Nabeel Alamgir, CMO of Bareburger: 5 Ways to Build the Best Restaurant Website
I love ordering from Seamless. I even order Bareburger from Seamless. If that doesn’t alarm you, it should. I am the CMO at Bareburger, and I more than anyone else should know the cost of doing business with them and other 3rd party ordering systems like UberEats and Caviar. These companies take, on average, 25% of every dollar a restaurant makes.
Sites like Seamless work because you can order from all of your favorite restaurants from one website. Their website has the friendliest UI out there, and they also have my credit card on file. It’s all pretty seamless.
This is why I made it my mission in 2018 to go out and make Bareburger’s the best restaurant website out there. So, here are the 5 ways to build the best restaurant website in 2018:
1. Have a clear call to action
On the home page, quickly guide your visitor to what they want to do: order online. Our development agency, Rocket & Mouse created a gif to convey that right off the bat.
Some days your guest might want to read about how your chicken is from 14 miles away from Goffle Farm, NJ, but mostly they just want their food and they want it fast.
We even added that gif for when someone visits a location page. They can check the hours, see how far away the location is from their place, and—guess what—order online.
2. Be an extension of the restaurant
People who go to Bareburger identify very strongly with their food. Whether it’s a gluten allergy, a plant-based diet, or the search for a tasty organic beef burger, Bareburger is a one-stop shop. Every table has a FAQ card that tells the diner all about our food sourcing.
So we created a Menu page that not only has the entire menu listed, but once an item is clicked, we show detailed information on sourcing of every single ingredient. Now you know exactly what you’re putting into your body and we think that’s important.
Sites like Seamless work because you can order from all of your favorite restaurants from one website. Their website has the friendliest UI out there, and they also have my credit card on file. It’s all pretty seamless.
3. Have a killer online ordering page
We partnered up with GoParrot to create the best pound for pound online ordering website out there. I’m looking at you, Sweetgreen. We wanted something simple and clean, just like our food. All the photography was taken by our social media team, Ludlow Creative. We didn’t even tell our kitchen that these were for a shoot—we didn't want to catfish anyone.
We also didn’t want our sourcing information lost, so hovering over an item displays a gif of sourcing information on each item. We left this out of the mobile version for a simpler check out process.
4. Create a simpler check-out process
Remember how I said that I always order from Seamless, because my credit card information is already there and logging in is super simple? So, we said what the heck, let’s get all those features on our site as well.
Facebook was once the key to our internet accounts, but I believe that is shifting to our cell phones. To log into the Bareburger website, you just enter your phone number, receive a 4 digit code on your phone, plug it in and voila, you’re in. Now you have all your personal and credit card information securely plugged in just like Seamless. Order away!
5. Repeat everything on mobile
Now take all 4 steps and repeat on mobile. But with only one call to action: online ordering. I tasked the Rocket & Mouse team to make sure that’s all people see, and they delivered with a bright orange button placed closest to the user's thumb.
If you notice, the online ordering page is similar if not better than Seamless in terms of its usability. And if a user is looking for more, it’s all there on the top right corner of their screen.
These are my 5 steps to creating a killer hospitality website. And the numbers don’t lie. We are up 24% in traffic since the creation of the new site, and up 11% in online ordering sales. Don’t forget to use my new friends at Rocket & Mouse if your ordering page needs some help.
Website —Rocket & Mouse
Online ordering — GoParrot
Photography — Ludlow Creative
Nabeel Alamgir is the CMO of Bareburger. For the perfect web ordering experience, visit bareburger.com.
