Key points to create effective websites for restaurants

Many restaurant owners spend hundreds of dollars on the creation and promotion of their websites. Some of these websites may arouse some interest in visitors, others may surprise you, but only some can attract the customer and take them directly to the door of the restaurant (which is the main objective of the website).

In this article we will explain restaurant website design ideas and how to create a website effectively, what design elements can attract more visitors, and how to get people to promote your business voluntarily and free of charge. These tips will work very well for you if you have a type of business: coffee, restaurant, bakery, cafeteria, cocktail bar, pub, tavern, grill, etc. They will help you create the right atmosphere on your restoration website.

Attractive and quality photos

In this type of business, there are normally 3 ways in which the photographs that will be part of the web. We will explain them to you and we will advise you which one you should or should not apply to your online business:

Make your own photos: This is the best solution you can choose, but certain conditions must be met. First of all, you have to hire a professional photographer to carry out this task. Be careful not to use poor quality images. A blurry, poorly sized or cropped photograph, too dark or too light will generate a bad image of your business, will cause rejection among your visitors who will be disappointed by this first impression and will surely not visit your website or your local business again.

Buy photos from photographic stock pages: This option will save you the time it would take to take them, retouch them and choose the best ones. Many websites offer a large number of high quality images, with different resolutions, orientations and categories. To attract more attention of the consumed to the dishes and drinks, many cafes and restaurants use this type of photographs in their menus. In this case you only have to use this type of photographs if you are sure that your dishes have an exact appearance to the chosen image. People first enter the dishes through their eyes and then decide to try how they taste. If your expectations do not match reality that will be the last time you see them again in your establishment. When you buy images online, you may be tempted to choose the lower resolution ones to save some money. Do not be stingy! In the short term you save some money, but in the long run you will lose a lot of money.

Search images in search engines like Google Image: This is the worst option you could choose for your website. We advise you to never use images resulting from search engines such as Google. Virtually most of these images are protected by copyright and you can get sued. The same goes for the images that we can find on pages of professional photographers or portals such as Flickr.com, pixabay.com.

Now let's focus on the main points that make your images look more palatable.

Use photos showing large plates and served with less food than is usually served. The issue is that people get more from the eyes a well presented dish with little food than a full plate to overflow. In this way the dishes will look more attractive, colorful, fresh and appetizing. On the other hand, if the photos are taken on a white background they will be easier to reuse if you change the design of your website in the future, keep that in mind.

Teacher-turned online blogger, Shirley is a full-time backyard homesteader based in Virginia. When she doesn't have her face buried in a book or striding in her garden, she's busy blogging about simple life hacks of the daily life.