Why use WordPress for your restaurant website
Posted by Robert on Mar 1, 2011 in Restaurant Business | 0 comments
It no longer makes sense to have a static website for your restaurant. With the number of smartphones in the market, having a dynamic website that’s interactive is the best way to keep your customers coming back and attract new customers.
If you’ve been following my posts, you know I’ve been working with Crepemaker restaurant franchise as my case study. We recently changed their Facebook page to be more fan friendly page this allowed them to make changes on the fly that will keep their Facebook fans coming back for more.
We changed www.crepemaker.net from a static to dynamic website using WordPress. The .net site is a place to market their concept to potential franchisees. The initial problem was that their site was static like their www.crepemaker.com site (which we will be changing to a dynamic site in the coming weeks). Crepemaker had outsourced their websites to webmasters that were costly, and could not make the changes they needed to their website fast enough with their rapid changing requirements. In addition, it was costing them money to make minor changes to text, pictures, and videos. Furthermore, Crepemaker customers interested in their concept only had to visit one time since the data did not change much; as a result, they were getting fewer and fewer hits to their site.
Crepemaker needed a website that was active, kept customers coming back, and could showcase their growth. They also wanted to start moving up in the ranks of the top search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com. Posting frequent relevant quality data is an excellent way to get index often and add value to your website in the eyes of Google.
With a WordPress backend and a nice quality WordPress theme, we were able to get crepemaker.net to become a more dynamic social website. Crepemaker is saving money, keeping their potential customers coming back for more with new video streams, pictures, and now they have their franchisees posting on their blog site. This freedom has given Crepemaker an opportunity to keep their data fresh, and potential franchisees are visiting the site more frequently since new posts are being published about crepemaker openings, and events.
The WordPress site now becomes more of a sales vehicle then just a plain website regurgitating numbers, royalties, and fees. It now has a personality!
The Crepemaker.com Website
Here are the steps we are taking to build a better more dynamic restaurant website for Crepemaker
1. We bought his domain at GoDaddy, but setup his web hosting service with HostGator for about $67 dollars. With a few steps WordPress was installed right form the CPanel.
2. We installed his new theme and Crepemaker was ready for content. I use two companies one is called Elegant Themes and the other is Woo Themes either one will work.
3. Now that their new theme is installed, Crepemaker is creating post right from the WordPress control panel.
WordPress is an incredible tool when used properly, there are many themes and plugins that allow you to install right from the control panel. You can get plugins for just about anything you’re looking for including a PayPal plugin to sell restaurant t-shirts, cups, and other items right online.
Best of all, it will allow you to launch your site and keep it fresh while saving you money!
