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WordPress is a blogging engine that has become a de facto content management system. That’s a lot of fancy words for saying, pick a theme, use WordPress, and your site could be up and online in no time. Here are ten things you can easily do if you’re using a restaurant theme from either WooThemes, Templatic or Elegant Themes.

1. Highlight Today’s Special

On the front page of your site, you can feature your Today’s Special and entice your site viewers to come and try it out. Sometimes people who dine in for the first time order the Today’s Special to review your restaurant’s overall food quality. Featuring it on your front page will definitely attract more potential visitors to your restaurant.

2. Articulate your Restaurant Hours

If you wanted to let your customers know the time your restaurant opens and closes both on weekdays and weekends, you can post the Restaurant Hours feature on the homepage. This information is vital in getting positive customer reviews – after all, no one wants to show up after your kitchen has closed.

3. Display your Menu

One of the useful features you can include on your site is displaying your restaurant’s complete menu. You can even add the prices for each dish and include their photos too. It’s the photos that make it work so well – you’re not inviting people to review your prices, you’re inviting them to taste your meals.

4. Accept Reservations

Accepting reservations for your restaurant is one of the best ways to get folks in your door. You can easily do this online. Just make a separate page for Reservations and post the details needed. You can also include the restaurant policy for cancellations, menu ordering, etc. Some themes, like the one from WooThemes, supports it natively in the theme.

5. Collect Reviews

Another feature you can use is the Review page which showcases real customer reviews of your restaurant. If there are other websites that featured you in their reviews, you can also post the summary of the article and the link to the featured review about your restaurant.

6.  Showcase your Staff

Make a statement on the web by featuring the staff of your restaurant. Make your chef and other restaurant staff feel special and well-known. You can even include some of their quirks – making it easy to relate to them. If you’re a high-end establishment, highlight your chef’s credentials.

7. Keep a Blog

Now, don’t forget to add a blog on your Restaurant Site. You are, after all, using WordPress as your platform. Taking advantage of the blog feature allows you to update your regular customers with the latest additions on your menu, new promos, and other things you’d like to share with them.

8. Create Special Offers

Make your customers feel special by letting them download discount coupons straight from your site. You can also use the Special Offers section to promote discount offers, eat-all-you-can buffet events, and other promotions your restaurant may have for the current month. It’s another place to highlight the next topic….

9. Host Private Events

If your restaurant has a separate room for special events, you can promote this by creating a page outlining the size of the hall and including some pictures. You can even demonstrate different decoration ideas with photo galleries which are easy to put online – because WordPress supports it naturally.

10. Never forget your Contact Info

Make your Restaurant Site an online business card by creating a Contact Info right in the homepage. This allows your customers to contact you directly on the phone for menu queries, reservations, and other things they’d like to ask you about.

Ready to get started?

So there you go – 10 quick things you can do if you own a restaurant and want to get online without spending thousands of dollars. Did I mention WordPress is free? And you can pick up a theme like Diner by WooThemes.

1. It should make it really easy for your customers to reach you.

Having a contact form is critical, and it’s essential that it work right. Many WordPress plugins exist to help you with contact forms, but not all of them will let you craft an effective auto-reply (letting them know you’ve received their message), or forward the message to you in a way that makes sense (maybe on that smart phone of yours). That’s why I am a huge fan of Gravity Forms. It does it all. And it’s really easy to use.

2. It should have easy ways for your client to develop a relationship with you.

Relationship? Sure. If a person walked into your business, you wouldn’t ignore them. So don’t do that when they visit your site. Create ways for them to stay engaged with you beyond this one visit. How? One way is to make sure your site has link to your twitter or facebook account. That’s a simple way for people to connect in other arenas and “follow” you.

3. Make it easy for people to meet with you.

Maybe your business is all online and this isn’t as applicable. But for most of us, we do business in person. So don’t assume that your clients are suddenly going to become internet gurus overnight. Instead, make it easy for people to connect with you in person. The best way is to integrate an online appointment tool, like those I wrote about in another post.

4. Offer clients ways to spread the word (and make money, if you can).

Whether it’s an affiliate program, or just a simple way to forward some of your special brand to their network, help them spread the word. If you’re selling stuff, offer them a portion of proceeds by setting up an affiliate program. It doesn’t have to be full blown, and lots of plugins can help (the makers of the WP eStore and eMember make WP Affiliate), but it could be as simple as an online coupon that clients can print and hand to others, putting their own name on it.

5. Make sure they know what you’re good at.

A portfolio, or case studies, of happy clients goes a long way to help someone make the decision to follow up with you. Keep them fresh, keep adding to it, and make sure people know that you do good work.

So that’s it. That’s my list of 5 things that really ought to be happening, even while you’re sleeping or on vacation. Does your site meet the standard? Go above? Is there something you think needs to be added?

Are you selling a physical product or a digital product?

If you’re selling physical products, then you’ll want to integrate a plugin like shopp or WP e-commerce. These are both really simple to use, and they do most of the work for you – from creating the shopping cart, to creating the product grid pages that show off all your wares. WP e-commerce is free, until you add the additional pieces that can end up costing you about $40. Not bad. Shopp is just a little more expensive at about $50 (but in reality that’s only for upgrades, the actual plugin is free).

If you’re selling a digital product, then you may want to look at WP eStore, which can be as cheap as $30.

As you can see, the cost of these plugins that integrate directly with WordPress isn’t very expensive. Especially if you consider what it would cost for you to develop or write this kind of code yourself.

But what if you’re not selling products? What if you’re selling access to a portion of your web site for it’s protected content? A subscription site? Then you’d look at WP eStore again, but look at their integrated WP eMember as well, to help you. Of course other products exist to help you with subscriptions as well, like Wishlist Member. Of course that costs you about $100, whereas eMember is typically about $35, and sometimes package deals bring the cost down.

Ok, now what if you’re selling services? The kind that you provide in person? Well, you have two ways to think about it, and both are pretty easy. First, and this should be said for all of the above as well, no matter what you’ll want a Paypal account. Even just the Standard kind that let’s you receive money. And that’s really option 1 – just use Paypal – they even have invoicing as part of their simple Merchant Services (Paypal Standard).

The other option is to look at some of the solutions in another of our articles on online appointment bookings because some of them offer direct solutions for collecting payment (before the appointment, etc), and others integrate with products like FreshBooks (if you have an account) so that you can send out invoices after the fact.

So that’s the quick round up of all your options. Look for upcoming videos on these different solutions and how to configure each one.

Managing your time is critical – regardless of your business size. So as you think about the new year, and new beginnings, maybe it’s time to re-think how you leverage the web to manage your time – particularly how you manage the interaction between you and your clients. Online booking sites are available at low monthly fees (some are free) and it’s worth looking into them.

Here’s a quick list of the six I recently reviewed: GenBook, Acuity, Bookfresh, Setster, Clickbook, and ScheduleThing.

Soon I’ll be adding a seventh to my list: bookd.

So, to cut to the chase, now that you have links and can review their sites and prices, which is best? The answer depends on what’s most important to you. Here’s my simple breakdown:

To get the most GUI interfaces – from a badge to put on your website, to a plugin that integrates to your site, to a schedule site all on it’s own, you’ll want to look at Bookfresh. But the free account limits incoming appointments to 3 a month.

To get the one that integrates best into your sidebar so that it’s easy to have appear all throughout your WordPress site, I’d pick Setster (which I have).

When free is the most important thing – Genbook offers a solution that doesn’t limit how many users (which Acuity does). It won’t integrate into your site the same way as others will, but when free counts, it’s a good option.

If you want an overall ease of use experience, I really enjoyed using ScheduleThing and you may as well.

What sets ClickBook apart is the potential of using text messages effectively to remind clients of upcoming appointments.

And if you only have one schedule you’re managing, the cheapest “paid” account that opens up personalization is brought to you by Acuity, for only $10, rather than the traditional $19.99 that most paid accounts start off at with the others.

Have you used one? What was your take?