After creating and publishing their restaurant websites, restaurant owners begin to rely on them to attract the right customers and provide a steady revenue. To achieve that they need to know what measures to take.
Below there is an easy-to-follow checklist. Read on to verify that the essentials are already implemented and to discover additional action to boost the restaurant website’s potential. 
 

Note: If the menu widget is not published yet on a website, read here how to get started. 

How to find out what to improve?

A good starting point is the Website Funnel dynamic chart located in the restaurant admin panel. 
Based on how the restaurant website performs in this sales funnel, the report recommends what actions can help improve conversion from website visitor to customer at every level. 

The funnel shows how many visitors go through each stage of the sales process and compares them to the general average in of the system. When there is room for improvement, the buttons below the chart lead to a dedicated list of suggestions:

Improve the number of website visits: 

To attract more visitors to enter the website, a first suggestion will always be to start promoting the restaurant business and website to more food clients. Some ways to achieve that might be:

• getting a better ranking in search engines, through good SEO practices and potentially online advertising 
• getting noticed offline, in the restaurant’s neighborhood, through the distribution of flyers and if the budget allows it, offline advertising

Is the website mobile friendly? In this system, over 70% of orders are made from the mobile website, so it is critical to offer food clients a good experience when they order from their phones.

Get more visitors to open the menu or reservation widgets: 

Restaurant owners should next ensure that more visitors open the menu and go through the list of the restaurant’s dishes. One way to draw the attention to the menu is to publish the ordering button in a top position on the homepage and all the relevant web pages. The top performing restaurants that have built their own websites, have published the menu widget in the upper part of the web page and some of them even doubled it with a tab in the main website menu.

Here is an example of a restaurant website with “sticky” buttons (i.e. buttons that remain visible to visitors as they scroll up and down the webpage).

Get more clients to add items to the cart and go to checkout:

Once the website visitors are browsing the menu, it’s a short step to place that order. Some will quit in this step because they are not finding the dishes they are looking for, at the right price, with the right incentive to purchase, so consider some of the following aspects:

• Menu improvement -  create a menu that is both appealing and easy to navigate, with plenty of dishes to choose from (i.e. does it include options for a family dinner?);
• Prices – adjust prices to the targeted food clients;
• Promotions – depending on the restaurant’s sales goals and previous experience, start with some simple discount promotions, and even experiment with the more advanced settings for better client segmentation or target returning food clients. To draw the offline clients to the website, consider creating a first-buy promo then invite clients to order through email and SMSes.

Ensure that more visitors place the order:

A fair number of website visitors who have started an online order abandon it at checkout. To increase the number of people who actually place the order:

• Diversify services – consider adding delivery services and/or pickup to your offer 
• Allow clients to order for later
• Revise delivery areas, minimum order values and fees
• Ensure clients have payment options to choose from (for example, in United States and other countries, over 65% of food clients prefer to pay online)

No missed orders:

To make sure the restaurant’s staff do not miss the orders, the order-taking app should be kept open and in the foreground at all times during the restaurant opening hours and the device on which orders are taken should be plugged in and connected to internet at all times. Or switch to accepting all orders automatically, with predefined fulfillment times. 

 

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Leverage the restaurant brand to attract more clients:

A well-executed restaurant branding strategy builds an emotional connection with food clients, it enhances loyalty and more importantly, helps drive sales.  To get started with restaurant branding restaurant owners may try to:

• Make sure the restaurant website is clutter-free and adaptable to smartphone screens (mobile-first design);
• Add or improve the basic information about the restaurant: “About us” section, address, opening hours, contact information. The more the food clients know about the restaurant, the more they trust it and the more they order from it;
• Add a section containing announcements – for example menu changes, events happening in the restaurant location, a new chef etc.;
• Add links to social media and review platforms – these help in ranking higher in search engine results so that food clients find the restaurant easier; 
• Add photo gallery/galleries - include location photos (if dine-in is the restaurant’s main service), appealing dish photos

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As the most important element in the restaurant’s online presence, its website can potentially become the main source of ordering all around. But how does one get started in the right direction? Our suggestion is to select and focus on 3 recommendations in the checklist above and start working on them as soon as possible. Execute those well, then choose a few more.