Websites That Make You Hungry
Every restaurant should be able to succeed with their passion and food alone, but competition is fierce and they need to enter your restaurant and taste your food before they’ll know they love it. There are several ways to entice people to your restaurant. What better way to show them just what they’re in for than restaurant websites that make you hungry?
Creative Juices Marketing Agency recently developed a website for a restaurant that served authentic Afghan cuisine in Charlottesville, Virginia. We conducted a photoshoot of a wide variety of dishes and then proceed to develop a responsive, colorful and downright mouthwatering website that incorporated them! This is the homepage/top of the website. Can’t you just feel how hot the fire is and taste how juicy those pieces of beef are? The slider on this website goes on to show more mouthwatering dishes – one after the other. Visually selling the food to the website viewer the minute they hit the website.
Website design has evolved recently into more of a ‘ONE Page’ style – there is a theory that people don’t like to go further than a homepage on a website (short attention spans). Does it make sense then to jam everything you’ve got onto the homepage so your visitors don’t miss a thing? Not really. Having a slow-loading homepage can be DEATH for a website, so loading it up with tons of copy and images is a really bad idea. Clutter is also very disturbing to many people (including me). BUT the most essential information SHOULD be on your homepage. Little teasers that will lead your visitor to pages that explain more are the best idea. The visitor needs to be drawn in.
Besides the tasty foods, there are other aspects that must be placed front and center on a restaurant’s website. Note below that the address, hours of operation and contact information is right at the top of the website. How many times have you spent your valuable time on a website looking for those important details? People don’t like inconveniences so why not avoid them and give information right up front. Also note below that we have call-to-action buttons to “order now” or “make a reservation”. Calls to action give the website visitor instruction on what they should do next. You don’t want to leave them wondering, right? :)
As we scroll down the home page, note that the navigation bar is “sticky”, meaning the user will always see it at the top no matter where they are on the site. This keeps all of the information at their fingertips, which is very important. We ‘get personal’ and humanize our business by introducing the chef/owner and welcoming the visitor to our website and restaurant. The human aspect is very important in locally owned businesses like this one. People feel more comfortable when they “know” stuff. If they know what the chef looks like and what his background is, they are more likely to feel a kinship with him and the restaurant. It may sound funny because all that really matters in the end is the food, but the initial choice to go to your restaurant needs to be made BEFORE anything is tasted. You have to reach your potential restaurant go-er on all levels if you want to get them in to feed them.
After you’ve given your restaurant a personal touch, show them some of your most popular, most delectable looking dishes with short descriptions and even pricing. They can view your menu at any time with just a click, but these enticing photos will help you make them want to!
TESTIMONIALS! Everyone who is going to a restaurant for the first time wants to know what others thought of it. Why do you think businesses like Yelp and Angie’s List do so well? They’re filled with reviews of different businesses. Word of mouth is so ridiculously important in marketing – especially for restaurant owners. Posting your testimonials on your website is always a good move. It’s also very smart to encourage patrons to write reviews for your restaurant on Google, Yelp and so on, but that’s for a different blog!
Every website needs to be mobile optimized in this day and age – meaning your website experience should be just as great on a mobile phone or tablet as it is on a desktop or laptop computer. People view websites on mobile devices in GREAT percentages. A website that is not mobile optimized is not a website that will get a second look and you don’t want that EVER.
If you’d like to review this particular website in it’s entirety on your computer or on your mobile device, it can be found at AfghanKabobCville.com. Let me know your thoughts. If you have a restaurant and would like to talk about having a beautiful, responsive, and compelling website developed, CONTACT US TODAY.
