cstbistro.com restaurant website
Completed March 2016
The cstbistro.com restaurant website for C St Bistro in Jacksonville, Oregon is the first I’ve done for an eatery. We started it in June of 2015 and they immediately became too busy to work with me on it, so there was a substantial lag time between the beginning and completion dates. Despite that, once we got back underway it was really fun to do. Restaurant owner Paul Becking was very happy with his new website when it was complete. Here’s a look at the home page:
The home page has several features of interest to other restaurant owners. First is the prominent display of the contact information, including a linked phone number, in the header of the site. When it responds to being viewed on a mobile device, this information is still front and center, so it’s convenient for today’s on-the-go patrons.
Though Paul prefers to take reservations by phone, the reservation module is also a key home page feature. This form can be integrated with the two most popular reservation systems, OpenTable and Bookatable, into your site.
Also of interest, the home page slider also has slides that display the Google Virtual Tours that Paul had made for his restaurant. Go to cstbistro.com to see them in action!
This website also takes advantage of the capability to use “schema” markup, which is used by search engines to improve the display of search results. This makes it easier for the right people to find your website. Visitors will also have immediate access to the important information they want to know.
The menu section of the site can accommodate several meal times. In this case, we have a brunch/lunch and dinner menu, accompanied by a wine list, beverage descriptions and specials. Chef Paul chose not to publish prices since their menu is based on locally available ingredients and his costs can change frequently, but they can be added, as well as flags for recommended dishes and more. You can choose to display pictures of your offerings or not, or some with and some without as on this site. These menu pages are very custom, so if you’re interested in a site like this one for your restaurant or café, rest assured that it can be tailored specifically to your personal taste and needs.
While the entire cstbistro.com site is fully responsive to mobile devices, the menu page is particularly graceful and attractive on a phone or tablet.
Another nice thing about this layout is that you can choose from the media library or your own Instagram feed to display gallery pictures. Paul wanted to use his Instagram feed as he found it more efficient to shoot new dishes and upload them. The captions you enter in Instagram are displayed in tooltips when one mouses over the image, another handy and time-saving feature. This method of keeping the galleries up to date is seen at the bottom of each menu page, About page, and again on the C St Bistro Photos page. It also allows him and his staff to simply shoot new menus as they change so he can easily keep his customers informed of the current offerings from his kitchen.
One of the most beautiful pages on this site is Meet the Chefs. With the currently popular parallax effect applied to the background images, this page has a depth and dimension of its own…an elegant way to introduce people to your key staff members. See how parallax works in action here.
To promote events and make announcements such as seasonally changing open hours, we also added a blog to the cstbistro.com restaurant website.
The cstbistro.com restaurant website is fully responsive and therefore mobile-friendly. It’s search engine optimized and designed to be user-friendly while presenting the bistro in its best possible light. This is just one layout that can be used to promote your restaurant, café or eatery. If you would prefer another layout, that can be done! Other layouts might not have all the features seen above incorporated into them, but there’s a plugin for just about any feature you might desire. If you are interested in a website as part of your restaurant’s online marketing strategy, contact Hannah West Design!
