LetsEat! News

Search Engine Optimizing Your Restaurant’s Website

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a dense topic. It is a big enough topic that many people make a pretty decent living doing it, and there are dozens of books written about the subject. However, for most restaurant owners, a few minor updates and changes can be enough to make a significant difference in terms of where you rank for select keywords.

While you may need to pay a specialist or agency to rank well for highly competitive terms, the following articles should help get started with the basics:

Choosing a Good Domain Name for Your Restaurant
Picking and Sticking with Keywords
Writing a Solid Home Page
Having Relevant Titles and Meta Descriptions
Linking in from External Websites

If you follow these articles, you will most likely do well in searches for your restaurant’s name, and possibly some related keywords as well. Unfortunately, all of your competitors are doing the same thing, so your results will vary, depending on where you are located, and what you are aiming for.

If you have any questions about any of these topics, you can email support for advice.

Use a standalone mobile web address

LetsEat.at automatically redirects mobile web users to the mobile version of your website. However, if you would like to add a specifically mobile web address to your takeout menus and business cards, you can now map a m.example.com style web address to your domain.

It’s simple. Just follow the instructions in the help section for setting up a ‘www’ web address, but add a second CNAME for ‘m’ that also points at letseat.at. The instructions in the help section for Godaddy, Namecheap, and LetsEat.at Domains have been updated.

Feel free to email support if you have any questions about this.

Another benefit of this feature is that you can now use LetsEat.at solely as your mobile website if you already have a website hosted with another company that isn’t mobile-optimized.

Add videos from YouTube and Vimeo to your restaurant’s website

Videos can be a great way to introduce your restaurant to new customers. With a well-produced video, you can show them the best your restaurant has to offer in just minutes via your website or through their mobile phone.

With LetsEat’s new video import feature, you can add a video from YouTube or Vimeo just by entering its web address! It’s that easy. No Javascript snippets or HTML embed codes, and the videos auto-resize to fit your website’s layout.

To add videos, just log in and go to Pages » Videos.

21 updated website themes

The theme gallery has been updated with a batch of redesigned versions of many of the existing themes.

A lot has changed on the internet since LetsEat.at launched back in 2008, and the updated themes reflect these new technologies.

The new themes are wider and have font sizes that read more comfortably in tablet browsers, as well as in larger monitors. They also support and come default with some of the 50+ new fonts in the font library. All the new versions of the themes use transparent background images, meaning you can now safely use custom background photos without any odd side effects.

Restaurants using the old style themes can continue to do so, as the legacy themes will continue to be supported alongside the new ones.

Add a custom favicon for your website

Favicons are the small icons that appear in browser tabs beside the title of your website. LetsEat! now allows you to create a custom favicon simply by uploading an image file:

To add a favicon to your restaurant’s website, just log in and go to Appearance » Logo Settings.

Web or mobile-specific custom pages

Sometimes, you may need to add a widget or video embed that will only work on desktop computers or specifically on mobile devices. For those situations, you can now specify whether a custom page should appear in both platforms, web only, or mobile only:

New navigation layout!

The dashboard navigation layout has been redesigned to match LetsEat’s updated home page, simplified, and split up into two color-coded navigation areas: restaurant and account-specific. Also, with the new drop down selector, you can switch between restaurant websites by clicking on their name in the navigation. Hope you like it!

Upload an iPhone or iPad icon for your restaurant’s mobile website

LetsEat! Pro users can upload an app icon for their website by going to Appearance » Mobile Customizations. With this new feature, when customers save your website to their phone’s home screen, they will see an icon for your website next to the native apps!

Customize the colors and logo of your restaurant’s mobile website

Did you know that over 30% of the traffic to your restaurant’s website comes from mobile phones and other handheld devices? Your mobile presence matters more than ever, and your LetsEat.at website is well equipped to handle these new visitors.

Starting today, LetsEat! Pro users can modify the appearance of their mobile website to match their logo and website’s look and feel. Simply log in and go to Appearance » Mobile Customization to change the font colors and upload a mobile-specific logo.

There will be more updates to this section in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out here for more updates (or follow @letseat on Twitter or Like us on Facebook)!

Create additional logins for managers and employees

Want your kitchen manager or one of the bartenders to manage your restaurant’s website without giving them your personal email and password login credentials? Starting today, LetsEat! Pro restaurants can have unlimited additional user logins.

It’s simple—just log in and go to the Users link in the top navigation to create and manage logins:

This is not only great news for restaurant owners, but also for web developers managing multiple clients. The secondary users you create for your websites don’t have authorization or access to billing-related pages. This means that secondary users don’t have access to your credit card update page or invoices, and can’t cancel or downgrade their account without your permission.