Visually powerful hospitality websites are hard to find. I know - I'm always looking for them! Too many websites put photos in as an afterthought, featuring often poor quality images of their food that can actually have a negative effect on business. Additionally, these photos (whether good or bad) are buried in the depths of a website instead of where they should be - on the home page giving potential diners immediate reasons to visit your restaurant. Your website only has a few seconds to convince new diners to pick up the phone to book a table, and these diners have no time to waste searching for information that can help them make a decision. If they don't get it immediately, they'll go elsewhere.And yet, when done properly, outstanding photos of your food and premises, placed strategically on your website and in other places on the Internet can create such a powerful effect on sales that it really should be an essential part of your online marketing strategy.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the perceived expense of getting professional photographs in the first place. But, when considering the amount of diners these 24/7 strategies can generate, the initial costs are soon justified. And professional photographers's rates very considerably, from less than $200 to over $2000, and you don't have to hire the most expensive.
Here are just a handful of uses great quality images can be used for:
- own website
- Flicker
- your blogs
- front window (in an electronic photo frame or printed copies of your food in a lightbox)
- email marketing
- other traditional marketing (e.g. flyers)
