Written by Lea Seibert | 14 May 2013
Posted in Web Design Tip of the Week

Your website is more than likely the first thing a potential customer sees when making their decision to dine at your restaurant.

So it is more important than ever that your website is optimized for converting website visitors into customers. The key is to make sure you know what those customers are looking for, and give it to them.

To address this issue, here are five things that a website visitor should see when they reach visit restaurant’s website:

1. Operating Hours
   Make sure your operating hours are very clear and easy to understand and are on every page of your website.  Update them immediately when your schedules change, whether it is holiday hours, closing for maintenance or special circumstances, such as private events or severe weather.  If your kitchen closes before your bar area or main dining room, make sure to note that time as well.  Nothing is more frustrating than making plans to meet your friends at a restaurant, only to arrive and find that it’s closed or the kitchen stopped serving 15 minutes ago.
2. Contact info
   Make sure that all of your contact info visible on every page. This includes your phone number and street address along with either a live map or link to driving directions.  Using plain text for your contact info makes it easy for mobile smartphone users to access as most mobile devices will convert these into touch links that allow you just to push and call.  It is also a huge help for search engines to know your location and contact info.  Bonus: Add links to the social media sites you’re most active on (Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc.).
   
   
3. Menus
   First-time customers want to see your food menu to help them make a dining decision. DO NOT make them download a PDF file to their computer or mobile phone just to see your menu(s) and pricing. Your food menu should be seamlessly designed into your website, just like any page. All it takes is a click and your visitor is browsing your mouth-watering selection.  Also be sure to keep your food menu(s) current, even if that means daily updates. Your website’s content management system should allow for this. Displaying an outdated menu is very frustrating for first-time visitors when they arrive with a particular dish in mind, only to find that it is not available.  That can guarantee they won’t turn into repeat customers.
4. Your best reviews
   Customer feedback is one of the most subtle, but powerful, marketing tools your business has. And there’s no industry where customer testimonials have a bigger impact than the restaurant industry.
   
   Just look at how heavily customers rely on sites like Yelp, UrbanSpoon and Trip Advisor.  Your reviews matter and they should not be confined to those restaurant directories.  Take your best reviews and showcase them right on your website. This is a great way to provide an added sense of excitement as your first-time visitors are browsing your food specials and other pages of your site. A great review could be just the push they need to book that reservation or place an order.
5. Photo galleries
   Even if you spend days crafting the perfect text for your website’s homepage, people will gravitate to your photos first. They tell a story just as well as a copy of your menu can. It is crucial to have beautiful photography on your website. You can hire a professional photographer, or if you’re just starting out, a digital camera with the right lighting could do.  Just don't put bad photos on your website.  This will turn people away quicker than no photos.
   
   Try to provide a variety of photos that showcase both the exterior of the restaurant (making it easy to spot on arrival), the interior (what’s the atmosphere like?), and the food (nothing sells food like photos of food!)

Written by Lesa Seibert | 05 February 2013
Posted in Web Design Tip of the Week

One of the main causes of people abandoning websites is poor navigation.  They can't find where they want to go, so they leave, maybe never to come back. Even worse, they assume your service is as bad as your navigation and will end up on your competitor's site to find what they are looking for.  With some changes to your navigation design, you can create an experience that helps visitors find what they want as quickly as possibly, preferably with one click.

Some important things to consider for site navigation are:

1. Let visitors navigate your site from any page - Visitors often get stuck in a site after a couple of clicks and don't know how to get back to where they came from.  A top placed navigation will allow visitors to navigate to other pages without having to go back to your home page to start over.  Make sure to include the navigation bar on all pages.
2. Display breadcrumbs - As visitors browse your site, they often need to know how they got to the page they are on or how to get back to an earlier page.  By displaying breadcrumbs, visitors know where they came from (Ex. Home > About > Staff > Programmers)
3. Consider adding images in the navigation to indicate navigational categories, such as product types, brands, etc. 

When developing your site navigation, thing like your customer.   After the site is built, navigate through it to make sure it is easy to get to the information that is most important on your site.  When you do this, you will be pleased with the results.

 

Written by Xstreme Media | 26 June 2012
Posted in Web Design Tip of the Week

Does your website have a good ranking with Google?  Is your website easy to navigate and user friendly?  Do you have keywords in your website text?  If you don't know, you should.

Competition is fierce today for site ranking and placement both in organic search and pay per click marketing.  You need to make sure your website content is optimized for search to ensure you are being ranked and found for the keyword(s) you think are important to your company.  Reviewing this before starting any online marketing is imperative.  You can have a Competition Research Report done which will tell you how your competition is marketing online and where are their visitors coming from.

As more and more people are using their smartphones for Internet browsing, you must ensure that your site is capable of being viewed on that small mobile screen.  You can either optimize your existing site for mobile or create a separate mobile site that is scaled back to load and view properly in a mobile browser.  You don't want to miss a potential client because they either can't pull up your website on their phone or they can't get to the information they need quickly if they do.

Another important thing is to make sure your site is up to date and optimized for the keywords you want to rank for before starting any social media campaigns.  You will get one chance to capture them when you direct them there, so you must make sure your content conveys the message you want to send in order to get the potential client to email you or call you for more information or to make an online purchase.

If you are not sure where you stand with your site, you can have a 21 Point Website Review done which will look at multiple areas of your site including performance, mobile capability, online listings, and more.  This will help you optimize your current site or let you know that you need to build a new site that is more optimized for search and best represents your products or services to your customers.

Written by Lesa Seibert | 19 July 2011
Posted in Web Design Tip of the Week

by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

The last piece to consider when writing a business blog is to use citations.  Blogging is quickly being accepted as legitimate journalism so it needs to be treated that way.  This means proper citation of facts, figures, sources and related stories.  This will reinforce the legitimacy of your business blog.

When trying to get ranked by search engines, speed is a factor.  So, while being the first to publish a post might result in a surge of clicks, what is most important is quality.  Google's latest update stresses the importance of quality content.  Taking a few extra minutes to ensure accuracy will have more important long-term effects. 

In writing business blogs, remember that the target audience is looking for facts, informatio and actionable advice.  Provide the audience reasons to trust your blog and they will come back, link to your posts, share the content and help establish your business as an industry leader.

Written by Lesa Seibert | 12 July 2011
Posted in Web Design Tip of the Week

by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

Like a songwriter, whose goal is to get their point across in as few words as possible, so is the goal of the blog writer.  Whenever a blog post is complete, go back and remove as many words as possible without changing the meaning of the content.  A very common mistake is the over-use of "you" and "your".  It is sometimes unavoidable but too much can ruin even the best sentence.  For example:
    
     Example 1 - To ensure a good business blog, you want to make it easy to read so you can convey the appropriate
     message to your target audience.

     Example 2 - A good business blog is easy to read while still conveying the appropriate message to its target audience.

By removing a few unnecessary words and with a little restructuring, Example 2 is easier to read and shorter than Example 1.

Another thing to remember when writing a blog is to get to the point quickly.  You should put the main points of the blog at the top of the post and work down.  Business blog readers don't have much time, so they want the information quickly.  Putting the main points first also helps with search engines because they index from the top down.  You can also use introductions, but keep them short and include the main focus in the intro.