These days in is not difficult to take care of online essentials: hosting, domain name, some generic template and even customized graphics for your restaurant's website. If all you want is give people some idea about the menu, the hours and the directions that's fine. But a website can be turned into a powerful marketing tool even for a smallest of restaurants. Here are a few ideas you can implement on your restaurant's web page.
It would be of course, easy to draw attention of Internet users to your website by adding interesting content that is not 100% relevant to your restaurant business: Flash games, blogs on various topics, popular video clips etc. It would be wiser, however, to be of service for people who are likely to become your customers. For instance, use restaurant's website as "an excuse" to provide valuable information for people who visit your town or your neighborhood. Use maps, photographs, local weather reports, reviews of local shops and museums, public transportation info -- anything you can possibly think that could be of value for people who visit the vicinity of your establishment. Are you near a major highway? Maybe a web camera can be used by thousands of commuters to check the traffic. Be creative, spend some time brainstorming. If you are hiring a web design firm, poke their brains a little, because these people likely have encountered many types of clients with various needs. Just make sure that your restaurant website design is always very lucid and people can see the name of your business on every page with easy links to access the parts of the website that are meant for potential customers.
Consider adding something to the design of your restaurant that would make it so unique that people would want to travel an extra mile just to see it. Same ideas as in having a themed restaurant, but a lot less hassle :) Again, be creative. Dinosaur fossils? Unique sports memorabilia? A collection of antique sowing machines? It can literally be anything, as long as you are sure that a good number of people will want to stop by just to see your unique display. Once you have it make sure that you advertise. Dedicate a page on your website, but leave some room for desire to see more, do not have high resolution object of your world's smallest operating gas grill (on which you can grill a special order, of course). Make them want to come and see it!
By all means offer coupons, but there is more that you can do. How about, pick one order number daily that wins a 25% coupon off the next meal? Your customers will have to come to your restaurant's website in order to claim the prize, in the mean time learning about all the useful information you actually happen to have there.
Always remember that the design of your restaurant's website can do much more than the sign on your restaurant!
If you are running a restaurant website, learn some optimization tips from Online Income Clinic.
