15 truths about your restaurant website that you may not know: Part 1

by Michal Hicks published 4th Aug 2009

1. Put your booking engine on your home page

Having a table booking engine on your home page will dramatically increase the chances of taking a booking by a visitor to your site. Don't hide your booking engine deep within your pages so no-one can find it!

2. Flash animation can't be read by search engines

Descriptive text within a pretty animation or flash movie on your home page will ensure that copy is not seen by search engines like Google. You could be missing a whole load of people searching for a place to eat in your neighbourhood because search engines can't find you!

3. Flash navigation is unreadable by search engines

What this means is that search engines won't be able to find and therefore index the various pages of your site.

4. Your sitemap helps search engines find things quicker

If you have a site map, send it to Google. This helps search engines to find information in your site quickly. It's like having your own Yellow Pages directory for Google to find the information that searchers are looking for.

5. Keywords are the key to more visitors

If you have Google Analytics (what's this?) built into your site, you'll be able to investigate the most popular keywords being used to find your website. To find out how to use this to optimise your website in search engines, get in touch and we'll talk you through it.

6. Don't be lazy with menus

By having PDF menus to download, your customers can get excited about dining with you, but search engines can't read them. So if someone searches online for 'restaurant with vegetarian mains' your website won't register in the results. Always try to have your menu included as text in your website as well as having a pretty PDF for download! PDF's are great for transferring information but to website visitors, they've been proven to be non user friendly.

7. 'Book here' is better than 'Book now'

The latter is seen to be too demanding - it's a hard sell. It's like pushing people into your restaurants front doors rather than gently suggesting that you're open and happy to oblige them.

8. Place your 'Call to action' buttons on the same place on every page

Users like familiar layouts. When your 'Book Here' or 'Enquire Here' buttons are on every page, in the same location, users will become familiar with what they need to do... to BOOK!

For Part Two in the series of 15 truths about your restaurant website that you may not know, sign up to Brightbox.

Author : Michal Hicks

Michal was our Marketing Director and currently has his own company called Rudolf � The Lone Marketeer. Michal�s works with small and medium sized companies using innovative technology and internet tools to help improve their business.
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Tags : Marketing | Online