Come eat at our restaurant!

Here are a 10 things a restaurant website should include on their site:

1. A clear address and contact information – Phone Number and Address should be prominent. Google Maps should be a given!

2. Food Pictures – a restaurant website should entice the consumer with their food, the better the photography, the better the response

3. Contact Us Page – as a former restaurant manager, I always welcome feedback from my guests. The website should have an easy contact form and room for comments.

4. Updated restaurant menus - there’s nothing worst than looking at a restaurant website with outdated menus. Oh yah, pricing should be on the menu. Don’t forget Kids Menus!

5. Hours of Operation – you’d be surprised to see how many restaurant omit this very important information. There’s nothing worst than going to a Los Gatos restaurant for lunch on a Monday just to see that they’re closed on Sundays and Mondays.

6. Payment Methods – Cash only is a killer, but just post it somewhere on the web site the you don’t take plastics

7. Staff/Management and Chef profiles – Show us who’s running the place and more importantly, who’s cooking!

8. Specials and Happy Hour – most restaurateurs forget how important it is to generate dinner business from happy hour. Did you know that over 50% of Happy Hour goers end up staying for dinner?

9. Outdoor and Patio Dining - if you have nice outdoor patio dining, you should boast about it.

10. Reservations online – I hope more and more restaurants are using Open Table, it’s a great way to make reservations effectively and accurately.

Focus on customers and showcase your restaurant, the website can do all this if it’s done right.

Picture of Mango Mimosa Ice Cream

After months of gathering data, recipes, and stories, BistroSites finally launched FoodandWineToday.com. The whole focus on this site is to promote local businesses, wineries, restaurants and the latest food trends.

Additionally, we also help promote our clients on the website to generate more buzz and visibility online.

We’ve started gathering data for our upcoming wineries page, where consumers can search for a region and winery. Results page would display all winery amenities, offerings and information.

We’ve posted our first recipe – Pad Thai by Lanna Thai Restaurant and we’ve also featured a local ice cream company in San Jose (Silver Moon Desserts). Stay tuned for more…

LannaThaiSanJose.com was our first Thai restaurant website. I’m a big fan of Thai food, so I was excited to work with Lanna Thai. Kevin supplied us with great photography, a great logo and some   background on their style of Thai cuisine. I learned so much about Thai food by working with the Singard family. I thought all Thai food was the same, but after doing some research on Chaing Rai’s region of Thailand, I’m now a fan of their cuisine.

I’m proud of what we’ve done for Lanna Thai’s website. I believe it’s one of the best Thai Restaurant websites in San Jose.

When conceptualizing the site, we had some goals in mind:

• create a “clean” Thai restaurant website
• make the site user friendly
• set Lanna Thai apart from all the other Thai restaurants in San Jose
• showcase their cuisine with great photography
• make LannaThaiSanJose.com be one of the top Thai sites on Google for “San Jose Thai Restaurant” and “San Jose Thai Catering”

Check out their website and let us know what you think.

Lanna Thai Website: www.lannathaisanjose.com

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