Starting up a website is very much similar to building up a restaurant. In this article we will discuss about several factors that are pivotal when it comes to starting a successful website and a thriving restaurant.
Location and Accessibility
When first starting up a restaurant business, the location and accessibility of a restaurant is one key factor to its success. Generally, restaurants that are located in areas nearer to town and with higher accessibility are more likely to get visitors as compared to restaurants that are located in secluded and remote areas which are harder to get to.
Translating into web terms, the amount of traffic that is being driven to the website depends largely on how easy it is to remember the web address, and how well it is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), i.e. how well it ranks on popular search engines like Google or Yahoo when keying in the relevant keywords.
Ambience and Aesthetics
The restaurant’s ambience and aesthetics play an important role in the overall experience when dining at the restaurant, how pleasing the environment is would usually determine the frequency of revisits and the duration of a patron’s stay in a restaurant.
Upon visiting a website, it is usually the aesthetics of the website that will determine if the visitor ventures further into other sections of the website, i.e. how pleasing the website is to the viewer’s eyes.
Content – The Main Course
Certainly, the most important factor for success is the Main Course that the restaurant serves. This would ultimately determine the overall branding process of the restaurant and what people would remember the restaurant for, i.e. the restaurant can brand itself as one which serves the best Fish & Chips or one which serves the best variety of authentic Mediterranean cuisine.
Similarly on the World Wide Web, content is king, be it the best source for stock exchange tips or the best place to go for the latest celebrity news, the kind of content offering that a website brings would largely determine the demographic of visitors that are being attracted to the site.
Feedback
Upon concluding the dining experience, it would be wise for the restaurant management to get feedback from their patrons. This is not only to improve on themselves but also to use it as a measure on how well they are doing in terms of their food and services.
Getting feedback from website visitors is important as it comes in handy when evaluating the service offering of the website as well as awareness to issues that might affect the website’s reputation in the long-term.
Staying in Touch
Last but not least would be staying in touch. Many restaurants would place their name cards at the restaurant counter for patrons to take away after dining. In this way patrons could easily refer to the name card when deciding to do a future visit or when it comes to recommending their friends to the restaurant.
It is also essential that website visitors are be able to stay connected to the webmaster, in this way they would be able to keep updated on the latest happenings and offerings of the website. For more information on how to stay connected with visitors to your website, do read up on our previous post titled Staying connected with the visitors to your website