5 Tips for Great Restaurant Web Design
As a restaurant owner, whipping up tasty meals is not the only way to attract diners. Having an impressive website for your restaurant is just as important as serving delicious food, and the two can go hand-in-hand to create an excellent guest experience.
Recent diner trend reports show that 79 percent of customers make it a point to browse through the website of a restaurant before they walk in through the doors. So what does it take for a restaurant website to impress a potential guest?
Here are five tips for restaurant web design you should keep in mind to make it appealing to the target audience:
When designing a restaurant website, navigation is one of the critical factors to consider. The easier your website is to navigate, the higher the chance that a customer will actually engage with it. Remember: most people browse your website to check out the menu or get contact details to make a reservation. Website navigation should be such that every visitor can quickly locate the information they seek.
Ideally, the website’s homepage should have distinct tabs, such as About Us, Menu, Reservations, Location, Contact, or Gallery, so a potential customer doesn’t have to scour through different pages to obtain basic details. If you have several menus, upload them all and make it possible to navigate to each individually. You can even add a contrasting color in the background to help the individual elements stand out.
If your restaurant also takes delivery or to-go orders, your website should have a separate page with all the necessary information for those services. This will ensure that a guest looking to dine in at your location doesn’t unnecessarily spend time going through a takeout menu.
2. Pick the Right Color Scheme
The colors you choose for your restaurant’s website directly impact how visitors respond, as colors are known to evoke various emotional responses. You want colors that make potential patrons excited about their visit and also reflect your brand’s personality.
For instance, if natural and organic food is the mainstay of your menu, opt for colors like brown, orange, and yellow on your website to create the ambiance of an inviting space. If your restaurant serves healthy food, consider a color palette consisting of greens.
Unsure what colors compliment the cuisine you serve? Opt for the same color scheme as your interior to maintain consistency between what your visitors see on screen and what they see once they walk in.
Regardless of the colors you choose, ensure they do not impair readability or compromise the browsing experience. Do not go overboard with adding too many colors—aim for three to five.
Visitors should be able to navigate through the website without straining their eyes. So even if colors like bright yellow or green are part of your branding, don’t include them on your website if they degrade the user experience. Consulting with a professional web designer can help you find the right balance and a combination of colors that will improve the user experience.
3. Make Sure Your Website Is Responsive
As a restaurant owner, you cannot control how visitors browse your website. While some may fire up their laptops to read through the menu on a bigger screen, many others may be content accessing it from their mobile devices.
If your website takes a long time to load or remains unresponsive on certain devices, you are bound to lose prospective customers even before they have a chance to visit you in person. Since loading speed is also a factor that Google’s algorithm considers to decide search rankings, you may find it challenging to appear on the first page of search engine results.
Ensure that your restaurant web design is mobile-friendly. Remember that Google analyzes the mobile version of a website first to decide its search engine ranking. You can compress images, minimize script, and adjust other elements to help it load as soon as the user clicks on the link.
If your site is heavy with graphics and images, work with a backend team to ensure you have the appropriate technical infrastructure and bandwidth to support the design. The last thing you want is a visitor hitting the exit button because they are frustrated with waiting for your website to load.
4. Include High-Quality Images That Are Not Stock Photos
Using stock photos is incredibly tempting. They are readily available and cost next to nothing, but since these images are not authentic, they do not truly represent your brand. Other restaurants using the same images can also dilute your brand value. Moreover, customers are bound to feel cheated when the food on the table doesn’t match the image they saw on your website.
So get a professional to take photos of the best-looking dishes on your menu and upload them to your website to tempt potential diners. Consider adding a few candid shots of the team working at the restaurant to showcase a warm, welcoming, and friendly atmosphere if that is your vibe.
5. Ensure Your Website Is Accessible to All
To demonstrate that your restaurant space welcomes everyone, pay careful attention to making your website accessible. Go through the ADA accessibility standards to check whether every function on your website, including making reservations, viewing the menu, ordering online, and so on, is easily accessible to all guests. Include alternative text for images on your website to assist those who are visually impaired. Add form labels so guests using screen readers can interact with your website.
Having a website is a must if you want to market your restaurant and stand out in the crowd. At the same time, restaurant web design needs to meet certain standards, especially if you are serious about creating an impact on your visitors and converting casual browsing into a reservation. Luckily, you don’t have to do it on your own. You can always hire a professional web design agency like InnoVision Marketing Group to help create a website that impresses regular and new customers alike.
