The internet has revolutionized the way people dine. From the convenience of food delivery to being able to view a restaurant’s menu straight from its website anywhere in the world, there’s no doubt it’s been a positive driving force behind the success of many restaurants. However, simply copying the best restaurant website design you can find does not guarantee success.
Shedding the physical limitations to which brick-and-mortar restaurants are accustomed makes the digital landscape an even more competitive space. Instead of being up against a handful of local restaurants, your restaurant and its website are competing with thousands online.
If you hope to keep up with or move past your competition, you need to consider investing in a custom website. Given that there is no dearth of restaurant website designers from which to choose, the ideal starting point is to select a partner who understands your requirements and goals.
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Website Designer vs. Restaurant Website Designer
Website designers possess a wide range of design skills to conceptualize and design a website. These include knowledge of web design programs, industry-related best practices, color theory, and UI/UX design.
The best restaurant web designers are knowledgeable about restaurant and food industry-related web design trends, technologies, and best practices. Their experience, knowledge, and skill set differentiate them from run-of-the-mill web designers, especially when it comes to designing a restaurant website.
Skills to Look For in a Website Designer for Restaurants
Restaurant website designers need to possess more than an understanding of web design. They also need to know the restaurant business back-to-front and be passionate about designing websites for businesses in this industry. Here are factors you need to consider when looking for a restaurant web designer.
Experience Designing Restaurant Websites
While several web design companies are proficient in web design, they might not be the best fit for you if they don’t have any experience in the restaurant business. Restaurant website designs differ considerably from those of regular business and personal service websites. This makes it important for a restaurant web designer to stay on top of the latest restaurant website design trends.
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An Impressive Restaurant Web Design Portfolio
The best restaurant website design agencies have impressive portfolios. Request to see these and browse through them thoroughly. Doing so will help you to gauge the level of its expertise. Besides, going through its portfolio will also give you an indication of its style and approach, and help you determine if it is a good match for your project.
A Passion for Food and Hospitality
Many restaurant website designers are active in and enthusiastic about the food and hospitality industries. When designers or teams are passionate about an industry, it stands to reason they will conceptualize a more relevant and engaging website design. Make sure your design team cares as much about your business, customers, food, and products as you do.
Web Design Proficiency
Web designers and design teams should have a wide range of skills to design a website successfully. Knowledge of key web design programs, best practices, and up-and-coming web design trends is vital. Ensure your restaurant website designer has the required knowledge, skills, and expertise to bring your website to life.
Knowledge of UI and UX Design
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design are relatively new but very important trends in web design. A restaurant website designer knowledgeable in UI and UX design who also applies UI/UX best practices is a plus. As UI and UX place importance on a website’s usability, these principles can improve user satisfaction and increase your website-generated revenue.
An Understanding of eCommerce for the Food Industry
If you plan to sell food or offer delivery through your website, know that you might be in for stiff competition. In such scenarios, it’s advisable to partner with eCommerce website designers who have expertise in designing websites and apps for the food industry. This is important because restaurant, deli, and food delivery websites require a high level of customization for their inventory and order pages, which makes eCommerce website designers the best fit for the job.
An Innovative and Cutting-Edge Approach
The food industry is one of the most trend-inspired ones, which is not surprising because, as the saying goes, “People eat with their eyes first.” So, in addition to producing aesthetically attractive food, your website needs to look appealing. You’ll notice this if you take a look at some of the top food delivery and restaurant websites. Ensure that your restaurant website designer is committed to creating a website that makes customers hungry for more.
Post-Launch Website Support and Maintenance
While conceptualizing a restaurant website and building it takes time and effort, it requires ongoing attention to keep running smoothly. Several leading restaurant website design agencies offer post-launch support and maintenance to their clients, and selecting one of them ensures that your restaurant website is usable at all times, remains glitch-free, and is safe from hackers.
Extended Website Services
Website designers typically focus on the front end of website creation, mainly digitally mapping out the aesthetics of your website. However, there are more skills and services required to make a website go live and maintain it thereafter. If the web design company you select can manage some or all of these additional roles, this can save you time, stress, and money.
- Website development. After finalizing the visual design of your custom restaurant website, it needs to be developed. Back-end web development covers the coding, programming, and actual creation of your website. Most top restaurant website design companies do both, design and develop websites.
- Digital marketing and advertising. Once your website is live, you can take advantage of a multitude of tools to advertise it online. For example, you may use Google Ads to position your services or products at the top of search results. The best restaurant website design companies might be able to assist with digital marketing as well as advertising.
- Content creation. Before and after the launch of your website, you’ll need to fill and update it with fresh, relevant, and up-to-date written and visual content. Restaurant website content creation isn’t generally part of a web designer’s skill set, but some of the top restaurant website design companies may offer it separately.
- Website hosting. Web hosting is an important website service. Without it, your website won’t be accessible online. While web designers don’t host websites, some might be able to help you sign up with a hosting service that does.
- App development. Many restaurant businesses are no longer just launching websites but apps as well. Fortunately, several restaurant website design agencies can develop a mobile application along with your website.
- Cybersecurity. Regular site testing, scanning, and software updates are required to keep your website and its data safe. Some of the best restaurant web design companies may assist you with your cybersecurity needs.
What the Best Web Designs for Restaurants Have in Common
When designing a restaurant website, a professional web designer needs to follow various best practices. Doing so ensures that a website excels when it comes to usability, driving revenue, website discoverability, and competing with other sites. Here are the most important restaurant website design best practices.
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Recognizable Restaurant Branding
When designing a restaurant website, the most important visuals to get across are the restaurant’s brand. Brand colors, fonts, graphics, and logos should be cohesive and noticeable on every page of a restaurant’s website. Creating a strong brand identity ensures that your customers recognize and remember your brand.
The Right Color Palette
Choosing colors for your website goes beyond matching your branding. Specific colors, particularly warm red, yellow, and orange tones, evoke hunger and thirst, stimulating customers’ appetites. That’s why these colors feature on many restaurant and fast-food chains’ signage, packaging, menus, and branding.
A Comprehensive and Up-To-Date Menu
One of the top reasons customers visit a restaurant’s website is to check its menu. Ideally, your website’s content should include up-to-date menu items and pricing as well as cooking- and ingredient-related information. The best web designs for restaurants present this information in an easy-to-navigate format.
Tempting and High-Quality Food Imagery
If you’re selling products online, your restaurant eCommerce website is technically your online shelf. Remember that it’s important for your website to use a lot of high-quality photos of your dishes and food items. Photographs that are accurate and tempting will persuade customers when deciding whether to eat at or order from your restaurant.
Photographs of Your Premises, Team, and Day-To-Day Operations
Adding images of your restaurant locations as backgrounds and on webpages can be beneficial. Upon visiting your website, customers may easily remember your brand and any occasions they have eaten there. Besides, adding images of your team and behind-the-scenes operations gives your customers insight into your business, which is great for building trust.
Promotional Restaurant Website Content
Successful restaurants tend to run promotions and special offers. If you have a new dish or want to offer customers a discount on select options, your website is the place to display this information. An effective restaurant website design should have space to incorporate regular restaurant website content as well as limited-time promotional content.
UI and UX Design
Usability is a vital factor when it comes to converting customers as well as generating leads and sales. The best restaurant website designs are as user-friendly as possible, minimizing customers’ stress and the time taken to complete website actions. Applying UI/UX best practices results in a straightforward and simple-to-use website, making it a top priority for all the top web design companies.
Mobile-First and Responsive Design
An increasing number of internet users are using their mobile devices to shop online. This makes mobile-first web design a top design trend. The best restaurant website design agencies go the mobile-first way and make use of responsive web design. Doing so ensures that the websites they create look good and function well on any mobile device.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is not new, but it’s still a very important component in creating a website. SEO-optimized content helps your website rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs) when people carry out relevant searches, and it also plays an important role in increasing conversions. What helps is that the top web design agencies and content creators apply SEO strategies when designing or writing content for restaurant websites.
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Different Types of Appeal
Food is certainly an appealing and necessary product, but this does not mean your restaurant website design should stop at utilitarian. Relying on different types of appeal is a marketing strategy designed to convert pickier customers by appealing to their emotions or needs.
- Emotions. Appeal to customers by highlighting your restaurant’s best characteristics on your website. This can come in the form of pages and sections detailing your sustainability model, ingredients’ quality, sources, team values, and your restaurant’s ethos.
- Utility. Appeal to customers by highlighting the efficiency of your restaurant. Include information about how long service takes, peak and off-peak times, and the booking process.
Links to Social Media
In this day and age, a website is one of many online presences required. It works together with advertising, social media, and other types of internet marketing to reach customers. The best restaurant website designs tend to feature links and even content from their social media pages.
Tracking and Analytics
The food and restaurant industry is competitive, making customer data a valuable resource. A website is an excellent place to collect user data to improve your restaurant’s offerings and website design. Integrating tracking and analytics software and then using it when you decide to redesign your website is crucial.
Custom Website Design
When designing a website, you can easily use free templates or low-code platforms to create a design quickly. However, the best restaurant website designs stand out because of their unique layout. Only custom websites can achieve this level of uniqueness, which is vital to being competitive in the food industry.
Conclusion
Creativity, particularly in web design, is fluid and often subjective. However, when you look at the best restaurant website designs, you will notice that they share several common features, be it in the form of effective branding or delivering flawless user experiences. In addition, while the right type of web design and development for restaurants can deliver great results, the process can be fraught with unforeseen issues.
Fortunately, partnering with a professional restaurant website designer or design company ensures that the process goes smoothly and as per plan. Choosing a web design company might be the better option if you also need help with your website’s development and online marketing. When making a selection, going with a company that’s knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about designing restaurant websites is ideal.
