How “Usable” is Your Restaurants Website?

When considering having a website built after we realize the benefits we must then identify what is it supposed to do?

Increase Restaurant Sales With Your Website

how should it look? What should we include in the site? The most often overlooked question is How easy is it to use?

Usability is a quality term that assesses how easy a website is to use, navigate, find stuff. The word “usability” also refers to

methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.

Your website homepage is your identity to the rest of the world  it communicates your brand, your message and your products to potential customers. A solid restaurant website design allows customers to know who you are (brand), and how to find what they are looking for when they land on your page.

Five Necessary Components

1. Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the site?
2. Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
3. Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
4. Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
5. Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the website?

Why Website Usability is Important

In Restaurant Internet Marketing world, usability is a necessary condition for survival. Your homepage is the most valuable real estate in the world, each year companies and individuals spend billions of dollars through a space that is less (typically) one foot square.

Steve Krug in his book “Don’t Make Me Think” claims his number one design priority is to not make people think in other words “Self Evidence”.

Website Purpose &  Message

Make your restaurant website message very clear!!

Who are you and what do you do!!

1. Include a one-sentence tagline, Start the page with a tagline or slogan that summarizes what the site or company does. Especially if you are new.
2. Group all company information in “the About Us Page” This is a great place to boost company credibility with newer companies
3. Legibility, using a font that is easy to read, using small font size and poor contrast and visability is one of the top issues of restaurant website design.
4. Help Users Find what they need, offering a clear starting point for the first 1-4 tasks, including the products!
   

   Communicate Clearly With Your Guests

5. Include a site search box very easy to find, and no excess verbage, site searches are apart of website design conventions, anything other then “search” on the search box is confusing.
6. All links should begin with a keyword this makes it easier for users eyes to differentiate the action items. Make sure your links are colored and distinguished between visited and unvisited links. It is Where am I, Where can I go, Where have I been. IS IT OBVIOUS?
7. Use Graphics to communicate a message not to just look pretty. It is always best to show your product being used. Many times graphics especially Flash are viewed as advertisement and serve to annoy users.
8. Violating design conventions. Design conventions, these are the consistent from site to site taking into consideration your competition. The user expectations the user has of your site is based upon what is commonly done on other sites. The more consistent you are the more comfortable the user feels.
9. Opening New Browser Windows this is not bad if the user is clicking away in the case of an affiliate link however the unnecessary opening of widows to keep users on the sight. Becomes and incredible annoyed if your windows take over their computer screen.
10. Not answering Users Questions for example pricing, Who are you? What do you sell, how do I get there. These issues and or making it easy to navigate the site and identify the cost of a product or service.
11. Standardize links through out the site, this includes standard colors, differentiated between visited and non-visited. Be sure to use keywords as links not only for users but for SEO purposes. Refrain from using the phrase click here as a clickable phrase.
12. Content written for the needs of the web short, scannable and to the point (rather than full of fluff).

Your Restaurant Website Message Should …

…answer users’ questions use common language rather industry jargon (this also improves search engine visibility, since users search using there own words not yours). Be full of  relevant phrases for your type of cuisine. Incorporate lots of headlines and calls to action to urge guest interaction. Incorporate  predictable navigation (design conventions) is your site completely different from your competitors? If So did you make it easier to navigate, use?  Contact and restaurant information is a must not only for credibility but to help build an e-mail campaign for future restaurant sales using the billboard approach (3 seconds to get your message across)

Your users do not read and go through and organized search and find the best choice, According to Steve Krug in the his book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition He realized that we do not make the best choice we make the first reasonable option. The reasons he states are these;

• We usually are in a hurry
• There is no penalty for guessing wrong
• Weighing options may not improve our chances
• Sometimes guessing is more fun.

Steve says that very few people read instructions but “muddle through” we don’t care to figure things out. Why? It is just not to important to us. It is not for lack of intelligence but for lack of caring.

To sum up restaurant website design, we usually think that users are going to read all of the content on our site in reality users are taking the billboard approach. How much can they figure out driving by at 60 mpg. Users are usually in a hurry and know they can navigate without reading everything on the page (Skimming and Scanning)

If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If your restaurant website homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There’s no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.

If users cannot find your product, they cannot buy it.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition” target=”_blank”>So don’t make them think!

Chow

Website Psychology

Your Web site is the Most important element in your online  restaurant marketing

Who am I?

campaign, No matter what we think or any body tells us about building an hospitality online business is that it can be broken down into two basic steps

Restaurant Website Psychology incorporates three areas of research. Color Psychology, Psychological Triggers and Psychological process. Using Psychology, restaurant sales are optimized, customer interaction and retention is enhanced, and return visits are increased. What exactly does all this mean? Lets take a look at the three parts of Website Psychology.

1. Drive as many targeted prospects to your website as you can
2. Convert as much of the traffic as possible into sales or sales leads
3. Communicate the Brand

One without the other is ultimately worthless, having a thousand qualified leads or visitors arrive at your site is useless if you cannot convert them to restaurant sales leads. The integrated and understanding of restaurant web design psychology will help us to work smarter and not harder when increasing the conversion rates of our traffic. In a perfect world there would be a balance from targeted traffic to a beautiful creative site that get the user to feel the perfect set of emotions to take action then purchase.

Psychology of restaurant website design needs to take balance and effectively achieve all three of these. Brand, traffic and sales. Having a thousand qualified prospects visit your site is useless if you cannot convert them to sales, sales lead, and communicate your restaurant brand then your restaurant website is the most important part of your online marketing campaign / business, the better you convert traffic the more money you will make

Efficiency vs Effectiveness

Typically when we start our online presence we have an efficiency mindset where we are in a hurry to get our site live to begin the search engine optimization and marketing then we want to drive all business to the web site, automate the entire process and put it on autopilot, and just sell stuff without ever having to come in contact the buyer. Sounds great. The first part of the process is necessary get live and market quickly to make money then we get to a point of transition to Effectiveness mode.

After the honeymoon period it time to get to work and create systems to track traffic and conversion rates, and move into testing our pages to increase the effectiveness of our pages, content, and irrisitable offers. Remember that an increase in sales per click is not the only way to increase revenue also think about and create additional offers and servicess to tap into and increase overall sales per customer.

Website Components

Restaurant Color Psychology

Restaurant color psychology is under-rated. Web designers do not take color into consideration when creating a web site. The reason? Color is just color too many.  However, color affects everything we do. The way we perceive others. Whether we are comfortable in a room. What we eat, how we dress, if we stop or go at the nearest stoplight. We do not realize the true impact color has on us, consciously and subconsciously. A smart rule of thumb when using multiple colors: do not use more than 5 colors, keep them either “warm” or “cool,” and make the background white.

Take orange for example

If you are on a diet, orange increases appetite encourages relaxation and sleep. As opposed to blue which decreases appetite, lowers the body temperature and eliminates the flight to fight response.

As a sales tool, orange is pivotal for persons making a buying decision. It makes products more attractive and appears more affordable.

Be Aware of

• Web designers often use color in a way that has a negative impact to the web sites purpose.
• demographic profile
• product
• existing logo,
• the color of the logo
• The color can /needs to be incorporated into the site.
• Balance must be achieved between the logo and the colors for the sites productivity.

Follow the Corporations

Large corporations long ago discovered the true importance of color to their products. Consider for a moment Coke and Pepsi. The predominant color for both is red. Walk into any grocery store and the majority of the packages are – red. The reason? The taste buds become more sensitive, appetite improves, and reactions become automatic.

Importance of Color in Restaurant Web Design

There’s more to restaurant websites than just images and text. A website is a marketing tool, representing the company, owner, employees and products. Beyond that, it is a personality. A restaurant website is a personality? Yes. It portrays a positive or negative symbolism and/or emotion.

In a face-to-face meeting our bodies and faces portray unspoken meanings. We smile, gesture, laugh, and become nervous. It’s these little nuances that help us communicate. A website does exactly the same thing.

The difference is: a restaurant website does it with color. Colors themselves contain a cornucopia of meaning. They can make us happy, sad, angry, comfortable, nervous, and even trusting. While it seems simple enough to choose a graphic and then design a site around that graphic, you may unintentionally be presenting a derogatory impression. The colors may contradict the content in unintended ways.

Restaurant Website Marketing

Green and white work well together, but in Japan a white carnation signifies death and a green hat in China means a man’s wife is cheating on him. A green hat with a white carnation in the brim wouldn’t be a good choice for a company logo. However, green is the easiest color on the eye; it has a calming effect which is why it is most used in hospitals. It relaxes the patients. Different shades of green have different meanings:  www.technorati.com and www.newsvine.com

Yellow-greens are the least preferred colors by consumers.

Red has been shown to increase blood pressure and heart rate. People working in a red environment work faster, but they also make more mistakes. It increases appetite, restlessness and nervous tension. Creating a site with bright red and bright blue is a very poor idea! However www.zdnet.com pulls it off very well

Bright red has the longest wavelength and bright blue has the shortest. When viewing these colors the human lens has to adjust to focus, and it tries to focus on both. This tires the eyes very quickly and will give the viewer a headache.

Websites that contain different shades of blue, or a blue and white combination tend to be more popular. Why? Blue represents calm, stability, hope, wisdom and generosity. People inherently trust blue websites faster. Add blue text and people will retain more information from your site. Combine blue, purple, and white and you have nobility. www.fordvehicles.com, www.maserati.com,

Thankfully you do not see many yellow sites. While yellow can increase concentration, it is the hardest on the eyes. Paint a room yellow and you will make babies cry and adults lose their temper. Yellow is a very spiritual color and eye catching. Used in small amounts it is very inviting, cheerful and the number one attention getter. Forget blinking animations, just use a small, nicely designed yellow graphic.

Orange has a tendency to make more expensive products seem affordable and suitable for everyone. www.ing.com

Your Personality is Your Restaurant Brand

Personalities Communicated Through Your Restaurant Website

strength, boldness, excitement, determination, desire, courage
enthusiasm, cheerfulness, affordability, stimulation, creativity
attention-grabbing, comfort, liveliness, intellect, happiness, energy
durability, reliability, safety, honesty, optimism, harmony, freshness
depth, stability, professionalism, loyalty, reliability, honor, trust
power,nobility, luxury, mystery, royalty, elegance, magic
conservatism, traditionalism, intelligence, seriousness
endurance, relaxing, confident, casual, reassuring, earthy
elegance, sophistication, formality, strength, mystery
cleanliness, purity, newness, virginity, peace, innocence, simplicity

Psychological Triggers

If turkeys moo are they cows too?

What kind of question is that?

It’s the kind that made you stop and think. It grabbed your attention. Probably made you shake your head and say, “Huh?” Without realizing it, you just reacted exactly as you were meant too. Psychology at work. Psychological triggers cause you to act or react in a way that is predictable. Your mind responds to them either consciously or subconsciously.Proper use and placement can lead a customer through a web site. Even to the point of purchase.

One of the most powerful psychological triggers is “why”. Kids love to ask the question why. Why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly? Why can’t I have a pony? Anyone who has kids or has been a kid knows these questions well.

We are curious by nature. Asking ‘why’ in a header is similar to flipping the curiosity switch. Our brain tells us that we “must know more!” And so we delve deeper into a sites content. Searching for the answer our mind seeks.Budweiser, in their infinite wisdom, came up with the slogan of “Why ask why? Drink bud dry.” That simple phrase increased their sales exponentially.

Website Psychology

Color Psychology and Psychological Triggers are powerful tools. Used together they are unbeatable! They have the ability to increase the productivity of any site, no matter the design or navigation. The challenge has always been memorability. People do not always bookmark sites, nor do they return to every site they bookmark.  Specific words are used causing the mind to remember the site. It is because of this process sites are bookmarked, remembered, and passed on. Grammatically challenged web sites can be just as successful as perfectly written sites.

Restaurant Website Psychology is a new field. It is because of this fact that people have not heard about it, and do not understand its importance. Any website can be successful, but it takes more than a product, an idea, and a web designer to make it happen.

The Power of the Press Release

What Makes You Unique?

More then 27 million People use Yahoo News and google News

Each month more then 27 million people in the US use Google News and Yahoo news to find the latest information about any topics that interest them. Yahoo News and Google News reach online audiences in excess of the off line CNN and BBC. A press release or news release is a condensed article that is written in a “journalistic” style. The sole purpose of a press release is to highlight what is interesting and newsworthy, about a company organization or industry. I highly recommend implementing a press release strategy for your restaurant marketing plan including new product releases, new services within your market.

Building Traffic vs. Back Links

As we will discuss below there is very strict rules to writing a press release. However do not let that scare you there are some great templates at www.docstock.com to help you find a template that works for your niche. Press releases have changed quite a bit from the old school versions. The search engines have created some opportunities to help us maximize our exposure. We will discuss strategy and Search engine promotion later in the article.

Press Release SEO

Send out press releases. Your restaurant marketing press release has to be news-worthy. If done right, you may get a lot of publicity in additional to links from authority web sites that will strengthen your positions in search engines. Media coverage may bring in a surge of traffic to your blog.

• An optimized press release will follow the same or similar rules and obstacles as articles.
• Best Case scenario we will be able to anchor link keywords directly to your pages, however many press release sites will only allow links to created within the bio section of the release.
• Incorporate as much optimized content into the release and bio section as possible.
• Always post releases to your sites “News” Page first.

“In the News” Strategy

Create an in the news section of your site. Link to and write about your competitors product or services, become a news authority.

• Set up a “News Press” page
• Set up a google news alert for your specific niche.
• Find ideas to write about the product or issue.
• Then anchor link and post the release to your site first, post link to the competitors site, then submit to PR sites.

Stand Out:

In the past, savvy PR professionals used press releases to hopefully bring their clients a little media exposure. The process was long and drawn out, with the ultimate goal being to get a journalist or news source to read your release. However, the days of a press release being used solely for a newsworthy announcement are long gone. The Web has changed what a press release can be. While not all press releases are going get your face on the nightly news, they can serve another purpose.

How to Reach New Readers and Improve Your SEO at the Same Time

Thanks to the internet, a  press release used for restaurant branding and marketing can now be seen by the general public without ever even being touched by a journalist. Sites like Google News and Yahoo News are constantly updating their search results with fresh press releases from sites like PRWeb. So what does that mean to you, the new online business owner, blogger just looking for a attention?

You can now reach thousands of potential new readers, overnight. When you distribute your release via a place like PRWeb, and hundreds of other sites to re-publish your release via the PRWeb, RSS feed. Not only does this mean more places for new readers to find your content, but it means more backlinks to your site (yes a press release can include links). And don’t forget, if you do it right your release will also appear in Google News, Yahoo News, Topix, etc… just to name a few.

A Restaurant Marketing Press Release is a different style of writing, in that it must be “news worthy” journalism. The part of the press releases that make them difficult is to be able to write them in third person. Write as a journalist. Well we are not all trained and or schooled as a journalist. So keeping a few things in mind will help us to format and write a better

news release.

The Basic Press Release

Includes Who What Why When and Where

The most interesting Fact(s)

Supporting Data

Business USP

Benefits to the Readers

Why is this interesting

Company name information etc

What a Press Release is Not

This is succinct news on how you can benefit the community and or market

The sole purpose is to provide news and information for your readers, customers

The lead Paragraph is the most important and should state the 5W’s The rest of the release supports these 5 w’s

Write as if you are giving instruction, advice, directions

Optimize SEO

Additional Press Release Guidelines

Initial Case –A journalism term which means every first letter in the headline should be capitalized, we do this with our blog titles and site headlines, this carries over to our press releases. Exclusions to this would be words with less then three letters long.

All Caps – It is a negative to have your press release and or headline to be entirely in capital letters, it is not professional and really detracts for the news.

Summary – the initial paragraph is a summary for the entire news story. Just as I writing an article in the newspaper. We understand that most newspaper articles are written in this format because not everybody reads the entire news story. Your summary needs to be “hard hitting” and grab the reader’s attention. Including one to three sentences long

Date line – Your release should begin with a dateline, this is dependent upon the news release source you are submitting to. And example of this is

City, State, Month, Day, Year, the city and state is optional yet will be affective if you are submitting to sites that offer geo submissions

Spacing – Each paragraph should have natural line wraps, one line in between paragraphs. You do not need to include dashes, asterisks, or other symbols to separate sections

Grammar – Need I say more?

HTML – Most of the press release submission sites will only allow HTML with certain upgrade practices

Link Spamming – Again your press release may be limited to a certain number of links back to your site. For instance PR Web the largest of the press release sites allows only 3 links per 100 words of content.

Ticker Symbols – The use of company ticker symbol, corporate name and mention must have permission to do this. Many of the sites will require expressed written permission.

Lists – These work well for content on your site however do not read well for a press release nor are they acceptable form the journalism world.

Length – First of all if you can not write more then a paragraph the submission sites will considered your release not news worthy. Shoot for 300 to 800 words in a paragraph format.

E-mail – Do not include your e-mail in the press release. Add it in the with your bio and contact information. There are reasons for this and is has to do getting your self spammed

Facts – Tell the truth avoid fluff hype or advertising. If your story sounds to good to be true you are probably hurting your credibility.

Jargon – Limit your use of industry jargon. Again speak plain English a limited use of jargon is appropriate.

Proofread – Of Course

Again Do not hesitate to jump into writing press releases to help build back links however just remember at the end of the day actually doing it and making mistakes, correcting them and moving forward is far more productive thinking about it.

Do I Have to Pay to Submit Press Releases?

Back in the “old days” pre 2007, that is how fast things change on the net, right? One could submit press releases to www.prweb.com for free. However once the press release SEO angle became mainstream the largest submission site had to adjust their strategy to keep press releases and to continue to cater to being the number one press release site on the net.

Yes the Laws of Supply and Demand do apply to press releases. PR Web had to begin charging for press releases to keep the supply under control. It has actually been a good thing. We have experienced increase competition and the ability to test and find sights that will produce more traffic for the dollar invested.

PR-Web still is the leader for press release submission, however what do you do if you are just starting out and are a bit leery of the $40.00 to $360.00 and more price tag for one submission?

You search for “Free” (my favorite price for bootstrapping a business start-up). Now I understand that you get what you pay for however what a great way to begin writing and submitting your press releases to get your feet wet and help develop your writing and maybe typing skills.

Through much scouring I have come across a list of “Free” Press Release Sites that meet the criteria mentioned below.

Free Press Release Site Criteria.

1. Be Indexed by Google, this sounds obvious but how do we know and when we are searching for the best bang for the buck submissions for our time and money this would be some great information to have access to.
2. Have a page rank of 4 or more however one of the exceptions is listed below with a page rank of three-ish.
3. An Alexa ranking of over 300,000 ( within the top 300,000 sites on the web)
4. Must be free of course but also offers upgrades.

Below are some sites that meet the criteria; These are in alphabetical order and not by ranking.

24-7pressrelease.com

Bignewsbiz.com

Clickpress.com

Ecommwire.com

Exl.com

Express-press-release.com

Freepressrelease.co.uk

Newswiretoday.com

Powerhomebiz.com

PR-inside.com (UK)

PRlog.org

PRUrgent.com

Theopenpress.com

Usprwire.com

Remember the focus is to be able to submit to the top 3 press release sites,

PRWeb.com

24-7press release.com

PRNewswire.com

These are some good places to begin to submit your press releases. In addition, be sure your analytics tool is installed to begin tracking effectiveness from the press releases. Without tracking and testing we are just wasting our marketing time. Set up your accounts track your accounts and slowly move into the paid upgrades.