First Look : Websites for Pubs

Your website should complement what your business does on a day-to-day basis so consider it a shop window for what you offer. It should be friendly and engaging and reflect the personal service you and your staff provide your customers when they visit your business.

If you have a particular style, look or colour that you use on your signage, menus etc this should be reflected in your website

Have a specific contact page which includes all your details e.g. opening hours, food served times, address, telephone number, email address plus a map of your location, local transport links e.g. railway station 3 minute walk away and if finding you is difficult provide written instructions.

Your opening hours/food served times need to be easy to find on your website. If you can get them on each page this is a bonus but not always practical

The saying ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ is so relevant when a customer is looking at your business for the first time through your website. Don’t cut corners on your photos – if you can afford a professional photographer please do it! Fantastic pictures on your website of your business, drinks, food, accommodation, garden etc will entice new customers in and take away the fear factor of not knowing what it will be like when they get there

Potential customers generally like to see what is available and how much it costs before visiting so ensure that you include your menus (both food and drink if relevant) on your site. Use the content management system to display your menu on the page as it makes it easy to change and update prices as required. However also offer a PDF download of your menu so that customers can print it off – useful if they want to pass on to friends or relatives

An important section to include. It needs to be kept fresh and up to date to encourage customers to keep re-visiting your website and your business. Have a tabbed page if you need to include a lot of dates and information and/or use a shortened version on your home page to grab attention

Show off the brilliant and passionate people that work in your business and include a picture of them, what their position is and a little bit about them – and don’t forget to include yourselves!

You have a very short window to capture your customers’ attention, so keep your copy concise and write in a friendly engaging style. Proof read it thoroughly as customers will notice mistakes quickly!!

Offer your customers the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter (by email or in the post) and if you use Facebook and/or Twitter include links so that they can become a fan or follow you easily

Consider including a ‘website exclusive’ offer – this will encourage a new customer to your website to come along and visit your business for the first time and will also give you a test of how much new business is coming from your website

Customers should be able to find their way round your website quickly and easily. The trick is to ensure that your customer stays and explores your site for as long as possible

A good website design should be easy on your customers' eyes. You should give your site enough breathing space around the text, images and be consistent with font styles, sizes and colours etc

Check that your site will work in most common browsers (latest and previous versions), such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari

The trick here is to minimise the file sizes of your graphics and scripts. The smaller file sizes are the quicker your site will load. Many customers don't have very much patience even with the higher broadband speeds that are now available