Your Restaurant Website is an integral part of your business. The market continues to be penetrated by digital media and online services, and consumers are expecting businesses to embrace them.
With high online dependency, consumers find local restaurants that have great online visibility more trustworthy and reliable. Their purchasing decision will certainly be influenced by whatever they see online, including reviews, social media profiles, and websites.
In today’s time, seventy-seven of diners search for a restaurant’s website first before they visit or try out the establishment. It’s a significant number considering how consumers are reliant on a business’s online presence.
This is one of the main reasons why you should work on your website. Keeping it updated and aligned with your branding campaigns helps potential customers to see that you’re willing to take this digital transition head-on.
If you already have a website, but not attracting enough quality traffic, then this article may help you. Basic website traffic and tips to increase yours are just some of the topics that we’ll discuss. Read along to know more.
Restaurant Website Traffic – What is it?
Website traffic is the volume of online users visiting your website. It is a crucial metric to measure the status of your website. Analyzing and understanding this metric can help you identify ways to improve your system for sustainable growth.
While you may be thrilled about having a high-traffic website, keep in mind that not all internet traffic is created equal. You have to secure a good quality of traffic for your website as it is the one that will bring in customers.
For a website to perform well, the quantity of traffic must be balanced with the quality. A high quantity of traffic means you’re doing good in establishing an online presence and brand awareness for your restaurant. In comparison, high-quality traffic results in higher conversion rates and revenues.
What is high-quality website traffic?
This type of traffic is generated when the content and design of your website are relevant to the buyer’s profile. And should you confirm that such traffic or website visits your buyer’s profile, then you now know that you’re connecting to the right audience.
Since a website doesn’t usually offer affordable and complete targeting features, analyzing high-quality traffic will be beneficial for you. If you already gathered high-quality ones, then now you’re aware that this audience is interested in your product, is looking for your product, and are most likely to convert into sales.
Checking on your website analytics helps you to determine if you’re gathering traffic that is of good quality. You should observe that your conversion rate is higher, engagement across platforms has increased, and sales are generated from online sources.
Quality Website Traffic vs Free Website Traffic
As mentioned above, no traffic is created equal. Free website traffic is the type that you get from every user that visits your website. While having a high volume of this type should also be good for you, it doesn’t impact your revenue particularly.
On the other hand, quality website traffic is the type that comes from your target customers. It provides the right amount of engagement and activity, at the same time it also influences the conversion rate of your website.
You can increase both by working on your restaurant website design in general. Strategically place calls to action and lead generating forms on your website. Make sure that you will provide every updated and relevant information about your business, and make it user-friendly.
A website is like an extension of your restaurant’s physical store. That’s why it should carry the same goal, to convert leads into customers. A well-visited store is good, but you should place a bit more focus on the quality of the visits.
How to measure website traffic?
Going into your analytics, you may just be overwhelmed by the data and numbers you’ll see. It’s a must that you know what you’re looking for and where to look to get the results you’re aiming for.
Here are some of the most common and simplest ways to measure the traffic on your website.
Percentage of Purchase
This is the percentage of the sales that your restaurant makes through your website. If you launch an online ordering system through your website, you will be able to determine how well it draws consumers to make purchases.
Number of Sessions
The number of how frequently a user visits your website (in a day, week, month, and year) could help you determine if they are quality traffic.
Bounce Rate
This metric shows the number of website visitors that leave the site after viewing just a single page. You should keep this low as it will reflect that there’s low engagement on your website.
Channels
From where the website traffic is coming from also can be used to measure the quality of your traffic. Website visits and engagement could come through social media accounts, email, organic search, and the like.
How to interpret website traffic?
A computer or other device connected to the internet communicates with the server when someone visits a website. Dozens of different files make up every web page.
The servers transmit files to the user’s browser where they are compiled and arranged into a composite work with graphics and text. In other words, viewing a single page can result in many hits because every file sent represents one “hit”.
Website traffic is not just tracked on the homepage. By contrast, every section of the website is continuously monitored by the server, which allows them to track how many hits it has received.
A session is a term used for a single visit on the web. There is no precise pattern to each session, but they all start and end somewhere. By gathering all requests for a web page, servers can determine which pages have become popular and which are not.
A web server’s “server log” on a hard drive stores entries made when it processes a file request. The log compiles entries from posterity, building a database that can be analyzed to learn more about the site’s visitors.
You can extract the database through a website analytic tool such as Google Analytics. It will give you valuable insights into your website and its performance.
Website Features To Boost Quality Website Traffic For Your Restaurant
To gather higher quality traffic for your website, you must incorporate the following elements into your website design. Make sure you talk to several restaurant website builders and let them know your goal for your website.
Interactive Online Menu
86% of modern diners regularly check online menus on websites before they dine in a particular establishment. That’s how thorough the market you’re trying to appeal with.
Restaurant menus are one of the most important aspects of a restaurant, so having them on the website is a must.
Therefore, your website should have a prominent area for your online menu. For some, it will be placed prominently on their home page. The alternative might be to devote one whole page to your menu and highlight it prominently on the menu bar.
No matter where you put your menu, you must ensure that all customers have easy access to it. It is recommended that you avoid creating Flash-based menus that are not compatible with most phones or with most browsers.
Additionally, you should also create a mobile version of your online menu to create a better customer experience for those who are using their smartphones. Keep your menu updated to avoid conflict and confusion with your customers.
Mobile-Friendly Interface
To entice mobile customers, your device must look beautiful and work smoothly on all devices. Your website visitors are likely to use mobile devices to a significant extent, probably over half.
The ability for your website to serve them isn’t an option – it’s a must. Access to the entire site is your goal. Meaning, your online menu should be readable and interactive and your online ordering process should function with mobile devices.
Your contact details should be designed in a way that your customers can easily contact you or locate your restaurant in a single tap.
Complete Business Information
If a potential customer will keep on asking questions about your restaurant even though they’re already on your website, then you’re probably doing it wrong. It is a must that you include your complete and updated business information on your website to give your customers the basic facts about your brand.
They’ll be more comfortable in navigating and interacting with your website if they know your basic information. You should clearly state your brand’s name, location, contact information, and operating hours.
It’ll be also helpful to provide them with the services that they should expect from you. Letting them know if you have parking space available, and how your WiFi connection works should establish that your brand is trustworthy.
Also, if your contact information is not displayed on your website, you could negatively impact your local search engine optimization. To obtain your number and address, Google gets your website as a reference.
Make Google find you easily, or you will lose out on loads of local traffic. On each page of your website, you should include your restaurant’s phone number and address. Establish separate contact pages for every restaurant location, if you have more than one address.
Functioning Online Ordering System
It’s no fun for your visitors if they can’t complete a transaction on a single platform. It is not wise to display an ordering option, yet you’ll still require them to call your restaurant and place their order via phone.
You should incorporate an online ordering system into your unique restaurant website design. The more you make it convenient for your customers, the easier for them to complete a purchase on your website.
More purchase leads to a higher conversion rate. And a higher conversion rate could be interpreted as gathering quality traffic for your website. That’s how interconnected those numbers are.
Engaging Loyalty Programs
While most of the loyalty programs are engaging enough, you should know when and where to introduce them on your website. Just like every element, you should strategically place a promotional banner as a reminder for your customers to sign in on your program.
But how does it help with your traffic? Let’s say that you’ve launched a point-based loyalty program. Your customers will be encouraged and motivated to purchase more on your website to accumulate enough points for their rewards.
Again, more purchases equal a higher conversion rate. And what’s next after that? Yes, higher-quality website traffic for you.
Authentic Online Reviews
It won’t hurt to show your visitors, a.k.a. potential customers, online feedback from your past customers. It leads to more customer engagement and there’s a greater chance of purchasing at the end of their visit.
Your website visitors are more likely to purchase from your website if they see other reviews about your product and services. Boosting their confidence, often leads to a higher conversion rate, as it decreases their doubts about their purchase.
Co-consumers are influenced by customer reviews. By stating how their experience was with a brand, they can easily encourage someone to support the brand. This is primarily because their fellow customers have more trust in them than what the brand has to say about them.
Ways To Increase Quality Website Traffic On Your Website
Here are simple and practical ways to increase your website traffic, and capture quality ones.
Integrate Social Media
Set up a Facebook page to drive traffic to your website and gain followers. By sharing excerpts of your website posts, your following will grow, as will your posts, as they are shared and re-shared, resulting in more visitors to your website.
It is also ideal to put a share button that allows your website visitors to share your website content to their social media profiles. This way, your website is being promoted to a new audience, consequently driving more traffic for you.
Twitter and YouTube are also good social media platforms. Taking traffic from these popular sites and redirecting it to your site is the idea. It is even possible to upload short videos on your YouTube Channel and link to a blog post that provides more detail on your posts to advertising on Twitter and Facebook. You will surely have people checking out your article after watching your video.
Work on your Local SEO
Increase the visibility of your website using Search Engine Optimization techniques. It means that you need to use keywords in your articles to improve their visibility in Google and other search engines.
Be careful not to use spammy or irrelevant keywords in your content as Google frowns on this and can punish you severely for this type of behavior. If you use keywords and tags, they should be appropriate for your website post and its content.
Proper keywords drive the correct audience for your website. Once you have the audience, it’ll be easier for you to know more about them and apply your learnings to your future website content.
Respond to Online Reviews
Inexperienced small businesses often assume that going viral and reaching the top can be accomplished with just one post. If you’re just starting, be sure to interact with your website visitors and take comments seriously.
Please respect the comments that people leave on your posts if they have taken the time to do so. Making them feel more at ease will increase your rapport. It is common for popular websites to respond to the first hundred or so comments per post out of ten thousand.
Post relevant content
If your website does everything we’ve discussed above, but the contents are irrelevant, then it won’t get anyone’s attention, much more the proper attention you want. You should realize that people have very little free time and they can spend it in countless ways.
It is not only important that your content is good, but it must also seem worthwhile for people to spend time on. You use your content to effectively communicate to your potential and loyal customers.
Consider posting various kinds of content such as tutorial videos, high-quality images of your kitchen, and the like. These types of content capture customer’s attention easily and they drive most of the online engagement for websites.
If you mindlessly post content that is of no significance to your audience, then most likely you won’t get the traffic that you aim for. Research about the market trends and talk about it. You can also ask them directly what are the topics that they want you to discuss.
Improving website speed
Considering how technology and online services accelerated today, it’s no surprise that consumers will expect the same for your website. Seventy-nine percent of online consumers won’t come back to a website if it takes time to load. A responsive website should load within two seconds.
While inserting plugins and images may affect your page’s loading time, it’s your problem to fix and not your consumers. Utilize online tools that can help you optimize the speed of your website.
Should you want to test the speed of your website, there are tools such as Google Page Speed that will provide you results and recommendations to improve it.
source https://www.etakeawaymax.co.uk/increase-traffic-to-your-restaurant-website/
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