Sterling Douglas (9:44)

In the last few years, restaurants have faced massive changes. Labor costs, food costs, rent, even payment processing costs are up so much that price increases alone can't cover it. And at the same time, their customers are demanding a whole new way to interact digitally. And that's now a requirement to survive, let alone thrive. To their credit, restaurant operators have been resilient. They've survived pandemics, inflation, regulatory environments and more. They've added the tablets, put out the QR codes, took reviews seriously, and their reward? A disjointed collection of tech that doesn't talk to each other and is impossible to manage. I've listened to hundreds of operators tell me the same story with the same problem. And that's why we came out with the Chale platform. One place to manage everything outside of your four walls. Just like everything built at Chali for our 17,000 restaurants, integrations and connections are at the heart of everything we do. It starts with your digital storefront. Your website has two jobs. More traffic, more orders. By connecting to Google business profile and your point of sale, we get that done for you. Digital marketing. We'll manage your paid ads, emails and social posts. We'll help you win the hyperlocal knife fight to maximize your sales. We measure everything so you know exactly where your orders are coming from. Marketplace, email, website, ads, app. All in one place. CH gives you more orders by ensuring your entire digital storefront is optimized with the data. You already have more time by using our knowledge and a done for you experience and more control by managing it all in one place. The Chowi platform isn't just a tool. It's a partner in running a more successful and profitable restaurant.

Chip Close (11:37)

If you want to learn more about Chow, go find the link in the show notes. Okay, so now we're talking about restaurant websites, right? Talked about. First and foremost, you need a restaurant website. That's for very technical reasons. I think it's a good idea anyway. But for very technical reasons that have to do with searchability and discoverability, you need a website. So if you're just pointing people to your Facebook page, just pointing people to your slice page, it's not good enough. Not in the year 2025 and beyond. When you get to your website, you have to answer that question. Who's coming to my site? Where do they come from? What do they Already know about me. What do they still need to know about me in order order to take the action I need them to take. And then you've got to build your website that makes it really obvious and easy for them to take the action you need them to take, which is usually to place an online order or to book a reservation. In very rare occasions you'll have two, you'll have two calls to action where you want them to make a reservation or book catering, let's say, right? Because maybe 30 or 40% of your revenue comes from catering, then fine, yeah, I'd make that really easy to find for the most part. The main call to action should be either order online or make a reservation. Now let's talk about the whole rest of your website. Here's some do, do's and don'ts. Your social media icons, right? The links to your social media pages need to, in essence be hidden. They should be there, but you know, the best place for them is way at the bottom in your footer or your secondary navigation. They do not need to be in your main navigation. They don't need to be at the top of your website. Certainly don't need to be in the top right corner because that's like position. That's why most great websites put a call to action there. The main call to action right there in the upper right. So on desktop you don't need it there, on mobile, you just want it hidden. Think of it this way. Your social media platforms, your, your social media Pages are like UFOs you send out into the galaxy to collect information or humans and bring them back to the mothership. Your website is the mothership. We never send things from the mothership out to the UFOs. We only send the UFOs out to gather stuff and bring it back to the mothership. So you are gathering users, potential diners, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, wherever you're collecting them and sending them back to your mothership, back to your website. We do not go the other way. You know why? Because they can't spend money on Facebook, they can spend money on your website. Can't book a reservation on Instagram, they gotta come back to the website to make a reservation. So we have to think about what we want people to do and then build our site to make that as easy and frictionless as possible. Do not send traffic away. Likewise, you don't need a thousand pages, right? Here's a really good example. When you go to Mighty Quinn's, you'll see there's a main navigation across the top, very limited options and they're almost all revenue generating. The exception to that is the menu, which is, you know, what people want to. They want to know if there's stuff that they like that helps them determine whether they're going to go eat there. But then all the way at the bottom in the footer, there's a secondary navigation where you see the contact page, the employment, you know, the careers page, the privacy policy. Gift cards, all that other stuff is down there. Most people are not going to your website to find gift cards. They're going there to order online, figure out where you are, figure out what you serve or to make a reservation so you can have that other stuff. But man, you got to sort of hide it. That's not really what you want people to do. Likewise, you don't need a thousand pages. Like you don't need a gallery page, a page just dedicated to pictures and videos. Nope. In the year 2025 and beyond, your website should be covered, plastered with photos and videos all over the place. So you should be telling your story visually on every single page. You don't need to put all of those images on one page. It's an absolute waste unless you're a photographer, unless you're an artist. Where you want a gallery page to show your work, it's useless. You want to show your food and your beverage and your space and your people and, you know, your happy guests on every page of your website. You don't need one page. We're, you know, dedicated to all that stuff. The same thing with the about page. And there's a lot of back and forth about this. There's a lot of dissension. I sort of hate about pages, but then I talk to people who say they're really important. So. Okay, but if you have an about page, it should be short, sweet, to the point, and it should be littered with calls to action so that somebody learns about the founders and then here, make a reservation, you talk about the accolades and then boom. Doesn't that make you want to dine here? If you're going to take somebody to a place that's non revenue generating, there better be ways to get them to play a place that is revenue generating. You do not need a thousand pages, you need just a couple. Just a couple is crucial. You don't want to take people too many places where they can't give you money and then tuck all the stuff in the footer. On your website you should be utilizing the pop up feature. If you don't use it because you think it'll annoy people, it won't. They're used to it. They'll just X out of it if they don't want the thing that's popping up. But there are plenty of people that when you put something in their face will go, oh well, I didn't know you guys were doing Mother's Day brunch. Oh, I didn't know you guys had a dinner for Father's Day. Well, I didn't know you offered gift boxes or gift cards or whatever it is. Just hit people with it and it's a great place to capture email addresses on your website. There should be several points where you are collecting email addresses on a contact page in the footer of your website and probably on a pop up. You should always be collecting people's information and again make it really easy for them to do the things you need them to do in your main navigation bar. Here's another tip. Don't have the home button. Everyone knows in the year 2025 and beyond that when you click the logo it takes you back to the homepage. You don't also need a home. It's, it's, it's wasted real estate. It's one more thing for people to read that doesn't actually get them to where you want to get them to, which is to start their order or to make a reservation. That's it guys. That's the beginning of this conversation. A lot of your website is closely connected to your SEO ranking. Like I said, we're going to talk about that in a little bit, in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned. But this is how we do a slight tune up on your website. I talk about this in my book as well. Again, I talked about this at the top. I'll remind you again, if you click the link in the show notes, you can get my book for free. You just pay shipping available to anybody in the United States. Or you can go to our instagram page @restaurantstrategy. Send us a DM with the word book B O okay. We have a manychat automation set up so the computer will automatically send you the link where you can go get your copy. One thing I didn't I neglected to mention earlier, I'll mention now is that when you order a book that way it also comes with a free month of our membership site. So we have a membership site called Restaurant foundations. It's regularly $97 a month. You get a free month as soon as you order the book. So all of the online content there is meant to complement the ideas and the insights in the book. You can cancel at any time. So what I recommend is like go in, dive in, take advantage of all of the material that's on there. We are always adding new stuff so obviously I hope you stick around and get the new content we every single month. But even if you don't, if you just want to cancel the before your 30 day mark, fine, go in there, you know, devour all the stuff, get all the downloads for free and then just cancel. It's totally fine. Again, we do that because the content is meant to complement the ideas and the insights in the book. The first module of the online course, for example, goes. Goes follows tracks identically with the first part of the book, the restaurant marketing mindset. That's it. Again, you can go in the show notes or you can go to our restaurant strategy page on Instagram DM us the word book and you can get the link to get the book for free. As always, appreciate you guys being here each and every week. Thank you very much and I will see you next time.