Serve Your Customers Online: Display An Accurate Menu
- Providing Convenience — Someone is more likely to come visit you in person if they know there won’t be any surprises in advance that you serve something they’ll want. Not displaying a menu can deter those customers who may be on a budget or have food allergies.
- Establishing value — If someone is looking to spend money at your establishment, providing descriptions and imagery of dishes is a good way to earn their business by presenting its quality.
- Utilizing design psychology — There are studies that show certain menu colors will drive more customers into your store, and others that claim removing the dollar sign ($) from your prices will cause people to spend more. Whether or not these claims are true, it is never a bad idea to utilize good design techniques in order to impress potential customers.
As examples, here are a couple clients whose sites we’ve built menus for:
Outpost Restaurant — Outpost’s menu is particularly useful because their site also has Google Translate embedded. Due to the high volume of out-of-country tourists they get coming through Yellowstone National Park, Outpost employees are able to pull the menu up on their tablet, translate it, and have the customer order with ease. Their menu makes a persuasive visual case to any hungry visitors who are looking for down-home cooking.
Once you have a menu built as a native part of your website, Google My Business is able to pull data from that menu to use in the menu displayed in search results. More recently, Google has added a menu editor, providing the ability to edit this menu. You can add menu items, including title, description, and price, as well as appetizers, entrees, and desserts.
To edit your menu, you must be registered as a “Restaurant” in your Google My Business account. If you are, login and toggle to “info.” Just as you can edit your hours of operation and contact info, here is where you can make edits to your business’s menu.
Conclusion.
If you are in the food industry, having your restaurant’s menu available to your customers online can be the difference between someone coming through your doors or bypassing you all together. To avoid frustration, and better serve your customers, the information should also be accurate — from the items available to their price. If you need help adding a menu to your website or to editing the one in your Google My Business account, let us know! We’d be happy to help.