Lowell Area Restaurant Directory – http://fbpagessl.com/lowellarea

Take Your Eatery Online: Building a Great Website for Your Restaurant

With so many new eateries popping up overnight, restaurateurs are constantly on the lookout

for bold and exciting ways to attract diners. Fortunately, a great website can be an invaluable

tool for getting the word out about your juice bar, cafe, pizza parlor or bistro. This article is

packed with tips for taking your restaurant online with an attractive and well-designed website.

You can post the most enticing menu, rave reviews or colorful photographs of signature dishes,

but all of it would be for naught if you forget to include contact information for your restaurant.

Include the name of your eatery, the address (or addresses for multiple locations), email

address if desired and the company phone number. This ensures that prospective diners always

know where to find you and how to get in touch.

Posting your breakfast, lunch, dinner and drink menus online is a great way to show hungry

foodies what your restaurant has to offer. However, you must take care to ensure that the

menus are always up-to-date and reflect your most current offerings. This is especially

important if you offer seasonal or specialty dishes. Otherwise, you risk disappointing diners

who choose your restaurant based on the menu.

A detailed, descriptive account of your signature dishes will have mouths watering, but it

certainly helps to support your text with a colorful, clear image of a steaming entree or a

tantalizing dessert. The same is true of your location and dining facilities. This is especially true

if your restaurant is not located in a well-known area of town or is isolated from your city's

dining and cultural district. Including photographs of the dining room and front facade also

Lowell Area Restaurant Directory – http://fbpagessl.com/lowellarea

conveys the quality and ambiance that diners can expect during their meal.

Your restaurant's website should also include updated hours of operation, as well as

information about upcoming events and special deals. If your dining room closes for a few

hours before dinner or is only open on certain days of the week, it should be clearly

communicated on the website; this also applies to holiday and weekend hours.

If your eatery serves up a specific type of cuisine, it should coordinate neatly with the design of

your website. The site will have a greater impact in the eyes of visitors if it is styled in a way

that complements the look and feel of your dining room and cuisine. For example, bold colors

and graphics are well-suited to a family restaurant or retro diner. On the other hand, the

website of an exclusive and critically acclaimed steakhouse or French bistro should convey

sophistication with a palette of dark, subdued colors and refined images.

If you provide an email address on your restaurant's website, you must ensure that someone is

monitoring the inbox and responding in a timely manner. Email can be a valuable tool for

communicating with customers (prospective and long-established), as well as with local

businesses, food critics and even the media. If you do not attend to these emails personally,

you should appoint someone who can respond in a professional, polite manner; otherwise, you

run the risk of jeopardizing relations with the public.

Whether your eatery is universally hailed by critics or has just set up shop in the neighborhood,

taking your business online can be a blessing. An attractive, helpful website is more about

Lowell Area Restaurant Directory – http://fbpagessl.com/lowellarea

getting your name out there; it also helps to give prospective diners an idea of the quality and

cuisine of what could be their next favorite hot spot. Make the most of your site with helpful

information, appealing imagery and great design.