Many Restaurant owners looking to save money look at some of the cheaper alternatives to getting a Restaurant Website, and many use the free option with Wix.  Whether you choose the free version or the paid subscriptions, here are some things you might want to consider before spending the time to set up a Wix website.

Recently a Restaurant owner asked us “So when should I use a Wix website?”, to which we answered when you only want a website and you have the time to build it.  It is really important to remember that most Restaurant owners don’t want a website – They want the phone to ring, they want bookings, they want orders, they want full restaurants and they want a successful business.  A properly constructed website, integrated into other online marketing tools and your marketing and business plans, will create that, but unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands and patience to build up skills across areas like online marketing, SEO, and design, you may spend a lot of time on a website that still produces little in the way of new customers.

This is especially true when the price of our great looking websites, with integration to Restaurant industry marketing tools, like our Free OnlineRestaurant Booking System and Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system starts at just $995 inc GST.   It takes the hassle out of creating a website, gets it done quicker and allows you to leverage all of our skill and experience in building Restaurant websites.

We have seen some pretty good results with Wix, but it is a big committment to build a new website by yourself.  Before you consider to build a Wix website or not, consider the following 7 points:

1.  Wix websites take longer to setup.

To properly build a website requires a concept, content creation, SEO strategy, and grpahic design.  With Wix, your on your own.  Getting the information together, entering the menu and ensuring the grammar and spelling is correct takes time, especially for Restaurant where English is a second language.

It is the equivalent of creating a concept for a menu item, costing it out, training the kitchen staff, educating front of house and finally preparing the dish.  A lot goes on in the background to build a great meal.  Sure you can slap a few ingredients together hope it turns out alright, but chances are that it either won’t taste good, won’t look good on the plate or won’t be popular with your customers.

2.  Wix websites are harder to add on custom modules

Because Wix uses a proprietary system for building websites, it is very difficult to add in modules that you want to add in, which decreases the flexibility in what you want to do with your website.  An article last year in awesometechly.com, detailed 5 reasons why not to use Wix

3.  Wix does not have design assistance

Your on your own as far as the design of the website.  There is little guidance as to what works best for helping customers make a booking, what needs to be included and also getting the look right.  If you want to edit some images or change the size or format, you need to do those yourself.

4.  Wix can’t help with coding

If there is something  that you want to change, you need to do it yourself.  Wix have worked very hard to ensure that the User Interface is very easy to use, but if there is something specific that you want on your website, it is either difficult to do without programming experience or it can’t be done on the Wix platform.

5.  Wix does not provide marketing assistance

A website only needs to do 2 things – Sales and Marketing.  The content does the marketing, creating the lead which is a visitor to your website and the design, including the awesome photos closes the sale, ideally with an online order or booking.  There is few tricks to the trade.  To learn more about the balance of content and design, listen to our Podcast Content vs Design.

6.  Wix doesn’t assist with SEO

Search Engine Optimisation for a Restaurant requires a certain skillset.  With Wix your on your own.  With the team at Marketing4Restaurants, we never talk about SEO.  We talk about what makes your restaurant awesome and our marketing team worry about  the SEO for you.

7.  Wix websites are not optimised for SEO

Google is very particular about the way that it indexes websites.  Wix websites tend to not rank as highly as possible, partially because of the platform but mostly because small business owners are not experts in content creation strategies and SEO techniques that are vital in getting your website ranked by Google.

8.  Wix does not have Restaurant specific  add-ons

Need a Restaurant Online Ordering system for Wix?

Need a Restaurant Booking widget for Wix?

Unfortunately Wix, being a general website builder, does not have industry specific marketing tools like our Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering System and our Free Online Restaurant Booking System and it is diffucult to integrate them into a Wix site.  As we have discussed, these are the easiest tools to grow your database, so if you aren’t using them, then you are missing out on building a database of existing customers who are most likely to buy from you.

For most Restaurant owners, getting a Restaurant website from Wix is like getting an untrained cook in the kitchen to make a soufflé.  They can follow the recipe, and it kind of looks OK, but it won’t rise as high as it could of and there is a big chance it won’t rise at all (this is doubly so if it is me cooking the soufflé! 🙂 )

It is also really important to understand that getting your online marketing is critical for most restaurants.  Poor SEO can be the silent killer.  Listento our podcast on getting SEO right for a better understanding of how to get better SEO for your Restaurant website.  We can’t stress enough how important getting your SEO strategy as part of your overall online marketing strategy.  Getting it right can be the start of a really profitable Restaurant with the resources for you to start working less hours.

Looking for ways to find more customers and to turn them into repeat customers?  Contact the team at Marketing4Restaurants.com and we can help you with free marketing tools or one of our websites which

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