, use contrasting colors for your CTA buttons to make them easily noticeable. In short, incorporate the colors strategically to encourage your customers to explore the menu and place orders.
11. Maintain Brand Consistency
Stick to your brand’s message while designing a menu online to create a cohesive customer experience. Consider your restaurant’s branding materials while choosing fonts, colors, and other design elements for a unified look. Include the logo of your restaurant to strengthen brand recognition.
Consistent branding builds trust among your customers. Consequently, they will prefer to choose your service over your competitors.
12. Consider Decoy Pricing Strategy
Menu pricing strategies also play a crucial role in food menu design. Hence, choose decoy pricing to guide your customers toward picking higher-profit foods. For example, place a higher-priced item just below a slightly lower-priced item.
Doing so will make the latter seem like a profitable deal. Or, create menu combos to incorporate decoy pricing. All these will help you steer your customers towards higher profit items, boosting the profitability of your restaurant.
13. Update Regularly
Update your menu regularly to inform your customers about your offerings. Your menu works like a dynamic tool where you can display limited-time offerings, special deals, and much more.
Keeping your customers updated about your latest offerings will ensure a satisfying dining experience. Moreover, it will drive in new customers searching for exciting dining options.
14. Get Customer Feedback
Collect customer feedback about your menu to find loopholes and work on them. For this, you can use surveys or feedback forms, where the customers can give feedback on your food quality, pricing, staff’s behavior, and overall dining experience. Analyze this feedback carefully to find the areas of improvement. Accordingly, you can make changes to your food menu design.
Additionally, asking for customer feedback will increase their loyalty. Consequently, you will drive repeat business.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Food Menu Design
- Lack of Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy in food menu design is the method of arranging food items to guide the attention of the viewers to generate more profits.
Not creating a visual hierarchy of your food items will make them indistinguishable. Use different colors, styles, and sizes to highlight your signature dishes.
- Ignoring the Psychology of the Menu
Menu psychology is understanding the psychology of viewers when they look at a menu. Keep an eye on the observation tendency of the customers when they scan a food menu. Knowing the factors that can influence their choices can help you design the menus strategically like how and where to place the most profitable food items, making pricing strategies, learning how to write the food descriptions, etc.
- Neglecting Dietary Restrictions
Today, many people have become fitness-conscious. Some of them are not ready to compromise with their diet even when they go to restaurants. Here, focusing on dietary restrictions while designing a food menu can help restaurant owners a lot.
Therefore, try to include sections like low-carb, gluten-free, etc in the menu to tap customers on diet too.
If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you want to create an attractive food menu. However, food menu plugins can help you a lot. You can consider WP Food Manager to design your food menu online. Visit here to know more about this plugin.
How WP Food Manager Helps Create a Striking Online Food Menu?
WP Food Manager, a wing of WP Event Manager, is a newly launched WordPress restaurant menu plugin that helps restaurant owners create eye-catching online food menus. The key features of the plugin include the following:
- User-friendly.
- Customizable.
- Simple coding structure.
- Multiple views.
- Elementor Pro Integration.
To know more, discover the plugin now!
Starting from creating an online food menu, to selling food items and managing payment the plugin offers a complete package for every restaurant owner who wants to manage restaurant operations online through a WordPress site.
Food Menu Design
Create an Eye-Catching Food Menu for Your Restaurant
Transform your restaurant’s menu into a visually stunning digital display. Follow these these ideas to craft the perfect menu that grabs attention.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How can I organize my food menu design?
Use dividers or subheadings to create logical sections in your food menu. Creating logical sections like appetizers, main course, and desserts will help you organize the design.
- Is it ok to keep prices on my menu?
Yes, it’s okay to include prices in your menu. Showing the price for each food will make your customers feel that you’re maintaining transparency.
- How often should I update my menu design?
Update or make changes in your menu regularly to reflect your seasonal offerings and to keep the menu looking fresh.
Wrapping UP
A food menu design involves a multifaceted process. You should select various elements like fonts, colors, images, etc, to win over your customers and encourage them to place orders. Follow the principles discussed in this blog to create online menus that showcase your offerings in the best possible light, are easy to navigate, and generate sales.
