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A website for your restaurant is vital to compete with other restaurants.
After all, your customer is most likely searching for restaurant ideas in your town.
Or even:
Soon to be visitors to your town.
You need to be seen and show up on search engines.
These 3 best Restaurant Website Builders I found make it super simple and provide you with the tools you need to show them important info like:
- The MenuÂ
- Your Hours
- Who You Are
- Directions
- Phone Number
Even better:
You can have it up and running today.
Let’s get started and check out these 3 super simple restaurant website builders.
Flavor Plate – Dedicated To bringing your Restaurant Online
Flavor Plate is free to sign up for and has pricing plan that is $39
There is a 14 day free trial with no credit card required.
This is a great way to try out the website’s features without fully committing to using it month after month.
Flavor Plate Pricing:
Flavor Plate’s website manager is easy to use and allows you to take control of your website content quickly and from one location.
The set of tools are the most useful ones you’ll have access to throughout the website.
For example, you can capture revenue for your restaurant successfully by giving people the option to purchase gift cards or gift certificates online.
Best of all, there is no set-up fee required and no additional cost added to your monthly subscription fees.
Other tools that will make you believe in the power of Flavor Plate include the restaurant website builder’s menu manager which allows you to compose, edit, and publish as many menus as you’d like.
This allows you to update seasonal offerings and introduce new menu items with ease.
Flavor Plate Is Responsive
You can also rest assured knowing that your website is optimized for mobile devices.
Customers viewing it from a tablet or smartphone will have a similar experience as they would viewing the restaurant site from a laptop or desktop computer.
Responsive design makes this possible.
Social Media And SEO
Social media integration allows you to keep up with one people have to say about your restaurant online.
You can create posts as a way of reaching out to your Facebook fans and Twitter followers. That’s where you truly engage these people and motivate them to share your posts with others.
SEO optimization is a default option included in every Flavor Plate website. You can set page titles, URLs, and meta descriptions with the intention of ranking well on the search engines.
If you don’t know how to do these things, the website building site does it for you.
Some Other Great Features
There is a photo gallery where you can show off your best dishes and an events calendar that allows you to promote special occasions on your restaurant calendar.
People can click on it to view it and see if you’re offering something they’d like to attend.
This is very helpful during the holidays when people are looking for something special to do with their loved ones and friends.
Email marketing lets you sign up for a free MailChimp account that you’re able to get a custom email template to use.
It’s branded to match your website so that you’re able to achieve consistent branding throughout the marketing process.
You can use the emails to announce changes to your menu, star employees, and customer feedback.
This is a great way to offer discount codes and coupons, too. If you have a new dish that you want to test, you can invite people to come in and try it by giving them a discounted price off a future visit.
Some Flavor Plate Template Options
Flavor Plate offers 10 different templates you can customize to your liking.
The nice thing is they are simple and straight to the point which I really like, and I think you will too.
Click on the pictures to check out a demo
Wix – Great Features To Build A Booming Restaurant Website
Wix is free to sign up for and offers several pricing plan options to choose from.
It ranges in price from free to $25 a month and all paid accounts offer unlimited pages and free web hosting.
VIP and Unlimited accounts offer unlimited bandwidth, too.
Wix Restaurant Pricing & All Pricing Options In General For Wix
Customizing Your Restaurant Website
Restaurant owners love what Wix has to offer them in the way of beautiful, responsive website templates, online menus, and unique image galleries.
Here are a few of the Wix restaurant templates they offer.
Coupled with a wide range of tools such as OpenTable Restaurant Reservations which allows customers to make reservations while on the go using their mobile phone and Google maps which makes finding the restaurant quick and easy.
Check this out
Here Is What The Table Reservations Looks Like….
When it comes to delivering an unforgettable experience, Wix does its part by making your website one that people come back to again and again.
When it comes to building your restaurant website through Wix, you’re given options as to what template you want to use.
From there, you can customize details and even set up a storefront that allows you to sell your homemade consumables.
Wix Stores, Shopify, Ecwid Store, and Etsy are supported by Wix.
Promoting Your Restaurant With Wix
Wix makes it easy to promote your restaurant business through social media networking.
In addition to providing a Facebook-like popup on your site, there is also the option to add social media icons to your homepage.
People can follow your accounts, post on your wall, and comment on your content.
You can even create coupons as enticements to get your customers off the couch and into your restaurant.
You can offer discounts in exchange for Facebook likes, tweets, and other social media shares. This helps get the word out about you and your business.
Online Ordering Made Simple
This is a great touch to really ramp up your online presence.
A Nice Restaurant Touch
Wix lets you announce special events and build buzz with a countdown timer.
You can also have people register through Eventbrite for special occasions such as menu samplings and charitable dinners.
A Google Event calendar keeps everyone in the know about upcoming events so they can take part in them.
Analytics & SEO
If you want to track how well your marketing and promotional efforts are working, you can use analytics to get real-time web stats.
You also have access to a number of SEO tools designed to make your business stand out in the search engines.
If you want others to know just how many visitors you’ve had on your website, add the Wix Hit Counter and watch the numbers roll in.
Wix makes it easy for you to get your site listed with the search engines. It also allows you to create targeted campaigns that help you gain new customers.
Being able to measure your progress and make adjustments along the way gives you a distinct advantage as a restaurant owner.
Start building your restaurant website with Wix right now
Squarespace – A Great Restaurant Solution
Like Wix, Squarespace is free to sign up for.
You get a free trial with no credit card required to enjoy the website’s benefits.
Businesses pay $18 a month if paid a year in advance or $26 a month to month, depending on what is more convenient for them.
Squarespace Pricing (They do run promos often)
Getting Started
Building a restaurant website is easy with Squarespace who details the steps required to get it launched in the support area of the company’s website.
The first thing you’re required to do is sign up for an account and select the membership plan that meets your needs.
Then, choose a template that makes your cuisine stand out in a sea of competitors by featuring color photographs of your best appetizers, salads, entrees, and desserts.
Squarespace Templates For Restaurants
Use Marquee to tempt patrons with your mouth-watering dishes. The carousel option continues to stroll while a customer is reading other information on your website.
A site-wide footer lets you keep important information about hours and location on every page.
Then there’s Pacific which lets you include hours, location, menus, and images in a seamless way on your website.
You can use the site-wide footer for whatever else you want your customers to know about your restaurant.
It’s a valuable piece of virtual real estate that you can use throughout your website on each page you have up.
The templates are samples of what you can do with Squarespace. You can also display hours and the location of your business as well as a contact us page.
This is important in the event that people have questions about your cuisine.
Make Online Reservations
Customers can use OpenTable to make reservations and you can list your restaurant phone number and email for this purpose, too. That’s one of the distinct advantages of Squarespace.
It helps you attract visitors to your website and hold their interest with descriptive banners, galleries, and blocks of images so they can see what your food and restaurant looks like before visiting you the first time.
Get In Touch With Your Customers
Like Wix, sharing information via social media account is easy once you’ve connected them.
This is a great way to connect with people through Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and other social media platforms.
Add specials, answer questions, and promote your latest menu offerings where your customers spend most of their time, on social media sites.
Start using Squarespace to build your website for your restaurant
Conclusion On The Best Restaurant Website Builders
Just to recap:
The 3 Best Restaurant Website Builders Are:
- Flavor Plate
- Wix
- Squarespace
All three offer an easy method of creating the perfect restaurant website with menu options, contact options, and beautiful templates.
Also, when testing these they made it the easiest to get started with which I’m huge on when it comes to building your website today.
Have you ever used one of these?
While those you described are good, they do not specifically serve the Food and Beverage industry and they are not very user-friendly. On the other hand, Take iMenu.link for example, which provides a digital QR-code menu, online ordering with takeaway and delivery ability and a website builder with analytics all in one platform. It is the most versatile of them all and should be added to your list.
Hi There,
No, in my opinion they don’t have to always be dedicated to the industry.
Appreciate your input too 🙂
Thanks,
Chris
For me, I often use NameSilo’s website builder because they have it as a feature in their hosting plans. Definitely worth to check out if you are looking for not just a website builder but for a good hosting.
Thanks for the info Gabor!
Website builders are really a convenient option for building website by your own. You have given well researched information for all. However each of them has its own pros and cons. we must choose the that fits to our requirements.
I So agree!
I can never, ever understand why wix gets such high ratings. Clearly they spend a fortune advertisting but more importantly incentivising what appear to be ‘independent reviews’ until you become more familiar with the way this all works.
My independent advice (see below for my background / interest) is be very very careful with Wix. 1] They are profoundly greedy (and that’s putting it kindly). 2] They make it very hard to understand exactly how much everything you need is really going to cost and, 3] In my view, purposely mislead you about what their packages can and can’t do until it’s too late for you to get out of your commitment without losing money.
For example, their restaurant package implies it offers a full table booking system within the price. It DOES NOT. It simply has an email box that guests can fill in, send to you and then you have to reply and confirm. No different from just adding an email form to your site.
Another example, their online booking of takeaway orders. Again, it appears this is all inclusive in the package price. It is not. Unless you don’t want your customers to pay when they book. If you do, about 2.75% per booking in UK and no options for other card services.
Another example – they imply that their CRM / customer management system is included in their standard premium packages. It is not. After a very, very basic free offering, you have to sign up for another ‘complimentary’ service to ensure you can manage and market to the customers you sign up via their website.
Finally, their customer support is non-existent in reality and Im a priority / top level user. Whilst their offering is, in places, good – their ethics as a business are stomach turning and very out-dated in today’s online marketplace. Sadly, however, it is only really possible to appreciate this once you get into the nitty gritty of building your site, your business and finalising the published version and it’s real cost. This is the only explanation I can work out (other than the financial incentives on offer) for so many reviewers giving them such high ratings i.e. they never get deep enough to really understand the con when, in fact, their pricing, service and diligence is simply not deserving of such endorsement.
I’ve used them for years purely because for a long time, there was no real option that offered the design versatility and no-code sophistication they did – but those days are long gone. Ultimately ask yourself this – are you wanting to be a designer without coding or a business person driving new revenue? If the latter is your primary drive, then moving into 2020 there is no need at all to succumb to this nonsense.
There are now so many fantastic options available, I strongly advise you try any other system than Wix in the first instance. There are so many good, ethical, much cheaper and much better options out there. Webflow, Sitejet, Moborise, IM creator are just a handful that rarely make the ‘incentivised’ recommendation lists but are great and this is just to name but a few. And if you want a household name for security most are better than Wix and Weebly are particularly good since their business offering overhaul.
Finally, if you are interested in design as much as functionality, Squarespace do both well and the former, very well. But most of all their customer support is OUTSTANDING. And if you’re new to all this – you’ll need this and they are fantastic and available 24/7 on call, on chat at a moments’ notice. What small weaknesses they have can often be easily made up for by their design and service. It is remarkable.
And who am I? Well, Im a small business consultant that is constantly testing and trying out new software for my clients. Im not being incentivised, nor paid nor am I partnered with anyone. Nor am I trying to win your business through writing this. This is a genuine unbiased review based purely on a LOT of experience and a lot of mistakes.
Im now a very good ‘user’ / front end operator but fundamentally Im a business person specialising in helping small businesses that have to do everything themselves and keep costs to an absolute minimum whilst staying competitive. These people are not what you need because they don’t care about anything other than locking you in and then making you as cheap an asset as possible. There are many other small independent businesses out there launching new, innovative and clever software for less money with much much better customer service and business transparency. Just ignore Wix to start with. Get on product hunt and spend a few days trying out 3 or 4 of your favourites before commiting to anything or even going to try Wix.
Hey Kerstin,
Thanks so much for you input:
For the most part I’ve had great luck testing it.
But, as well.
I’ve personally used and help others use it with great success and customer service too.
Regardless though, I’m very thankful for readers leaving such in-depth thoughts on website builders.
Thanks,
Chris