I was looking over a discussion forum when I came across the following question...
"My good friends David and Terra own an amazing restaurant and bar in Colorado. They have owned the restaurant for a couple of years and do a steady business of mostly repeat customers. That's good. They don't have a web-site yet - that's not so good. I constantly obsess about all of the opportunities that they are missing because of it."
It's a simple question really. Why do I need a website?
Here's my reply to the question...
Not having a website is like having a road with no signposts to get to it.
The majority of potential diners are looking online when deciding ahead when to dine. If they don't find your website, they'll find someone else's. You need to interact with your customers in the channels which they inhabit.
Your marketing relies not only on your physical presence (your location) but also on your virtual presence. I'm sure there's a sign on the front of the restaurant and a menu in the window. Having a website takes that same principle and gets your storefront into the virtual world.
Of course I imagine what your friend is thinking is not "do I need a website" but rather "what is the return on investment" that I get for spending those hours and dollars on a pretty set of webpages.
It's simple; your website needs to work for you and pay it's way. It needs to take reservations, it needs to provide directions, menus and it needs to persuade people that your restaurant is where they want to dine.
At Livebookings we've found that you can convert 1 website visit in every 10 to become a reservation. And when you take those reservations, they give you email data that you can store to start building a guest database. After that you can do email campaigns to build a stronger relationship with your customers and encourage repeat diners.
2 comments:
I would just like to add that the slow but steady building of that email database is crucial for when we get to the present times. When business is good, customers abound, but when things start to slow down...
We found at My History last year that our email database of over 20k customers was a lifeline to get us up to our sales targets. If we hadn’t been building that database we would have been in trouble. As it is, we are also getting growth in sales thanks to the emails we send out.
Tony
In the growth of food business, an online counterpart wherein people can easily access their services and communicate with the staff is a prerequisite in effective management.
Post a Comment