Gordon's successful restaurant always had a steady stream of diners but most of these were only casual customers. He wanted to have a regular clientele that returned often, were loyal to his business, and bought friends and colleagues along with them - to ensure the restaurant was always busy even in the usual quiet times.
Restaurant Web Design Case Study
Learn how this restaurant achieved great success with the help of Bloomtools.
Stage 1 - Website presence
Gordon's previous website did not reflect the quality and professionalism of his business, so the Bloomtools design team produced a new website design that matched the casual yet sophisticated feel of the restaurant. The design used lots of white space and clean lines, with beautiful professional photos of the food and the restaurant interior to appeal to potential customers.
Gordon knew it was his fantastic menu that drew people to his restaurant, so he wanted to make it easy for people to find what he had on offer. Using a custom product catalogue, Gordon added images, descriptions and prices for all his dishes on to the website so people could easily view all his menus. The menus were so appealing that people often mentioned them when they came into the restaurant so Gordon knew they played a big role in getting new customers through the door.
Gordon also wanted to do something different at his restaurant to encourage people to come back time and time again. To create some excitement amongst diners, he would get a photographer to come in on Friday and Saturday nights (his busiest times) and take photos of all the groups, then he would put them in a photo gallery on the website for customers to view. The photos were a huge hit and he even made some extra money from selling them.
Stage 2 - Driving traffic to the site
Gordon knew that a lot of his potential customers were searching for restaurants in their local area on Google and other search engines, so he invested in search engine optimisation. He chose niche keywords based on his style of menu and location and used them throughout his content and in his page titles. He also got the Bloomtools SEO team to build links to his site to get it higher in the search results.
Gordon also knew the power of online restaurant directories - they ranked highly in the search engines and were very popular with potential customers. So he added his restaurant to as many directories he could find and put effort into writing enticing keyword-rich copy and uploading images. Most of his competitors didn't bother with these directories so Gordon's listings attracted a lot of traffic and he soon found they were a great source of customers for his restaurant.
Gordon also built a strong presence on Facebook for his restaurant. He gave the restaurant a personal feel by including pictures of his team behind-the-scenes. He also posted the professional photos from Friday and Saturday nights on Facebook (with his website address watermarked in the corner), allowing people to tag themselves to further promote the restaurant.
Stage 3 - Regular communication
To promote the website and build his database, Gordon got his wait staff to ask every customer to join their VIP club and supply their email address. In return for their email address, they got a free glass of wine or coffee with their meal.
To get more customers in on the traditionally quiet nights of Tuesday and Wednesday, Gordon ran VIP nights with special offers (eg. buy 2 get 1 free) and themes (eg. Halloween). He sent a weekly email newsletter out to the database with the details of the next week's VIP nights and a 'book your table now' link to the booking form on the website. The open rates for these campaigns were very high because his customers were actually looking forward to them. Soon Gordon was filling out the restaurant on what used to be his quietest nights and dramatically increasing his profit.
Gordon wanted to go above and beyond what other restaurants did with their VIPs, so he also ran special events, such as wine tasting, fashion parades and a cocktail making evening. These events were organised in conjunction with his alliance network and suppliers, and were designed to promote all of the businesses together. Gordon would send out email invitations through his database and attendees could register online. All of the VIPs were encouraged to bring a guest so the restaurant could add more contacts to their database, and the events were a great success in strengthening customer relations.
Tools used
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