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Restaurant websites have one of the highest conversion rates, with around 10% of visitors making a booking before they leave.  That’s because the most common method of searching for a place to eat is using the internet.  If you’re a restaurant owner or manager, these are potential customers you simply cannot afford to miss out on and you need to create an online presence.

If you’re in the restaurant business, you probably have very little experience of building a website.  Don’t worry!  Using WordPress it’s so simple, you can make a restaurant website in 15 minutes.  Here’s how in 7 simple steps:

1.  Decide on a Hosting Company for Your Restaurant Website

The first thing you need to do is choose a company to host your website.  This can cost from as little as $6.95 per month.  Just make sure that you select a good quality company you can trust to guarantee the reliability of your service.  The last thing you want is your website going offline as your customers try to find you.  This article has plenty of guidance on Which Web Host to Choose.

2.  Register Your Restaurant Website Domain Name

Next you’ll need to select a domain name, which is basically the address of your website.  When it comes to restaurants, it’s probably best to use the name of your restaurant as your website address.  For example, if your restaurant was called Sizzler Steak House you could create the domain name: http://www.sizzlersteakhouse.com.   

You just need to check whether your chosen domain is still available, and this domain name checker will do this for you.  Then all you need to do is register your name, which your hosting company should be able to do.

3.  Download your Free Restaurant Website Builder

The most difficult stage of learning to make a restaurant website in 15 minutes is now complete.  Now comes the fun part… designing and building your website.

The next step is to download your free website builder.  WordPress is the ideal platform for creating your restaurant website and is extremely easy to use, customize to suit your needs and best of all, it’s completely free.  Millions of people are using it worldwide to create websites that look like they’re built by professionals.  As soon as you’ve downloaded WordPress, you now have your blank website template to begin customizing to suit your needs.

4.  Choose a Restaurant Theme

The really great thing about WordPress is that there are hundreds of free and premium themes available, which you can use to create the look, style and layout of your website.  All the program writing and complicated tasks are done for you.  Simply download your favorite theme to your WordPress website builder.  For more guidance on how to do this, this article tells you How to Install a WordPress Theme.

There are many different restaurant themes to choose from.  Here are three of the best, all of which are available to download through our WordPress themes page:

1. Food Plates:  this free theme is ideal for any restaurant or café, with a simple and professional style that will let the images of your food do the talking.  Fully widget ready, it comes with RSS feed buttons to spread the word about your great food, as well as pages in the header and a left side bar.
2. Be a Gourmet:  for a more fun and upbeat tone, this free WordPress restaurant theme comes with a search box, Recent Posts, Recent Comments and Welcome Text in the sidebar, social bookmarking buttons and sidebars on the left and right. 
3. Delicious: this is a premium restaurant theme, ideal for any kind of food establishment.  Although it costs $69 for a single license, $149 for multiple use, it’s worth the spend because it comes with four developed widgets, custom fields for images and four different page templates.  Ideal for a restaurant website with a blog attached. 

5.  Upload A Gallery of Delicious Food Photos to Your Website

The saying goes that people eat with their eyes, so it’s vital to place some good quality photos of your delicious food on your website.  You should also include some photos of the dining and bar area, to show people the style and ambiance of the place.

To really make your photos stand out and tantalize the taste buds, a slideshow is a good idea.  Featured Content Gallery is a really great plugin that creates an automated, fully rotating slideshow you can customize to place on any page, including the front page. 

Simply download the plugin from our resources page, go to the admin section of your WordPress site (which is http://yourdomainname.wp-admin), click on the plugin section where you can install new plugins.  Once downloaded you’ll see the Featured Content Gallery on your dashboard, which you can customize to suit your needs.  For more ideas on how to add slideshows to your new restaurant website, this article has plenty of ideas.

6.  Add a Table Booking Plugin

There are so many plugins you can use to add booking calendars and online reservation to your new website.  To save you time, so that you can make a website for your restaurant in under 15 minutes we’ve selected one of the most popular with caterers worldwide.  The WebReserv Embedded Booking Calendar provides your customers with the facility to easily check availability and reserve a table online.  As soon as they’ve made a reservation they will receive a confirmation email, which you will also receive so that you can make the reservation.  Upfront payment can also be secured. 

7.  Spreading the Word About Your Great Food

If you are planning to make a restaurant website in just 15 minutes, you’ll still have time to do a bit of online promotion.  One of the easiest ways to spread the word about your fabulous dining experience is using social bookmarking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter. 

The first step to social promotion is to get your customers to spread the word for you.  By adding the Sociable plugin, your website visitors can easily share news about your great food with all their social bookmarking friends.  A simple icon is placed at the end of each page, post and photo, so that visitors can easily share the content with their friends.  This is ideal if you have a special offer running with discount coupons, which your customers can help you promote through social bookmarking sites. 

So in just 15 minutes you have been able to make a top class restaurant website that gives your customers the ability to find you online, see photos of your great food, place an online order, pay in advance and tell all their friends about the wonderful experience they had!