We love all businesses equally, but this post goes out to our restaurant friends.

Houston, we’ve raved about your food time and again, and it seems like people are finally catching on. But, while we certainly wear the restaurant crown of the south, we’re still washing dishes in the kitchen of website marketing.

And if you can make a soufflé with the best of them and turn egg yolks into hollandaise, there’s no reason you can’t manage a simple, up-to-date website.

Here’s the recipe for success (Look, it’s not every day we get to use food puns and references, so deal with it.) inspired by one of the funniest and unfortunately, most accurate, blogs on the subject.

  1. Collect your ingredients. You’ll need basic information (and basic information only!) to build the content of the site. That includes your address(es), phone number, CORRECT hours and menu. If you want to play with the big boys, include UPCOMING events or a calendar, but if you still have holiday hours from LAST New Year’s Eve up, don’t bother. Then, combine the pieces on the front page of your website. If your website were a dinner, this would be a one-course meal – the meat and potatoes, if you will.
  2. Now, it’s time for the reduction, and as with your favorite sauce, you need to boil things down to the essentials. It’s important not to overwhelm the palate of your site visitors – while they may like complex flavors, they won’t want a complex website. So, forget flash, songs, slideshows and frustrating inconveniences like PDF menus (just leave it as an image). In fact, some of the best sites are made using WordPress blogs instead of intricately designed (and quickly outdated) sites.
  3. Make one for the road. Thanks to apps like Urbanspoon, Yelp, and AroundMe, more and more restaurant website visits are occurring via mobile phone, and it’s important to ensure a smooth delivery. A site that is designed for mobile use – whether it’s a special phone version or a home page with all of the info – it needs to be fast and easy. Make sure all of your numbers and addresses are text (not images) so viewers can copy and paste, and include a Google Maps link for directions. The fewer clicks required for information, the better.

  1. Ice the cake. If your restaurant requires or recommends a reservation, give customers the option to make the arrangements online. A simple form that gives an email confirmation can be set up faster than you can boil water, and it will impress your guests before they ever pick up a fork.

You’ve done the hard part by making great food and training the perfect staff – now you just have to do the rest. Take an hour to clean up your restaurant’s website, and we’re sure you’ll have customers eating out of your hands.

Bon appétit!