Restaurant Website Creation: What Every Restaurant Owner Needs to Know

77% of diners check out a restaurant’s online presence before visiting. Your online presence, or website, is the welcome mat and doorway to your brick-and-mortar restaurant. 

With a website, you can acquaint your diners with the menu, functional hours, and online ordering. If you do not have an online presence, your business may sprawl and lose out on potential diners. U.S. restaurant industry risks potentially losing $6.9 billion in revenue each year due to inadequate online visibility.

The consequences are dire, and therefore, we want to enlighten you about the benefits of having a website. In this blog, we’ll explain how NOVA can help you with your restaurant website creation and boost your visibility.

Why Does Your Restaurant Need Its Website?

The competition is cutthroat.

Before you can target consumers’ taste buds, you must appeal to their aesthetic taste via a stimulating website. 

Why do you need it? First, we would like to emphasize what you could miss if you don’t have one.

The Gen-Z and millennials are tech-savvy. Before making a purchase decision, they delve into all streams of research, both online and offline. Since your competitors are also growing, they are exhausting all channels to advertise and be present. If you miss out on any front, you may lose your potential diner.

Now, let’s delve into what happens if you are present online.

1. Making a First Impression

It’s your consumer’s birthday, and they are looking for an extravagant place to celebrate. Even though you are a seasoned restaurant owner, but are placed quite distant from them. Luckily and smartly, you’ve built a website. They can view your gallery, menu, and dining hours and make a reservation. If you make that first impact, it could be a lasting one.

1. Create Your Brand

You can include customer testimonials, your brand persona, and the restaurant’s evolution on your website. Weave your story and tell your diners how you evolved and your vision. This helps you make an emotional connection. If you tap into the digital space, you can be among the 300% fastest-growing restaurants that choose to flaunt their presence digitally.

1. Direct Orders

Consumers can directly order from your website without depending on 3rd-party applications. As per stats, 64% of customers prefer ordering directly from the restaurant. This fosters trust and makes you a popular choice among consumers. Since you are easy to discover, you become a preferred choice when looking for easy online orders. 

Now that you know why you need a website, let’s list what you should have on your website.

What Should You Have On Your Website?

A well-built restaurant website needs certain elements to offer a complete package. It includes a branded design and a mobile-optimized page to help diners. 94 percent of users find websites with good designs more trustworthy and may opt to dine in.

If you have all the essential jot-downs for your website, the chance of conversion increases.

Here are the checklists for your website to ease out customer experience:

1. Contact Details: List down your phone number and email address on the website. This makes it easy for the diners to contact you.
2. Address: Ensure your address is mentioned on the website.
3. Availability Hours: Include functional dining hours.
4. Menu: The Menu is the most instrumental part of your website. Many potential diners refer to the menu on your website before making a dining choice. If your menu is well laid out with courses segregated, it is a good practice.
5. Gallery: Include high-quality images of dishes like food, drinks, and aesthetic appearance to make an informed choice.
6. About Page: Mention the vision behind your restaurant. 
7. Making Reservations: Help the diners make reservations so they don’t have to wait in line upon arrival.
8. Online Ordering: Give them the choice to make online orders in case they want to enjoy food at home.

Challenges You May Face with Website Creation 

Creating a restaurant website poses its own set of challenges. Among the most complex tasks is choosing the perfect restaurant website builder.

Here is the additional set of challenges you may face while rolling out a new restaurant website.

1. Poor Mobile Responsiveness

Since the market is proliferating with smartphones, diners refer to their mobile devices while making decisions. It’s vital to have a responsive website attuned to smartphones and tablets with a clean UI and responsive buttons. Diners refer to location or proximity via smartphones as 65% and tablets as 52% while making dining choices.

1. Lack of Time or Tech Experience

Building a seamless website experience needs knowledge of HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript beyond just Wix or WordPress. Diners are 84% more likely to scroll on a well-designed website than a poorly designed one. This implies referring to a highly competent restaurant website builder with robust tech experience.

1. High Cost of Hiring a Developer or Agency

Since the restaurant industry is a niche industry, it requires dedicated knowledge to create a restaurant website. There should be aesthetic design, appealing graphics, and seamless navigation. This translates to a high cost of hiring developers and exhaustive planning. They need to have full-stack knowledge, implying high proficiency in programming and a hefty budget.

The average restaurant website cost with an agency is around $5,000 to $10,000. Although it can be significantly higher, depending on how extensive you want it to be with integrations or other additional features.

1. Managing Menus with Multiple Tools

Mostly, the menu alters at times. Your website needs to be updated frequently and should be dynamic. You may juggle multiple restaurant marketing tools like social media marketing, SEO strategies, paid advertising, and loyalty programs. Your restaurant POS with website integration enables your diners to check out easily and have a seamless ordering experience.

How NOVA Makes Your Restaurant’s Website Creation Easy?

NOVA is known for its all-in-one restaurant POS and management system. It simplifies restaurant website creation by offering integrated digital tools, removing the necessity for complex restaurant website builders.

No-code website builders

Using no-code website builders, the website is developed using drag-and-drop features. These templates are customized for quick service and full-service restaurants, cafes, bars, and food trucks.

POS with website integration

NOVA seamlessly integrates online ordering features into POS, making it a revenue-generating platform. This includes customizable digital menus, real-time inventory updates, pickup, delivery, and scheduled ordering options. There is no dependency on 3rd-party apps that take hefty commissions.

Mobile-optimized design

Websites built with NOVA are responsive across all devices, ensuring great UX across desktops, tablets, and phones. With its faster load time and SEO friendly design, it attracts more local traffic.

Brand customization and loyalty integration

Personalize the look and feel of your website as per your brand and integrate loyalty programs. Since the website is built with drag-and-drop features, it can go live in under an hour. 

Ongoing support

With hosting, maintenance, and security managed by NOVA, you can focus on food and service rather than technical upkeep.

Real Results: What You Get with a NOVA Website?

Once you’ve developed a website with NOVA, there are a plethora of benefits evident.

1. By integrating online ordering directly into your website, NOVA reduces reliance on 3rd-party platforms, boosting margins and enhancing customer loyalty. This increases direct orders and repeat business. 
2. As a centralized point of operation, menu changes, promos, and business hours can be updated in one place and reflected across your website and POS system.
3. Customizable templates, mobile optimization, and branding make your website look as good online as it does in person.
4. Keep diners’ information intact. Whether it’s order history, preference, or loyalty engagement. Manage your consumers’ engagement from a single dashboard to create a top-notch dining experience.

Getting Started with NOVA

NOVA is an all-in-one POS and restaurant management platform. It powers seamless ordering and payment, along with managing staff, inventory, and menus.

It simplifies operation with modern POS, flexible delivery integrations, real-time reports and analytics, and menu and pricing management.

Since it follows a drag-and-drop module, it helps you go live within an hour. It’s designed by restaurant owners and built by technology experts.

For one of its clients, its AI-driven loyalty programs have increased restaurant traffic by 60% during non-peak hours.

A Website is Your Restaurant’s Most Important Digital Asset

Rolling out your restaurant’s website shouldn’t be another challenge. It should be an investment that makes your restaurant’s sales stronger. You shouldn’t just hire any developer or agency that may not be up to the mark and burn a hole in your pocket. 

Creating your website with NOVA is as smart a choice as it gets. You can have your POS with website integration that sums up real-time updates in case any item goes out of stock. It helps turn your website into a revenue-generating engine with commission-free direct orders.

Sync menus, inventory, and pricing instantly with your POS system. With no-code website development, go live within hours.

With NOVA, your restaurant website isn’t just a digital menu; it’s a smart business tool.