Why You Need to Keep Your Restaurant Website Up to Date—and How to Do It

You did your job. You heard everyone talking about why you need a restaurant website, so you went out and got one. You even got yourself an awesome gimmick so that you’d stand out on Google. Either you struggled over learning how to create the site yourself, or you hired someone else to create it for you. The good news is that now you can breathe easy. After all, you have an online presence already. You’ve checked that task off your list. Now you can return to what you really love: food.

Sorry to break it to you, but in today’s world, restaurants can’t just create a site and then rest on their laurels. They need to keep that restaurant website up to date. Here’s why.

Your Events Page and Specials Will Stay as Fresh as Your Food

Stale events and specials are often a sign that a restaurant has gone out of business. Actually, I’ve got to be truthful here: That statement is not backed up by fact. I have never checked to see if the restaurant with an out-of-date website has really gone out of business.

Here’s what is a fact. If your restaurant website doesn’t have updated drink or food specials or your events date back to last year’s holiday season… I’m not going to waste my time going out to your restaurant because I will suspect that you’ve gone out of business—or that you will be soon.

Customers Will Check Back Often to See What’s New

When you update your restaurant website regularly, your customers will also remember to check back with you regularly to see what new and exciting things are going on. If you get your customers to remember your restaurant, you’ve found success.

Feel like you need to give your customers a nudge sometimes, just to remind them that you exist? Updated events and specials give you a great reason to send emails to your customers. Email marketing is the most effective marketing , dollar for dollar, that your restaurant can do.

Regulars Want to Try Something New

Sure, many of your regulars come over and over again for the same thing, but maybe they would like to try a new wine or cocktail.  Keeping your menu current on your website is critical, along with your bar menus and wine list.  Yes, it can be a hassle to constantly upload PDF’s and other files to your site all the time with the menus, but customers want to see that you have new offerings, not the same wine list from three years ago with outdated vintages that are incorrect.

Luckily, Uncorkd makes it easier to keep your website up to date because by inserting one line of code on your site, you can always have your menus synced without having to constantly make changes on your website.  No more uploading PDFs or website changes, plus have descriptions and pictures available on your online menu as well.

You’ll Make a Great First Impression

Pop quiz: What do your potential customers do when they hear about you for the first time?

A. Tell their friends about your food
B. Write you a review on Yelp
C. Whip out their smartphone to look up your site
D. Forget about you

I hope your answer wasn’t D, because that would make me sad. The correct answer, by the way, was C. That’s why you created your darn site in the first place. However, many restaurateurs forget that although they need their site to make a good first impression… that site is their first impression.

Meaning, if your site is stale and sloppy, your potential guests will think that your food is stale and sloppy, too. If they think that, they really will forget about you.

How to Update Your Site—Fast

If you haven’t been keeping your restaurant website up to date, you need to fix that fast. Make it easy on yourself by:

• Creating an events page or a sidebar calendar on the home page
• Entering all your upcoming events on that page/calendar
• Creating a specials page
• Typing up all your specials for the week (so that you don’t have to update it too often)
• Keep updated copies of your menus on your site

While you’re at it, you should take a quick glance through the pages you previously posted to make sure they don’t reference old specials, old events, or the wrong season. Once you’ve spent 30 minutes to an hour wrangling your site back into shape, you should only need to spend 10 minutes a week to keep it updated.

With an updated site, your customers will trust that you’re still open, they’ll check back in often to see what’s new, and they’ll go to your restaurant expecting exactly what you deliver: a friendly, customer-service-oriented dining experience that is worth returning to again and again.