What Your Restaurant Website’s Data Can Tell You

Written by Justine Nightingale
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 08:00am CST

There is a saying by Thomas Redman, known as the “Data Doc,” that says, “Where there is data smoke, there is business fire.” So, if you want to light your marketing on fire and grow your business, data analytics is a must.

In our digital age, data is knowledge, and knowledge is one of the keys to success. (tweet this) We look at what your restaurant website’s data can tell you and how you can use it to drive customers to your restaurant.

What is the Point of Website Analytics?

Your website’s data analytics helps you process, track, and understand how people use your restaurant website. When you understand this data, you can optimize your website and improve the overall user experience.

Here is some of the information you can learn about your website:

• How many people visit your site each day.
• Where your website visitors come from.
• What pages they visit.
• The path they take once on your website from page to page.
• How long they stay on each page.
• How long they stay on your website before bouncing off.
• If visitors stay on your most important pages.
• The number of people who leave after visiting only one of your website pages.
• The most popular pages on your website.

Knowing and understanding this data can help you make good marketing decisions. You can test your pages, revise them, and then test again to see if your data improves.

Now, let’s dive a little deeper into your analytics so you can review your restaurant website’s data.

What Metrics Should I Measure?

When using an analytics tool like Google Analytics, there are three things you may notice right on the screen. Those are Visits, Unique Visitors, and Pageviews. These are the who and how of the “hits” to your website.

While these are important metrics, they don’t necessarily tell you the quality of engagement on your restaurant website. You can only learn quantity from this data.

While this data is important, there are several other data points to measure that we look at next.

Who Are Your Website Visitors?

It’s important to know where your visitors are coming from. Analytics can tell you the following:

• If a visitor is new or returning.
• Is your visitor local?
• What type of device did they use to look at your website? Was it an Android or iPhone? A desktop or cell phone?
• What browser they used to surf your website.

Knowing this information can help you craft the right content for the people who do land on your website. For example, if too many of them aren’t from your area, then you need to add more local information to your website to draw the customers who will actually eat at your restaurant.

What Did the Visitors Do When They Were on Your Website?

For example, you may notice that no one visits your online ordering page. This might lead you to discover there is an issue with the page.

You can also learn how many pages people visited and how long they stayed there. If everyone seems to bounce off the same page, you may need to rework that page.

Once you know how many people only look at one page and nothing else, you might ask yourself if your site is hard to navigate or unappealing.

You also want to study your bounce rates. They are only concerning if you don’t understand and use the data.

For example, if you notice the bounce rate on your home page is 65%, that may not be worrisome if they just landed there for your location or phone number. If your online menu pages have a 65% bounce rate, that may indicate an issue.

Don’t look at your whole site’s bounce rate. Look at individual pages to learn the most valuable information. (tweet this)

Where Did Your Website Visitors Come From?

This data is really important as you build out your marketing strategy. There are several sources website visitors come from:

• Direct Traffic
• Organic Search
• Social Media
• Referral
• Paid Traffic

With this data, you can decide where to put your money for paid ads. You can also learn where you might need to improve your search engine optimization to increase your organic search traffic.

When Did They Arrive on Your Website?

Another helpful piece of data concerns when website visitors land on your restaurant site.

Was there a spike on a certain day of the week? For example, you had 500 people every day except Thursday, which showed 1,000 visitors. You can look at what made that happen.

Did you share a blog article or send a special promotion through email or SMS marketing? Did your paid ads spend more that day?

Whatever you learn, you can use it to increase traffic on other days of the week, too.

How and Where Did They Spend Their Time?

From your data, you can learn about the most popular pages on your website.

For example, do people spend a lot of time on your dessert pages? Or do people look for your location pages more often?

Once you know your most popular pages, you can make sure you have the best content possible and a strong call to action.

Where Did They Drop Off?

This is another vital data point.

Take a look at your funnel reports, see how they move from page to page, and learn where they drop off.

For example, do they drop off on your reservations page? Or do they leave it on a particular menu page?

There may be a perfectly valid reason for drop-offs. You may also need to revise your website page if it’s difficult to read or navigate.

Final Thoughts on Your Restaurant Website’s Data

You can use the data mentioned here to learn if your website is engaging, easy to navigate, and meeting your website visitors’ needs.

The goal of your restaurant website is information, conversions, and, ultimately, sales. Using your data, you can make website improvements to improve your bottom line and gain conversions and sales.

Is your website ready to help your restaurant succeed? Have you looked at your restaurant’s analytics? At Restaurant Engine, we can create a website for you that has the right keywords to land you at the top of search engine results pages and bring guests to your doors. Your website is the centerpiece of your online marketing, and it needs to look and perform well. You can count on us to create an amazing website that presents a unified brand for your restaurant and works across all digital platforms. Let us help you make the perfect site that draws customers in, improves customer engagement and your conversion rate, and enables you to grow your new business using website data! 

Are you ready to take your restaurant to the next level with a new website?

Get your free website consultation today!

Images: Lukas Blazek and Jack Finnigan on Unsplash

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