Image by ebayink via Flickr
As a business owner in the food and hospitality industry, you may have done everything from developing an impressive menu, hiring the best chefs, to finding someone who provide wholesale hospitality uniforms. Still, if you fail to get the desired business, it could be because you don’t have a good website. Finding the right WordPress theme for your restaurant is not as easy as picking one that looks pretty. you know that a quality dish is more than presentation; ingredients, best practices (food safety), process, experience, and providing a customer what they would like at the right time mean everything.
The same goes for your restaurant WordPress theme. In order to find the right website theme for your restaurant, it would be prudent to consider these important factors:
1. Custom Business Logic
A WordPress theme specifically designed for a restaurant will possess many attributes that are specifically designed with a restaurant in mind. Out of the box, WordPress does not include key features that a restaurant will need to present itself effectively.
Customized menu options; beyond blog posts and pages, a custom restaurant WordPress theme will allow businesses to present their menu items in an attractive way and make each item easily editable
Through research and experience, a restaurant theme developer knows what is important to you and your customers; an effective restaurant WordPress theme will present the most sought after information in order of importance, such as address or an easy to view map, menu options, and much more.
Many restaurants also require additional features such as widgets which display hours of operation, event calendar, reservation booking, and so on.
At the end of the day, it is important to find a website theme for your restaurant that is “responsive” and loads quickly across devices, is easy to manipulate and edit (with a drag and drop page builder, perhaps), and presents your business in the best possible light.
A website that is easy to work with will save you money and a website that loads fast and follows best practices will climb search engine results.
In addition to the points mentioned above, you could invest in beautiful restaurant signs and post them on your website and social media pages to attract more dine-in customers. When installed in the right location, printed with eye-catching graphics, and directed at your target audience, eye-catching display signs can be extremely effective tools in attracting new customers.
2. Is it Mobile Friendly?
Image by Sharon & Nikki McCutcheon via Flickr
Last month Google announced that a website theme’s ability to load quickly on a mobile device in a way that works across many devices and screen sizes will affect how it ranks on the popular search engine.
Now why would they do this? Simple. Remember when I said 4/5 restaurant patrons look online before selecting a venue to eat at? Well the majority of those patrons will do it in the moment, on a mobile device.
3, Does it load quickly?
Another factor that search engines such as Google look at is how quickly a website loads. If a website takes longer than 2 seconds to load, a majority of web surfers are likely to abandon ship. Two seconds! And that number is shrinking year after year as intention spans continue to dwindle and expectations increase.
4. Does it make the best use of modern technologies?
From HTML5 to simple integration with third party services such as mailing list platforms, and social media channels that cater (pun!) specifically to your niche are incredibly important. They can enhance the user’s experience, increase “shareability”, and enhance the visibility of your restaurant business.
5. Is it easy to edit yourself?
The main draw for going with a prefabricated WordPress theme is how easy it is to take your online strategy into your own hands without having to learn how to code websites or struggle with a sharp learning curve.
