Serve Your Customers Online: Display An Accurate Menu

Just as a store would list their products on a website, or a theater’s would display what’s now showing — if you are in the food industry, it is equally important that you display your food menu for visitors to browse. By clearly displaying your products and their prices, you are benefitting your business and your customers in the following ways:

• 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:

Route 93 Pizza — A restaurant and bar in Eureka, MT, Route 93 Pizza often changes their menu items, which employees can do easily through our content management system. Their menu includes a drop down for easy navigation and they can mark recent additions as “New!” The menu — and website as a whole — is laid out in a red color scheme that has a psychological effect of increasing hunger. Paired with mouthwatering descriptions and spot photography, this menu is likely to make any pizza-lover salivate. Further serving their customers’ need for convenience, this website offers the option to download a PDF version of their menu. This allows a customer to print out or save the menu on their device to be accessed with or without internet connection. Although useful as supplement, it is highly discouraged to only have a PDF menu as an option on your website.

The next step — Displaying your menu in Google’s search results.
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.