How to Set-Up a Website for Your Restaurant

It’s an easy decision to use the power of the World Wide Web to promote your restaurant or bistro, however don’t underestimate the importance of effective presentation and marketing of your new website. Here, we provide plain-English advice on getting started with your site, on how to get people to view your carefully crafted pages and on how to convert those site visitors into paying customers.

Choosing a Website Design Service

There are many options available when selecting a company to design and build your website. Unless you have web design and coding experience, don’t be tempted by the false economy of the self-coded website option. First impressions are very important and a poorly presented website is unlikely to generate interest in your restaurant.

Your first step is therefore to decide on the services that you require from your website designer. These will probably include a content management system (this enables you to make real-time updates to your website), web hosting, domain name registration and logo design and creation. You should certainly be offered access to your site’s referral statistics; these are reports on the number of people who have visited your site, and which website they have linked through from.

A full-featured, professionally designed restaurant website should not cost more than about £400-£600, and an annual fee of up to £100 may also apply if you are being offered web hosting and/or a content management system.

A great option if you’re on a tight budget is to use a template-based website creation service. These involve selecting from a range of pre-designed templates and then adding text and images using an online editing tool. These services vary in quality and cost, so view their portfolio pages and compare prices. A great bonus would be a provider that offers a free service, with upgrade options to suit your requirements. We offer such a FREE service, Websites for Restaurants, it has all the above features and our templates are specifically designed for restaurant websites.
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Advice on Choosing Your Website’s Domain Name

Your website’s domain name will influence how highly the site is placed in search engine listings.

We recommend that the domain name includes two or three keywords that your potential customers might enter into search engines. Most search engines use the domain name text to help decide on the subject of your website so this strategy this will improve your listing position. An example of a search engine friendly domain name would be www.seafoodrestaurantexeter.co.uk as it includes three highly relevant keywords.

If your restaurant is widely known by name then it may be more advantageous to use the name (perhaps combined with the location) in the domain name, for example www.thepergolabude.co.uk.

Promoting Your New Website

Unfortunately, no one will visit your site if it does not establish a good web-presence so, once your website is complete, the important and often time consuming job of promoting the site must begin.

It’s important to get your site into the top search engines and directories, these are Google (www.google.com), Ask (www.ask.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), MSN (www.msn.com) and Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com). These sites may eventually find and list your website but it could take several months (or longer!) so it’s a good idea to visit each one and submit your site to them.

Google offer an excellent free service called Google Maps. Sign-up to a Google Places account and you can create your free Google Maps listing, which includes a link to your website. When your potential customers conduct a search on Google for a restaurant in your area your listing will appear, together with a placemarker on an adjacent map.

There are many online directories that specialise in listing restaurants; some are free but most charge an annual fee. These directories can be effective but they vary in the amount of enquiries that they generate so carefully select the best and monitor the results from each one.

An effective way of increasing traffic to your site is to create a links page and ask other sites to exchange links with you, this is called reciprocal linking. It is advisable to mainly include links to relevant and local websites, so offer to swap links with other restaurants, your local taxi service, tourist attractions, B&B's, estate agents and so on. One good tip is to ensure that, when another site links to yours, your main keywords are in the clickable text (called anchor text). Search engines use the anchor text to help determine the content of your website, enabling them to rank you higher for relevant searches.

Finally, a content-rich site packed with relevant and interesting information will always attract plenty of visitors and search engines really love them! Build your site with at least 6 to 10 pages, include loads of content on your restaurant and pack it with as much related information, such as recipes, as you can.

If you need a restaurant website with all the above features and further marketing advice go to our start page and register for your free website. Good luck with your new website!

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