Reviews, whether good or bad, benefit you and your customers a great deal. Show good reviews on your website to build trust and use bad reviews to improve on your service. There is no better way to get the best feedback about your restaurant service than from your customers.
For more tips on reviews, check out this post about adding them to your website.
DIYing your website isn’t as bad as you think. I’m saying this because there are certain times where creating a DIY website is the best option for you. You can benefit from a DIY website when you just need to get something up, and how it looks isn’t important, or when you are just starting out and don’t have a clear definition of who you are but you still want to get the word out. Well, if you are a restaurant owner, what I said above simply does not apply to you, especially if you have a physical location. There are some exceptions when it comes to caterers and bakers that are just starting out and just need something up so their customers and get information about them and submit orders. When you set up a restaurant, you are in for the long haul so it is great for your image and reputation when your brand identity is created before you launch or at least within the first 6 months of business.
Let’s begin by understanding what a DIY website is.
A DIY website is a website that puts you, the business owner, in charge of creating a website that fits your needs based on an existing template. Purchasing or signing up for a DIY website means that you are basically in charge of setting up your website as the proposed template. It is a much cheaper option than a custom website because the responsibility is put on you the owner to set up the website while they simply provide you with a platform. To name a few, some the companies providing these types of products are Squarespace, Wix and Weebly. These companies provide good looking website templates but the question is, can you do the work?
1. As a restaurant, you want to provide as much professionalism as you can because you are in the people business. You want to give your customers an impression that you take your restaurant, your service, and your customers seriously. Having a website that is not professionally built gives the opposite impression.
2. Branding is one of the most important things for a restaurant. You want to keep consistency and credibility so your customers make a connection with you whether at your restaurant or online. With DIY websites you miss out on the ability to fully customize your website for cohesiveness with your branding. These websites are not fully customizable because most of the areas that handle the core of websites are inaccessible due to the risk of breaking the website if not handled properly.
3. You also miss out on the key opportunities and strategies a restaurant website design studio would use to make your website a success based on the knowledge of your industry.
4. DIY website companies usually do not provide backups of your website so you are doomed if anything bad happens to your website.
5. There is a lot of wasted time on you, the restaurant owner or your staff because you will need to spend a lot of time trying to make your website as close as possible to what you want. The templates are usually based on a drag and drop type platform making it very easy to use but there is still a learning curve. If you do not have the time or patience for online based tools, this is not for you.
6. DIY websites are usually very general by nature so any type of business can use the template for their website. These websites, therefore, do not focus on the needs of a restaurant. Yes, there are restaurant DIY templates but they usually only provide the look and feel of a restaurant website but not necessarily the functionality that restaurants need for their customers to have a great experience. For example, easy to update menus, unique photo gallery options to display your food, etc
7. It is also very easy to have the same look and feel as other restaurants using the same platform and/or template because most likely they are having a hard time customizing the template to their liking as well.
A custom website, no matter how complex or simple your branding, is the best way to go for a restaurant. Invest in a website that would be the most beneficial to your restaurant than one that is cheaper to build without the necessary tools for success. Unless you, a restaurant owner, are trained and have great skill in the art of web design, development and strategy, leave this part of your business to the professionals like us. We’re here for you when you need us!
Invest in a professional photographer to make sure the photos on your website are stunning and visually delicious. A photo is worth a thousand words so make it count.
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Are you ready to begin a website project with us? Ask about our photography services.
If you are a restaurant or restaurant goer, you will notice that some restaurant websites have the ability to make reservations. Giving guest the option to make reservations is a great marketing strategy for restaurants and helps you plan for visits and reduce your real time revenue reliance on walk ins.
There are a few ways to achieve this. We have the more traditional way where customers call the restaurant to make a reservation. Secondly, a restaurant can have just a general form on their website where customers can type in their information, send it out to the restaurant in hopes of making a reservation on the day of their choice. Lastly, there is the option, which is, subscribing with a company that is in the reservation business to make reservations and seat management as seamless as possible. Well, here is a description of 4 reservations platforms you might consider.
OpenTable is the leading platform for online reservations. When you think of reservations, the first place that comes to mind is usually OpenTable. They have been in this space since 1998 so it’s been a while. In addition to their services, they offer a reward system to customers who reserve through their platform by giving them $10 in points towards their next meal and customers love it. If you are a restaurant that has reservations as a major part of the business OpenTable would be a great restaurant marketing fit for you as they offer a wide range of services. Some of their features include reservation management, waitlist management, credit card vaulting, passcode protection, wireless chit printing, integrations & APIs, recommended tables assignments, table blocking, holiday promotions, reservation timeline view, alerts & notifications, multiple floor plans and more.
OpenTable’s, pricing starts from $249/month with a setup fee of $1295.
As you all know, Yelp is a great reviewing platform for many businesses especially restaurants. Yelp now offers Yelp Reservations which has a great list of services including accepting reservations from right from your Yelp profile and website, text reminders to guests, table assignment, waitlist management and server management.Yelp Reservations provides these services at a monthly rate of $249 with no setup fee. Also included in the subscription is an iPad to get a full experience with their tools.
Yelp Reservations provides these services at a monthly rate of $249 with no setup fee. Also included in the subscription is an iPad to get a full experience with their tools.
Resy is a complete reservation and waitlist system that includes table management, waitlisting, ticketing, and booking. It is very easy to integrate with a POS system and with your website. It is definitely not as popular as the first two and but you get just what you need at a lower price than the others. Resy also provides “ResyPay” which allows guests to pay and split checks. ResyPay is unfortunately not available with the basic plan.
Resy provides these services at a starting monthly rate of $189 with no cover fee.
This is one reservation tool I had not heard of before but I love how simple the look and feel of it is. Tock is also a complete reservation system that offers free bookings to guests, prepaid options for bookings, reservation management, table management, guest profiles and notes, texting, financial reporting, booking widget for your website and note taking so you remember details about your guests.
Tock provides these services at a starting monthly fee of $99 with a $0.99 cover fee. No setup fee.
In summary, here is a comparison chart of the 4 reservations systems for their starting packages
| OpenTable | Yelp Reservations | Resy | Tock | |
| Monthly Payment | $249 | $249 | $189 | $99 |
| Setup Fee | $1295 | No extra fee | No extra fee | No extra fee |
| Cover | $1.00 | No extra fee | No extra fee | $0.99 |
| Hardware | no | iPad Included | no | no |
| Website Integration | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Texting | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Table management | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Take Notes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| POS Integration | yes | no | no (upgrade req’d) | no |
Well, I hope this blog post helps to introduce you to reservation systems out there. Whether you decide to pick one of these 4 as your system of choice or any other system that integrates with websites, note that they easily work with any ASBA Website.
Comment below with any other reservation system out there you recommend.
Have a restaurant? I would love to hear more about you. How you run it, what you love about it, your pains and frustrations, your customers’ needs and wants, anything you got. One of the essential things that get overlooked easily when running a business is taking the time to learn about your customers. One of the excuses for me is the feeling of taking my clients away from their daily activities because as you know, the restaurant business is super hectic and tremendously busy. My mom had a restaurant for a while and recently started up a catering service so I really understand. I often forget that surveying my audience and asking them questions from time to time a is a win-win for us both. I say this because it helps me know more about you, which in turn helps me provide you with more helpful content and a more useful website and visual branding.
So, with that said, it would love to hear from you! Comment below folks or just send me a message.
Happy Friday!
