Is your site running well enough?
I see a lot of restaurant websites. I see websites built and managed by the restaurant owners themselves. I see websites built by web developers hired by the restaurant. I see websites that have been custom-built and I see websites that have been cobbled together from whatever tools are available.
But there’s one thing that all of these websites have in common: they’ve all been built on a tight budget.
That’s not a surprise. Profit margins in the restaurant industry are tiny, and most restaurateurs hang on to every penny they can. Who can blame them? But as it goes with a restaurant’s food prep, dinnerware or interior design, so it goes with a website: when you finish a job on-the-cheap, it’s going to have some rough edges.
The issue I encounter the most on the restaurant websites I see is poor performance. Most restaurant websites take too long to load. Even when a site seems to load quickly at home, it’s painfully slow when you’re away from your wifi, loading it up on your phone.
This is a problem that’s not always very easy to see. Slower websites appear lower in Google search results, but how do you know how much you’re being penalized? We know that visitors abandon slow websites, but how many customers are you losing?
It’s even harder to diagnose the source of your problem. Every website is slow for different reasons. Some say bad web hosting can be an issue, but is your host one of the good ones? Bloated plugins can slow your site down, but how do you identify the worst offenders? Automated tools help, but unless you know what you’re doing, it’s not always easy to determine how you can improve your site’s speed.
That’s why I’m really excited that my friends over at WP Site Care have introduced a new service: SiteCheck. They’re offering personalized audits of your site, with simple, actionable checklists of things you can do to improve your site speed, security and stability.
They gave me a look at a sample report and I’m impressed. Their audits are thorough, the reporting is detailed, and the actionable steps are clear and helpful. Each report is broken down into sections, covering everything from your web hosting to the plugins you’re using:
Each report section includes a summary for quick info at-a-glance:
And if there are any issues they recommend you address, they’re provided in a short, actionable list:
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while now, you may remember WP Site Care. I interviewed Ryan Sullivan, the head of the company, a couple years ago about their concierge site maintenance service. Their new SiteCheck service is a great addition for restaurateurs who are working on their website themselves to cut down on costs.
If you hurry, you can get an audit of your site for $299, a $100 discount on their regular price. This price won’t be around forever, so I’d encourage you to act on it soon.
