How To Write and Sell Books

If you run a restaurant, you probably already have your own website. But are you taking advantage of it to its full potential? Consider some of these ideas, if you don't already have them in place.

Cross-promotion: Use your other advertising channels to drive traffic to your restaurant website. Once your site is up and running, you will have discovered that it can be an inexpensive and effective means of providing detailed information to your potential customers and your regulars. In your newspaper advertisements, make your website's location prominent. You will find it considerably less expensive to provide details when you are not paying by the column inch. If you use television commercials, keep your web address on the screen throughout the duration of the commercial. In a radio ad campaign, grab the listeners first to get them interested, then give them an easy to remember URL twice.

Menu display: Some restaurants choose to display a sampling of their menu selections. Of course, there is no real problem with that. However web space is practically free, so why not include your entire menu. You do not want to omit someone's favorite entree that could have brought them to your tables. Be certain that the menu pages are designed in a way that allows you to update them any time you actually change your menu. Whether you choose to include the prices will be somewhat determined by the types of diners you are hoping to attract as well as the stability of your prices. If a lot of your selections are impacted by "market prices," then it might be better to leave all prices off.

Use inviting images: Pictures of the food are fine for recipe books and frozen dinner boxes, but you want your food to sell itself as your guests eat it. To attract attention, you need to show real human beings enjoying their meals and the dining experience. Be certain that the images show all of the kinds of people you want as customers, representing the full diversity of your community.

Build an email database: Request the email information of visitors to your web pages and allow your customers in your restaurant to add their primary email contact information as they pay. Have a member of your staff enter these new email addresses on a frequent basis. Use regular email marketing to announce new menu items, offer special coupons or other enticements. Think of ways to keep them interested in reading your emails on a regular basis. You might want to offer an occasional recipe, or provide some sort of fun food related contest.

By all means encourage and display testimonials: While an enthusiastic restaurant review from the local newspaper or local magazine is unbeatable publicity, most folks like to see what other regular diners like themselves have to say. You may choose to put these on their own page, but also sprinkle a few of the more literate comments on each page of your site.

Everyone in any facet of the service industry needs customers who keep returning over and over. In order to help your diners feel as if they want to patronize your establishment often, they should feel that they have an ongoing relationship with your business. A well designed, efficiently used service business website can help establish that bond. This is particularly important in the restaurant industry, where there is already so much social contact upon which you can build.

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