Setup Your Restaurants Site

Your Web Site is Critical to your Restaurants Business Success.

When people ask their friends to recommend a business they’ll more than likely ask for their web site.

Many people will ask for product or service recommendations using an instant messenger or email. It’s critical that you have a web site that can be passed around.

When people go looking for a business they are going to be more likely to engage the one that has a web site.

From a yellow pages listing to an advert, it’s the web address they can easily punch into their web browser and get more information to help make their choice that will get their attention the most.

Many people are doing this more than picking up the phone and calling. It’s your web site that is the crucial, most critical part of your marketing kit.

Register your Domain name

  • Choose a domain closest to your business name
  • Make sure it is easy to remember and easy to say
  • You can use up to 67 characters

It is import you choose a name that is closest to your business name. As anyone in the world can register domain names, it is a good chance that the name you want is already taken so it is a good idea to work out a number of alternatives.

When coming up with domain names, make sure they are easy to remember, easy to spell and easy to say. If people have a hard time remembering it or remembering how it is spelt not only could you lose their business but loose them to a competitor. It is also important that it is easy to say your domain name. When people call you on the phone and ask for your email or web address you want to be able to easily say it without a long winded explanation or spelling session.

Get hosting

  • You’ll need reliable hosting
  • You’ll need it to be easy to use
  • You’ll need flexibility and support.

A web hosting account is needed to serve your web site 24/7. Other than your domain name it is central to getting and keeping your web site online. The most important aspects of your hosting account are Reliability, that it is easy to control, and the host is flexible and you can get support fast when you need it.

You’ll easily spend hundreds per month on your phone and just as much again on your internet connection so for as much again on your web site you'll have a far greater chance at closing more business. in the age of the internet it is your web site that will close the sales, seal the deal and reel in business.

Get web hosting for your site now!

Prepare content for your web site

Write the key pages for your website: About Your business, Your People, Your Services, Why People should choose you, Your Contact Details, A list of your favorite links related to your business that will help your customers and people visiting your site.

It is also a good idea to write articles about your business. Also collect or take photo's of your business premises, people and examples of your business in action. Click here for more details on what to write.

Either Design Your Site or Hire a Web Designer to Design Your Web Site...

Once you have your content ready for your web site you'll need to turn it into a good looking, easy to use website.

You can either do this yourself using one of the readily available web design tools or hire a web designer to do it for you.

Generally someone with word processing skills will spend 20 hours over around 2 weeks designing it themselves.

Getting a designer to desin and produce a basic website with a basic design will cost around $500.

For a more invovled web site design you can expect to pay $1500-$2500.

These costs are not exact and depend on how involved and how specific you are with your requirments. You can find out more about the web site design process here.

Setup Statistics for Your website

Every time a person visits your website, the server logs a wide range of details of the visit.

Statistics can tell you a lot about who visits, what pages they read, where they're from and how they got to your site. This is important to know what works on your site and what isnt.

It also helps you to know if you are getting close to your target audience and what you need to do to improve your web site.

Get Traffic for Your Website

Most people will come to your website from seeing it in all your local marketing offline.

The other way people will find you is from searching with a search engine, local business directory or the yellow pages.

Search engines rank sites based on the content of the page and how active they are on the internet. They work out how active and valuable you are in relation to keywords by how many other sites link to your site and what text is used to describe your site in the link.

The more links you get across the internet on other good Restaurants sites with keywords you want to be found on, the better the chance you have at ranking higher and getting traffic from them.

Increase Business With your Restaurants Web Site

Adding your website address - your domain name - prominantly to all your marketing materials will increase the chance you have of closing more sales and increasing business.

Your website will give your business greater credibility and allow you to show how unique and benefical you are to your current and prospective customers.

People are using the internet more than the telephone to answer their queries about a business and make their choice.

The more up to date, fresh and relevant you make your web site to your customers and prospects, the greater the chance you will have of grabbing their business.

Promote Your Restaurants Site

Restaurants Forums

Find out what others are discussing about Restaurants in forums.

Post your questions, or answer others which will build your credibility online and help promote your website.

Roadfood.com Forums
Restaurant Management Forum
Epicurious.com Forums

Articles - content & promotion

To increase your web site content, grab articles about Restaurants topics from Aticle Directories and publish them on your site.

You can slso promote your web site by writing articles and submitting them to Article Directories. Other Restaurants sites can then republish them on their site with a link back to yours.

Articles on Restaurant & Hospitality
Articles from ArticlesBase.com
Restaurant Report
Articles from eatanddrink
Articles, Restaurant Key
Restaurant Articles
London Restaurant Articles
Restaurant Articles -Gold Coast

Restaurants Blogs

Keep up with what your peers are talking about and get isights into the future directions of the Restaurants industry.

By placing valuable comments on Restaurants related blog posts you'll be joining an ongoing conversation that will help build your authority in the Restaurants industry.

Once you get your website up and running and are comfortable updating it, you're ready to add a blog and write about your own experiences. You can comment and quote other blogs posts on your blog. Your customers will see how involved you are in the Restaurants industry boosting your reputation.

You can easily add blogging to your site by installing a Blog Web Application. We suggest WordPress.

Restaurant Marketing Blog
Boston Restaurant Blog
Restaurant - Blogs
Restaurant and Food Blog
Epicurean | newsobserver.com blogs

Restaurants Ezines

Ezines are online newsletters and you may even consider producing your own. It's the next leap in promoting your site after a blog.

You can easily setup a mailing list with your web hosting account to maintain an email list of readers and send your newsletter or ezine.

Restaurant-Reviews Ezine Articles
report.com-newsletter
Denver Dining Guide

Restaurants Social Networks

Social networks are a good way to meet like minded people on the internet - think of social networks as 'networking' online.

You can find people who can help you, inspire, and lead you to opportunities.

Social Network for Restaurant Industry
A Social Network For Restaurant
Social network for Italian foodies
Food Social Network

Restaurants - Directories

Restaurants directories, business directories and local community directories are a good place where prospective customers can find you.

It's a good first place to promote your web site. Listing your site in directories will also help search engines see your site is active on the internet and help raise your ranking on search results.

Check out these Restaurants directories and then search on:
'your local area' directory to find ones specific to your local community.

Restaurant Directory
Restaurant and Food Directory
Business Restaurant
Restaurant Key
Local Restaurant Directory
Ithaca Times
Dining Guide, Restaurant Information
Ireland Restaurants Directory
Dining Decisions: Restaurant Directory
Food Informations
Seattle Area Restaurant Directory
Thai Restaurants
Restaurant Listing Directory
Online Restaurant

Resources to Build Your Site

Web Designers

Hiring a designer is the quickest way to get your web site up. Find a designer that has experience and understands Restaurants so you can benefit from their experience and they'll be able to design a more effective site for you. Some suggestions to consider

Restaurant Web Design
website design for restaurants
Restaurant Website Design
Affordable Restaurant Websites
Restaurant Web Design Raleigh
Website Design @ BostonChefs.com

Example Restaurant Web Sites

It's easier to design and build your own site with inspiration from others. Some examples

Roy's Restaurant
New Orleans Restaurants
McDonald's
Sambuca Restaurants
Family Restaurants - O'Charley's
San Francisco Restaurants

Restaurants Web Templates

If you prefer to design your website yourself, you can buy already designed site templates. All you need to do is insert your content and logo, customise images and colours and you can quicly have your site up and running.

Cafe Website Templates
Restaurants Sites Templates
Website flash templates
Website Templates - Restaurants
Website Templates for Restaurants
Web Design Templates
Free Website Templates
Restaurant and Food Web Site
Restaurants website templates
Restaurant Website Design Templates
Restaurant Web templates

Web Applications to Consider

Web applications are a great way to add extra functionality to your site and make your site more useful and engaging for your customers or automate processes in your business.

Web applications can automate processes like managing a mail list and sending out newsletters or providing a help system or message board for prospective customers to ask questions. Some examples and ideas of web applications you can look into. All these web applications can be installed with just a click from your web hosting control panel.

Run Classifieds System on your site
Easy Content Management
Message Board / Forum
Web Stats and Analytics
Groupware Suite
Run online surveys
Web Calendaring
WordPress Blog
Contact Management

Search Engine Tools

Search engine tools are generally used to find out which keywords are being searched the most to optimise pages and text used on links to your site.

Another good use for search engine keyword tools is to find out what people are thinking about when researching topics related to your business. You can then write content and articles that will be most useful to people searching on these topics.

Searh engine and keyword tools are a good way to get inspiration and direction on what you need to put on your site and what to write about.

Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
Free Keyword Suggestion Tool
SeoDigger.com
Backlinks Checker Tool - Backlink Watch

Freelance Web Sites

Feelance web sites provide a means for people to list a web design, writing or marketing project and have professionals bid a price for the job.

Professionals who have completed jobs using the freelance site, get reviewed on the jobs they have completed and this allows you to select the best professional suited to your project based on the price they bid and the reviews you have read about them.

Most freelance sites allow you to pay the agreed price into an escrow account which you can release to the professional once you are satsified that the project is complete.

Feelance web site provide a good way for you to find someone to design, write or promote your site with less risk.

Design Quote
Guru.com
Elance
Net4Manpower
Project4hire.com
ScriptLance.com
Freelance Auctions
Freelance Web Market
Talkfreelance

Software

In order to maintain and up date your site it is important you setup and get to know some of the following software.

Nvu Complete Web Authoring
PersonalWebKit Web Design
NetObjects Web Design
Dreamweaver Web Design
MS Expression Web Design
SmartFTP Upload your site
FileZilla - Upload your site