How to Drive Traffic to your Restaurant Website that gets Customers Through the Door

Your website is a virtual business card and it holds far more information about your business than a piece of paper or small card. In addition it can be accessed from any country, city or household in the world with an internet connection and computer.
Getting customers to your website is a little harder than handing out business cards. The best way of driving traffic to your site, and ultimately through the door, is to use the following multiple proven methods:

1) Print it

Perhaps, the simplest way to drive traffic to your restaurant’s website is through a printed card placed at each table. List your site and encourage visitors to go to it. Every piece of your marketing material should include your website address.

2) Social Media

Drive traffic to your website with social media. This can be achieved in multiple ways. For example, you can use social media to attract attention to a ‘scavenger hunt’ on your website to find the latest entree your restaurant will serve. You can jump on Twitter trending topics. If they like what you have to say, they may follow you and even visit your website. Moreover, social media promotion is only limited by your imagination. There are many ways to promote businesses and their products that have yet to be discovered.

3) Coupons

Coupons are an immensely successful tool to drive traffic to your restaurant’s website. Everyone loves free stuff! Coupons can be used for a free appetizer or dollars off. They do not have to have a high value amount. They only need to be high enough to encourage your customers to visit your restaurant instead of your competitors. Restaurants can make use of a PDF file or image placed on their website or a service, like coupons.com to make the coupons printable. Always place the coupon on your website to make that the first stop for prospective diners.

4) Giveaways

Giveaways do not need to be elaborate. A fabulous prize and an entry form is all that’s required. Make your website the only place where customers can enter. Combine social media marketing and print to make the giveaway more successful.

5) Blog About It

A restaurant’s website should utilize the blogosphere with a blog on their site and guest posting. A blog on your website keeps your site updated which satisfies the rules of search engines to maintain the site’s ranking in the search results. It also establishes the restaurant as an expert in its field and provides a reason for site visitors to keep coming back. Guest posting is when your restaurant (or a freelancer writer/ghostwriter hired by you) creates a blog post for another blog that promotes your business and establishes the restaurant further as an expert. Guest posts include a link back to the website, so readers can learn more about your restaurant.

6) Fill Your Site with Information

While filling your site with relevant and detailed information sounds a bit elementary, many restaurants forget that all sites need the basics; a detailed menu, ‘About Us’ page, promotions, and other personal details, for customers to read and obtain a better sense of your business. Without these, what exactly is the intent of getting people to your restaurant’s website? A website is a restaurant’s virtual business card and it should reflect the business’s image.

Driving traffic to your website begins with a good website and a marketing plan. A combination of the above methods will bring customers to your website and hook them into coming back. Continue with these efforts to keep traffic at optimal levels.

What methods do you use to get traffic to your website and subsequently through the door of your restaurant?

7 Tips for Selecting the Best Wines for your Restaurant

Offering a wine menu means you must weigh several elements, including your overall concept, your clientele, your food menu, and whether your staff will be able to sell the wine you select.  Get these elements wrong, and you may be stuck with a costly, slow-moving inventory.  Get them right, however, and that jovial clinking of wine glasses will sound like an old-fashioned cash register.

Here are seven tips to think about when creating your wine list:

1) Know Your Concept

What is your theme and who are you trying to serve? If you run a casual burger joint, a wine list may be unnecessary.  But if you offer gourmet burgers as part of an upscale menu, then a wine list may be not only be appropriate, but vital. Do some research of the restaurants in your area to get an idea of what they are offering and what they are charging?

2) Choose Your Supplier Carefully

Ask any contacts in the beverage industry whom they use, and how successfully they compete on conceptual fit, price, and variety. Meet with distributors at your restaurant so they can understand your concept. Ask about their best sellers, but don’t be afraid to offer lesser-known labels that may better fit your theme. Your prospective vendors will want a mutually beneficial sale, so they’ll typically make good suggestions. Make sure that you use at least two distributors.

3) Involve Your Staff

If you have a separate chef or wine steward, include them in the decision, or even delegate them to make recommendations for your approval. Enlist your servers help as well. Your staff will drive your wine sales, so if they don’t like the wine they taste, you will have trouble selling it.

4) Offer Variety

Although a list of 15 wines may be sufficient, try and offer several varieties, even a few which may be new to most customers. Offering recognizable wines with new ones will not only give the guest the comfort of familiarity but also position your establishment as a place where they can experiment. Ensure that you include light, medium and full bodied white and red wines, as well as sweet and sparkling wines.

5) Create Value for Yourself and your Customers

Purchasing wine will obviously affect cash flow; so if you choose expensive wines, make sure they offer something for which customers will pay a premium. Unlike your food, to which your chef and servers add value, customers know the retail cost of your wine, to which you add no value. Remember: not all expensive wines will fit your concept, few of your customers will appreciate the difference, and some of your best-selling wines may be the most affordable, especially those from places such as Australia, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa, etc.

6) Maximise Your Food Pairings

Select wines that enhance the widest variety of menu items. Many guests choose wine based on their choice of entrées. Consider listing appropriate pairings on your menu and train your servers to make suggestions when possible.

7) Manage Your Inventory

Before creating your inventory, you will need to budget for your initial order’s cash flow impact. You will need enough climate-controlled storage to house your wine, without spoiling, until poured.

We end off this blog post with a quote:  “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.” –  W.C Fields

Now it’s your turn. Any more tips? How do you choose your best wines? Share with us below.

For more info on Ideal Software’s Inventory Management system for controlling food cost IdealStockControl

Ideal Software Named Constant Contact All Star Winner

We are delighted to announce the news that Ideal Software has been named a Constant Contact© 2012 All Star winner. We are thrilled to know that our efforts in reaching and engaging our customers via eMail and other online marketing tools has been successful. We would like to express our gratitude to you, our loyal customers and fans, for receiving this honour. Our emails are made with our customers and supporters in mind, and so to this end we thank you for engaging and interacting with us.

How Do You Become a Winner?

Any Constant Contact customer can be chosen as an Allstar. Criteria Include:

1) Having been a customer in 2012

2) Consistently high open rates (greater than 25%), click through rates, and low bounce rates

3) Regular contact with your audience, or publishing at least 2 events

4) Completing two of the following Constant Contact activities:

- Adding list growth tool Join My Mailing List to your website

- Adding Join My Mailing List to your business Facebook page

- Regularly viewing your reports to see how you’re doing

- Sharing your emails or events on social media using social share

- Adding social media Follow Me links to your emails or events

We welcome your feedback, in our continuous effort to improve on our emails, on how we can better tailor information to your foodservice needs.