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I’ve been involved with a residential property management firm in Birmingham who have been looking into slicker ways of dealing with enquiries on the internet, particularly from existing tenants and residents as opposed to say any new-business enquires (however it will indirectly help with new business as it’s an important service that can be offered for new clients).

It’s taken a full step back to get the principles right first before rushing into techie-talk on how it’s all done, and involved consultation with marketing companies as well as residents and clients. The conclusion was three important angles that can be looked at independently or together; infact, to some degree they progress in importance and cost, almost an ‘upgrade’ in terms of how slick you really want to get with managing enquiries on the web. So here they are:

1. Basic enquiries from a website. It’s a typical series of boxes that someone adds their information into like name, telephone number, address, email address, and comments box. With managing lots of different properties one question was whether to have a drop-down list of these to choose from, as although this may be easier when submitting information it is very transparent with all the firm’s client list there. You could also look into predictive-typing instead, or just let people type from scratch and make the field compulsory to fill in.

You then need to look at what happens to all this information, typically pinged on an email to whoever needs to see it. After this, to look at where these forms are found, not only directly on the website but maybe other popular areas like a Facebook page and links within emails, and when it is on your main website whether there is a special area just for this service or a particular property as opposed to just a general area at the side of every page say. Another technical point as well was to make sure that it’s all fully mobile compatible, particularly within this context as most residents would be accessing through this method.

2. Online email ticketing system. One example recommended by a resident was www.zendesk.com which I spent a little time on with a trial account, and had a call from a representative. The idea is that you pay so much per month for being able to use their online email ticketing system so anyone can send an email and it is linked to however many other people’s email as well. Its white-label in that you can brand it to your own company, and you can set up information points to have said a FAQ and documents-page to download - it’s kind of a customer-support function that can involve lots of other people as necessary. One downside though is that it would take time to fully understand, not just the basics, but the ins and outs of it, and going beyond just the video clips and guides, but spending a fair amount of time just trialling and seeing how it goes.

3. Telephone call-centre support. This is admitably off line, but still related to the online world. Out of hours, it will help provide a back-up call centre to take calls. The number could simply be mentioned on the standard message on the main phone out of hours, and the emphasis being on dealing with emergencies out of hours. A good script would be needed so they know what to say, including any unique pieces of information about the property. You’re then into the realms of maybe a communal-access spreadsheet in the cloud, maybe shared from Google Drive, and the call centre being able to make the most of sending emails online if possible rather that call numbers, maybe even using any ticketing system already in use on the previous point.

Last month’s free website design I helped with was www.rite-price-building-services.co.uk. A local building company I’ve been involved with who do a good local job, and we got onto the subject of websites as I spotted that one wasn’t mentioned on their works van. They had one ages ago but it hadn’t been viable to keep on, and they had been hit by one of the bigger companies offering the world for only so much per month (they had treated him to coffee, and talked about a flashy new website costing hundreds of pounds and then monthly charges for hosting and keeping updated).

The reality is that you can end up with a website you don’t really like, and monthly charges you don’t really need. Keith commented how he actually didn’t like the standard pictures of fancy builders doing whatever as it didn’t show the true picture - fair comment.

So anyway, I offered to do a new one, with a new domain name to save all the hassle of trying to locate whatever old one there was. This can then be added in time to whatever marketing material like flyers, adverts, and even van graphics.

So this website is actually a great example of something so completely simple and simply better than having nothing at all. Keith still needs to go over and update the content, put some real life pictures on, but there’s a fancy version of his logo that I had a graphics designer make up just from a picture of the one on his van. It’s worth asking any graphics designer to come up with a few of these, often easy as they can pop in a standard 3D shape and it looks great.

The other important aspect to having some kind of website no matter how simple is that it can be used in other online information, whether directory listings, social media profiles – over time it can become a central hub to link back to, and if you’re using the right basic software you can then improve and add features over time.

The one thing I didn’t do here was the new Google My Business set up. Here you don’t even need a website, as Google is bringing together all kinds of Google features to help local businesses get online – here’s an old post on the former Google Places and getting your business on Google, with more eon the current changes soon.

There’s an interesting article in the Peterborough Telegraph on how you should account for any website development costs in your business accounts so they are correctly taxed. To date a new website has just been perceived as another form of advertising/marketing or IT cost to a business like any other costs such as newspaper adverts or servers, wheres now the HMRC are seeing them as a whole new entity.

They’ve realised the potential of websites generating significant income for a business, and therefore this income-generation potential of a website is now being considered not just the function of the website which will then determine whether they are treated as revenue expenditure in your profit-and-loss, or capital expenditure in a balance sheet.

In reality this probably won’t effect most small businesses with straight forward website design costs, and if it does then it’s something your accountant can help clarify, however without getting bogged down with the detail of this it’s critical to understand the gist of this in case it does affect you now or in the future and any HMRC queries.

So here’s 3 bottom-line steps to get this sorted:

1. Understand the difference between the two types of accounting. The first is ‘capital expenditure’, which is where you’re spending on something that has value now but can continue with a form of value into the future, hopefully going upwards but possibly downwards. It’s like buying a car – you’ll still have it tomorrow and it will be worth something if you sold it, probably less over time although can be more if it’s say a classic car.

In the accountancy world you deal with these separately, and then ‘tweak’ your main businesses’ profit-and-loss figures to reflect these costs and changes, which can include 100% capital allowances in the year of expenditure – this can then require a separate balance sheet to account and capitalise/reduce these costs over time.

The second is ‘revenue expenditure’, which is a more bog-standard costs of doing business which is then taken away from any income to produce actual remaining profit in any one year. Sort of like putting the petrol in your new car, once it’s used it has no value, and it’s simply a ‘cost’ of being able to use your ‘asset’ car. So these are just accounted for in your normal profit-and-loss accounts.

2. Get your website development costs split between these two types of costs. So the capital-expenditure costs are now ‘enduring assets’ and apparently your main website costs as HMRC perceive your website as an asset that not only keeps its value, but can increase in value as it grows and develops income for the business.
These can include the domain name, hosting, software, infrastructure, hardware, design, publishing, designing, and content-development costs. A crude benchmark is if the net income expected from the website (like direct sales, subscriptions, advertising or other income) is higher than your design costs, then it normally falls into this category.

The other type is when things are simply changed through say a new website refresh, but the basic ‘asset’ is already there, or where there is just running and maintenance costs. These are your normal ‘revenue expenditure’ costs that you will take off your business income in that year.

3. Decide if these two costs need to be accounted for in the two types of accounting, which may affect the tax you pay now and in the future. The best way is to then involve an accountant or bookkeeper right at the beginning rather than passing the invoices afterwards, as they can help confirm things correctly. Generally speaking this only becomes an issue though with larger companies and total design-costs of over £1,000 ish or where the website plays a significant part of the business income, for example if there are a lot of online sales. Also, even though you technically need to account for these two ways, it can have little net effect on taxes paid now, with the effect of say capital allowances and being able to benefit from full tax relief on these costs anyway in the year of expenditure.

Not many people know that Google have given them a free webpage for their business – and will provide one if not already there.

If you type in a type of business (or actual business name) and your town in Google search box, for example “hairdressers Walsall”, you not only get your ‘normal’ search results of websites, but notice the list of actual real-life businesses at the top (or side) with a red flag next to them, and then a map to the right with these flags on it.

Now click on either a red flag or link below each one called “Google review” or “Google+ Page” and you’ll come to a page of information about that business on Google, including contact details, description, location map, and maybe even photos. You can also search under the “Maps” part of Google, and click the “more info” link on the pop-up box on the map.

This is Google being very clever – over the last few years it has collected data on every real offline business in the world with an address, and given them this opportunity to be online, whether or not they already have a website.

Even if they already have a normal website, it’s critical for every business to make sure they have their free Google Places page claimed and setup. One example of how useful this is. is when people search for your type of business online, and this Places page coming at the top of search results above the normal websites.

Another reason is that your Places page links to a Google Plus account, which is Google’s version of a social networking site like Facebook or LinkedIn. It can then help any social-media strategy you have.

Anyway, back to the Google Places page – here’s 5 critical things you need to do to claim and improve your free opportunity to be at the top of the world’s most popular online search engine:

1. Try and find your existing listing – then click the “manage this page” link on the right at the bottom near “Is this your business?”  to go through a procedure with Google to validate that this is really yours (this involves Google actually phoning you or sending a ‘code’ in the post to your address).

2. If you can’t find your business, click www.google.com/places to create a new one, and go through a similar procedure with Google to validate that this is real.

3. Once you’ve claimed your Google Places page (by this time you’ll have needed to create your own Google account), then edit and update it, like your own profile on say Facebook. Add descriptions, new pictures, check contact details, even upload video clips of your business.

4. Keep an eye on who actually visits your Places page – there is a section of your page where you can see behind the scenes how it performs.

5. Keep updating it every so often, for example some new photos, and adding special offers you have on at the moment or ‘coupons’.

If you’d like any help and advice on this, then do contact me. I offer the ‘Google Place Pudding’ dessert from The Website Waiter ‘menu’ of services, which will help claim and correctly setup your Places page, and make sure that it is not only updated for people to look at but to be ‘optimised’ with Google so it appears more and more in people’s searches, and links nicely with any existing website or social-media profile you have.

Designing a website for one business type like restaurants needs to be different to other business areas – although the basics will be the same, there will be unique changes and extras to make it function and appear correctly for that type of business.

I’ve recently been involved in restaurant website design, and fine-tuned some core factors – whether you’re tackling it yourself or you’re instructing a website designer, you need a tick list to make sure you don’t miss anything out.   So here are 12 (and a half) points to consider for the restaurant trade, whether high-end restaurants, bistros and cafes, or take-aways. They’re the same principles no matter what the size or type of restaurant business is, for example a small family business, or individual sandwich man, or corporate where you have a franchise and the ability to shape your own business and restaurant website design. 

To be pedantic, the last point is actually only half a point really, as it is more to do with how the website is operated afterwards rather than designed at the beginning – this is often a classic mistake where people assume that both the marketing and then operation of a website is the same as the initial design.

Restaurant Website Design Important Factors

OK, so here’s a quick summary of these 12 (and a half) points (Contact Me for a full report on these):

1. The Purpose – sounds too obvious to be true, but you need to be clear what you’re trying to achieve right from the start as this will shape what you do. So as an example, is the focus on an impressive website with lots of information about the food and service designed for existing customers, or does it need to be short-and-sweater to attract people looking for somewhere to eat on the internet

2. Your Website Name – again an obvious one as this will need to match your restaurant name, but you may want to deliberately keep the actual URL more genetic to attract the sort of phrases people are actually searching for online, for example www.birminghamrestaurant.co.uk

3. Hosting – this used to be a big expensive issue, but is now easier and cheaper, therefore make sure you don’t get fleeced – it should be easy to access, have features such as webmail accounts, and be able to cope with uploaded files like images and menus.

4. The Main Software Ingredient – the type of basic website design software is key. Years ago it used to be complicated bespoke software and ‘code’, whereas now you can actually use template and CMS-based systems. Ones to be wary of are those online or through software where you ‘design’ yourself as they can be quite restrictive both in the original design and on-going use.

5. Colour & Design – an important one in that it needs to match whatever logo or design your business already has, but an important factor is to also keep the restaurant website design as simple and plain as possible and let the writing and pictures do all the work to impress.

6.  Pictures & Images – they say a picture says a thousand words, and will really add something, whether real-life images of happy customers and a spotless-restaurant area, or special logos and images by a website graphic designer (a lot of the larger pub-chains are using these effectively on offers now)

7. Writing & Copy – you not only need to get the important information on the website, but more attractive wording or ‘copy’ to help sell your service, which includes layout changes such as titles and use of quotes and snippets of information.

8. Testimonials – to add as much feedback a possible from happy customers, whether it’s a short written quote or full paragraph, and ideally with a picture and their name to make authentic.

9. Menu & Services – some easy way to get to the bottom-line of what you serve, maybe even a quick download-PDF menu.

10. Regular Updates – the name of the game is to keep things fresh with maybe latest news and offers on to keep people interested.

11. Customer Interaction – mainly through Social Media, people like to interact, whether it’s liking or sharing or tweeting, or being able to leave reviews and comments on the website (links with the testimonials point above)

12. Video – becoming more important nowadays, a quick promo-video can help communicate something much better than written text.

12.5. The Stats (half) – not really a whole point because you can easily add the ‘code’ for stats on your websites nowadays; it’s the use of them afterwards which really counts as you can easily track what the bottom-line results are.  

We’ve also just created a product called ‘Out-The-Box Restaurant Website’ – Click Here to see more details. The idea is to help people who want to miss out the traditional website-design process and have something created that they can shape and design themselves within minutes not weeks. This will help save time, money, and general fathing-around with restaurant web site design – again Click here for more details.

I’ve just had some graphics created for the front of the website so they rotate around on the front page. This is through a local professional graphic designer in Walsall Birmingham I’ve started using for website image jobs like this, and helps add that depth to websites and any marketing materials.

This did get me thinking about the whole are of ‘graphic design’ for websites, as one trend I’ve noticed for a while is that websites are actually becoming simpler – less fuss and general activity, and often just clear plan colours backgrounds, simple text, and a few images. If you look at websites like Google or Facebook, they’re essentially just white backgrounds and coloured boxes and text – it’s the use and interaction that ‘makes’ the websites.

Graphics can make a huge impact, which is why I’ve wanted to simplify my own website and let good old graphics do the trick. Here are a few lessons I’ve learnt to help anyone in the same boat:

1. Get them matching your brand and existing colour and designs – sounds obvious, but show the graphic designer what you already have, any particular colours you need to dove-tail into, and any say fliers or other information you have (if only a hard copy, you can take a photo on your mobile phone and email or text it to them).

2. Show graphic designers some example – they have good ideas and imaginations and judgement, but they can’t mind read. If you’ve seen examples on other websites or on the internet send them a link, even if it’s just that part or colour of an image you like. For mine I actually looked at some popular pub and restaurant website images to pick out a few to send across in an effort to get the restaurant theme right with The Website Waiter.

3. Keep it simple – as above, I reckon simpler the better, maybe just a colour, some text, and a small image, or even a symbol. And if you simply change one of these elements on another images to help bring variety but yet consistency (so on mine, there is a difference in the whole background colours in each one)

4. Use text on images to inform people about something – so as well as the graphics helping to make the front of the website look pretty, I wanted to take the opportunity to communicate The Website Waite principle of serving ‘course’ like being at a restaurant. I thought of a quick video clip, and maybe text, but noticed on other websites that bold images with text in them can do this. The text then needs to be simple and straight to the point with clear statements as people look through them.

5. Use movement to quickly get the message across between different website images - so here I’ve placed them in a rotating slide show that automatically happens when people go on the website, and takes them through the slides in logical order to reinforce the message I want to communicate. Infact I’ve actually made these rotations happen quickly so as people read the simple text on one image within a few seconds they’re straight onto the next one in order to keep people’s attention for the whole sequence.

So as the saying goes, a picture says a thousand words – well worth looking into some fresh website images and graphics and asking a good graphic designer to help add that special something.

By Andrew Duncan