Restaurant Website Builders: Are they worth it?

In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for restaurants. But beware: not all website solutions are created equal. While restaurant website builders like Wix and Squarespace may seem like quick and cheap options, they could be costing you more than you realize.

As a restaurant owner, your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. It’s not just about having any website – it’s about having the right website that truly represents your brand, engages visitors, and drives revenue.

This article will explore why popular website builders may be a risky choice for your restaurant, and what alternatives can help you create a website that truly serves your business goals. We’ll dive into the limitations of website builders, their hidden costs, and why a custom-designed website might be the better investment for your restaurant’s long-term success.

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What are Restaurant Website Builders?

Restaurant website builders are specialized software tools designed to help restaurant owners create and manage their websites without needing to know how to code. These platforms typically feature a drag-and-drop interface, making them accessible even to those with limited technical skills. The primary goal of these builders is to provide a quick, easy, and cost-effective way for restaurants to establish an online presence.

Several website builders are popular among restaurant owners due to their specialized features and ease of use:

• Squarespace: Known for its stylish design options and ease of use, Squarespace is typically used by restaurants that want to showcase their food photography and maintain a visually appealing site.
• Wix: Offering a lot of features, Wix offers a wide range of templates and apps, making it a top choice for many restaurants.
• BentoBox: Focuses on providing a comprehensive solution for restaurants, including features like online ordering, gift card sales, and event management.
• Weebly: Offers a straightforward platform with essential features, suitable for smaller restaurants or those just starting out.
• Webflow: Provides more advanced customization options, allowing for unique and highly tailored website designs.
• Popmenu: Specializes in enhancing customer engagement with interactive menus.
• Spoton: Known for its robust online ordering and reservation capabilities, making it a good choice for busy restaurants.

It is important to understand that all these website builder platforms are “proprietary” platforms, which, despite their ease of use, come with significant drawbacks and may not be the best choice in the long run.

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Is it Worth Using a Website Builder?

The primary reason that small business owners and freelancers use website builders is to (a) rapidly get a website up and running, and (b) not spend a lot of money.

However, they fail to take into account the most important thing, which is that a website to accomplish the purpose for which it was developed.

That bring us to the fundamental question: what should be the primary purpose of the restaurant website? Let’s understand this.

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What is the primary objective of a restaurant website?

The main goal of a restaurant website is to create a compelling online presence that converts visitors into diners or customers. This overarching objective can be broken down into several key components:

Attract and Inform Potential Customers

1. Showcase the Restaurant’s Unique Identity: The website should effectively communicate the restaurant’s brand, atmosphere, and culinary style through visuals and content.
2. Provide Essential Information: Visitors should easily find crucial details such as location, hours of operation, contact information, and directions.
3. Display the Menu: An up-to-date, easy-to-read menu is critical for attracting customers and helping them decide to visit or order.

Facilitate Customer Actions

1. Enable Online Reservations: A user-friendly reservation system can significantly increase bookings and help manage restaurant capacity.
2. Offer Online Ordering: Implementing a seamless online ordering system can boost sales and cater to customers who prefer takeout or delivery.
3. Encourage Engagement: Features like newsletter sign-ups, social media links, and contact forms can help build a loyal customer base.

Enhance Customer Experience

1. Mobile Optimization: With the increasing use of smartphones, ensuring the website is mobile-friendly is crucial for reaching potential customers.
2. Fast Loading Times: A quick-loading website improves user experience and can positively impact search engine rankings.
3. High-Quality Visuals: Appetizing food photography and attractive images of the restaurant can entice visitors to dine in or order.

Support Marketing Efforts

1. SEO Optimization: A well-optimized website helps the restaurant appear in local search results, attracting more potential customers.
2. Promote Special Offers: The website can be used to highlight promotions, events, or new menu items, encouraging repeat visits.
3. Showcase Reviews and Testimonials: Positive customer feedback can build trust and influence potential diners’ decisions.

By focusing on these objectives, a restaurant website can effectively serve as a powerful tool for attracting customers, increasing revenue, and building a strong online presence in the competitive food service industry. The website should be seen as an extension of the restaurant itself, providing a taste of the dining experience and making it easy for customers to engage with the business.

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Why You Should Not Use A Website Builder?

There are 3 absolutely unquestionable factors you should consider:

1. Your restaurant is unique; your website won’t be.

Consider this: Squarespace currently has 110 templates, with more than 4 million websites using them. Simple math shows us that 36,363 websites share the same template on an average.

Would you want your restaurant website to be looking the same as ~36,363 other websites around you? 

Here is an example of the template page to choose from:

You pride yourself on the quality of your food and the beauty of your restaurant. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors and makes you unique. But if you use a site built by a website builder, you will be using the same template as thousands of other restaurants.

What does that say about your restaurant? It certainly doesn’t scream amazing unique experience. If anything it says we don’t care about our brand and we may not care about your experience. If you’re an independent restaurant using a website builder, you’re no better than a chain restaurant.

You’ve probably worked hard to develop the ideal brand identity for your company. If you have, the last thing you want is for that vision to be lost on your website. If you create a one-of-a-kind website, it will stand out. This increases the likelihood that your prospective customers will use your services or purchase your products.

2. You do NOT own the website – Accept it!

You’ll be building your house on someone else’s land!

Squarespace terms of services state that – Any content you upload to their builder remains “yours.” However, they have “permission” to use it in ways necessary to provide, improve, promote, and protect THEIR services.”

If your content is theirs to use, is it truly yours? 

Worse, still, however, is the fact that you could be stuck using your website builder for the rest of the time you are in business.

Websites built using Wix and Squarespace are notoriously difficult (and sometimes impossible) to migrate. In fact, you won’t actually own the website. You will just be renting it from Wix or Squarespace.

These companies do this on purpose so that you have to keep paying the monthly fee. What is the point in paying for a website that you don’t own and can’t change?

Hint: there isn’t one!

1. Your site may lose some of its customizations.
2. For some builders, your domain and branding will reset to the website builder’s free, cheaper looking aesthetic.
3. For others like Squarespace, your site will be deleted after 30 days. This means subscriptions are endless, for life!

3. Restricted Customization – your site may not do everything you want 

Website builders by their very nature restrict customization.

Do you want to be able to take online orders through your website? How about integrating OpenTable so that customers can reserve a table?

If you use a website builder, it is doubtful that your website will be able to have this functionality. And if it does have it, it probably won’t work well.

That’s because websites built using website builders are meant to be basic. They aren’t meant to be used by forward-thinking restaurants who want to get the most out of their website. And because you are just one customer in a million, you aren’t going to get the functionality enabled that you need.

4. Your site may not be mobile-first optimized

If you’ve read the other posts on our blog, you don’t need us to tell you the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. But there’s no guarantee you’ll get one if you use a restaurant website builder. Even if it looks good on one mobile device, it may not be built to look great on them all.

5. You don’t get the support you need 

What happens if your website stops working or part of it breaks? The matter could be resolved in less than an hour if you used a web design agency. But if you use a website builder, you could be the one having to work out how to fix the problem.

6. They are bad for SEO

This is perhaps the biggest issue with restaurant website creators. They are terrible when it comes to ranking in Google—even though they sell themselves as being SEO-friendly. 

There are a couple of reasons why a website built using a website builder isn’t likely to rank well on Google. For one, these builders tend to spit out a jumble of code because of the way they let users customize their sites. The code created by any page builder will always be exponentially more bloated.

While these may allow users to create the site they want, the masses of code tend to lead to the poor on-page structure which can slow the website down significantly. There’s nothing you can do to improve the code of your website to make it faster, either as most builders have a closed source code.

Even if there are no search engine ranking considerations, A Google study shows that if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of consumers will abandon it.

Website builders tend to focus more on the aesthetic of the website rather than the backend technicalities that make your website a well-oiled SEO machine that actually attracts traffic.

What you don’t want is a beautiful website that looks fantastic but receives little to no traffic due to its SEO limitations.

7. You can’t grow or change your website

Build your restaurant’s website with a website builder, and you’re stuck with it. It may not have a Content Management System (CMS), which means you won’t be able to add or edit the pages you create. It also means you won’t be able to add new content such as blog posts to grow your traffic and attract new customers.

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What Can Restaurant Owners Do Instead?

(a) Hire Professional Website Designer

Use a trusted restaurant web design agency to create your restaurant website. You will get a much, much better experience and a much better end product. When you use a proper agency, you will:

• Actually own your website outright
• Get a great looking unique website built to rank in Google
• Support for at least a year and probably a lot longer
• Have a website that works on all smartphones
• Get expert advice and support along the way

(b) Build on WordPress CMS

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS software, and it powers around 43% of all websites on the internet. You cannot go wrong building your restaurant website on WordPress for the following reasons:

• It’s free. The WordPress platform is open-source and is entirely free to use.
• It’s highly flexible and customizable. Many themes and plugin options are available to expand the website’s functionality.
• It’s a scalable platform to meet the needs of the business as it grows There’s no need to migrate to a different platform once the website takes off.
• It’s relatively easy to use to create beautiful, fully functional websites using only the graphical user interface.

(c) Host on Dedicated Hosting Server

Use dedicated hosting server to host your restaurant website. Avoid shared hosting for cheaper cost where your website coexists with that of other websites who share the same server. Here are the reasons:

• Server resources not shared: with dedicated hosting, you get the full resources of the server. You don’t need to worry about other shared websites clogging up the server’s CPU and RAM. With a dedicated server, you can be sure that other websites do not affect your website.
• Unique IP address: Each server has it’s own unique IP address. With shared hosting, that means that you are also sharing an IP address with multiple other websites. If one of your neighbors is a spam site or an adult site, this could mean having your websites’ rank pushed down. With dedicated hosting, you have a dedicated server, which means your own unique IP address. This is especially important if you are a online ordering site that requires SSL for credit card processing.
• Enhanced performance and security: dedicated servers provide more stability and reliability than shared hosting.With a dedicated server, you can also be sure that you aren’t sharing space with a malicious website or a potential spammer. Dedicated hosting allows enhanced security, particularly important for restaurants handling online ordering transactions.
• Scalability & Flexibility: A dedicated server allows to scale and customize server environment that fits their needs. They can choose the platform and software they really need, allowing more control over how their dedicated server is configured. 

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Summary

Choosing the right platform for your restaurant’s website is a critical decision that can significantly impact your online presence and business success. While website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and others offer quick and seemingly cost-effective solutions, they come with substantial limitations that may hinder your restaurant’s growth and online performance.

Key takeaways from this analysis include:

1. Limited Customization: Website builders often restrict your ability to create a truly unique design that reflects your restaurant’s brand identity.
2. SEO Challenges: Many builders have limitations in SEO capabilities, potentially affecting your visibility in local search results.
3. Performance Issues: Websites created with these builders may suffer from slower loading speeds, impacting user experience and search rankings.
4. Scalability Concerns: As your restaurant grows, you may find website builders lack the flexibility to accommodate your evolving needs.
5. Hidden Costs: While initially appearing cost-effective, website builders often have hidden fees and necessary upgrades that can increase overall expenses.
6. Limited Control: You may have restricted control over your content and data, which can be problematic for maintaining brand integrity.
7. Feature Limitations: Advanced features crucial for restaurants, such as complex reservation systems or custom loyalty programs, may be difficult or impossible to implement.
8. Migration Difficulties: Moving away from a website builder to a more robust platform can be challenging and time-consuming.

Instead of relying on website builders, consider investing in a custom-built website. While it may require a larger upfront investment, a custom website offers:

• Complete design flexibility to showcase your unique brand
• Superior performance and SEO optimization
• Scalability to grow with your business
• Full control over your content and features
• The ability to implement advanced, restaurant-specific functionalities

Remember, your website is often the first point of contact between your restaurant and potential customers. It should not only inform but also engage and convert visitors into diners. By choosing a solution that offers full customization and control, you’re investing in a powerful tool that can drive your restaurant’s success in the digital age.Ultimately, while website builders may seem appealing for their ease of use and low initial cost, the long-term benefits of a custom-built website often outweigh these short-term advantages for restaurants serious about establishing a strong, effective online presence.

Do you need a new website for your restaurant? Learn about our website design service or Get in touch with us

We’ll walk you through the entire website design process, providing you with expert guidance on what you need and a custom quote at the end of it.