Danspot Restaurant: Digital Marketing Audit

Danspot is a locally-owned restaurant and bar located in Walton Hills, Ohio.

The food and service I’ve received from them have been good. But, one area I found lacking was their website and SEO. So, in this post, I’m going to share a few improvements they can make to grow their business online.

Keep in mind, Danspot is not currently one of our clients.

The recommendations in this post don’t factor in their goals or capabilities as a company. These are some of the thoughts I would have if I was consulting with Danspot.

The Goal

This post assumes that Danspot would like to:

1. Increase online orders
2. Provide a better customer experience online

The recommendations in this post will focus on achieving those 2 goals.

Increase Online Orders

Increasing online orders will force us to do one of the following:

1. Bring more potential customers to the website
2. Convert more website visitors into customers
3. Use platforms that already have hungry customers (ex. Doordash)

Without knowing some KPIs of Danspot’s restaurant (ex. Profit margins), I can’t recommend expanding to other platforms like Doordash.

Bringing more potential customers to the website could help us achieve this goal. But, the success of this strategy would depend on a few, currently unknown, KPIs – such as:

• The cost to bring more potential customers to the website
• The percentage of potential customers that place an order
• The average order amount
• The average customer lifetime value

Since I don’t have that info, we’ll focus on turning more website visitors into customers. It always makes sense to turn more website visitors into customers.

Make The Website Easier To Use

This is what Danspot’s homepage currently looks like:

The job of the homepage is to tell what you do. You also want a call-to-action that allows visitors to take the next steps.

The current Danspot homepage does both of those but it could be easier for the customer.

A few changes to split test for improvement are:

1. A uniquely colored call-to-action that’s hard to miss
2. Less variation in font size and color
3. A clearer description of Danspot

Those changes would make Danspot’s homepage look something like this:

This new design does the following:

1. Clearly describes Danspot (an Italian-inspired restaurant)
2. Has an obvious call-to-action (“order online”)
3. Showcases some of the most important info (ordering options, coupons, and hours).

This page could likely be further improved by adding high-quality images and improving the headline/copy.

Improve User Experience

The “menu” page on Danspot’s website doesn’t show the menu. It takes a user to a page that shows photos of the menu.

If a user wants to view the menu, they’ll need to click the “view our menu” button. That button will then open a PDF that lists the menu.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with linking to a PDF, the menu page should do a few things:

• Show the menu items
• Be in an easy-to-read format
• Provide SEO benefit
• Allow easy editing

The PDF format can be:

• Hard to read on mobile (requiring pinch-to-zoom and dragging)
• More work to edit and publish new versions
• Limiting for SEO
• Hard to track data on engagement

Instead of making users view two separate pages to see the menu, here’s an example of what the menu could look like:

The HTML version of the menu:

• Is easy to read on all devices
• Is easy to add/remove new items
• Provides SEO benefit
• Can be expanded with photos or links to related content
• Allows us to better track data

Final Thoughts

It’s never a bad idea to increase your website’s conversion rate.

Anyone looking to convert more website visitors should:

1. Have KPIs/metrics they measure to track the success
2. Consistently A/B split test changes
3. Simplify as much as possible

There’s no secret behind optimizing your conversion rate. It’s a constant cycle of making changes and testing them.

Every increase in conversion rate makes your business more competitive than your competitors.

With that said, if you’re interested in growing your business online, schedule a free consultation.

We only work with one business in a specific region and industry at one time. Once that spot is taken, we won’t be able to work with you.