SWOT Analysis

DEVELOPMENT OF DOWNTOWN RESTAURANT’S WEBSITE: A SWOT ANALYSIS OF WEB DESIGNS

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DEVELOPMENT OF DOWNTOWN RESTAURANT’S WEBSITE: A SWOT ANALYSIS OF WEB DESIGNS

PREAMBLE

Downtown Restaurant is a start-up food business that is projected to be launched in coming next two months. The restaurant is located in Atlanta, Georgia, and in order to facilitate its customers, it is looking forward to developing its web presence. Downtown Restaurant will offer fine dining to its customers, and therefore three websites of similar restaurant's categories are thoroughly analyzed from SWOT standpoint, so Downtown Restaurant could implement successful aspects of web design while avoiding the negative aspects of developing a website. The selected websites and their SWOT analyses are as follow:

SELECTED WEBSITES AND SWOT ANALYSIS

Alinea Restaurant

https://www.alinearestaurant.com/

Alinea Restaurant is a venue to have a delicious and creative fine dining experience. Chef Grant Achatz's role is eminent in attracting and captivating the attention of all new American food lovers. The entire menu and other service dimensions are highly innovative and creative. Alinea' website is a depiction of artistic aesthetics as its overall presences itself.

Strength: Alinea Restaurant's official website features relevant and unique content. And the substantial theory of creativity and innovation is clearly evident from the interface of the web page as well. That means the content and design of the website perfectly harmonized with the style statement of the restaurant. Moreover, the site allows users to book their tables according to their particular specifications. It also has a section for providing answers to frequently asked questions.

Weaknesses: Regardless of a unique design and online reservation and frequently asked questions' section; the website evidently lack graphics and detailed content. The detailed menus, photos of ambiance, specialties, and other details are starkly absent from the website. The minimal design of the web page makes the user bore in no time. Furthermore, mobile optimization's option is also unavailable. And no contact details are provided, and the social media junctions are nowhere to be found.

Opportunities: The technological advancement and creative appearance of the website could be a plus point for Alinea. But they have to elaborate its efficacy through adding content, further details, and images to make it captivating.

Threats: There is a myriad of food and restaurant businesses, which are competing in a similar industry and have far more better websites. Through flawless services and online options such a restaurant can make and retain loyal customer-base and can leave Alinea behind.

Circa 1886

https://www.circa1886.com/

Circa 1886 is a romanticized and reminiscence fine dining restaurant in Wentworth St, Charleston. The restaurant features a seasonal menu, which is further elevated through the Lowcountry style local menu, and boosted with a selection of exotic wine. The official website of Circa 1886 is as striking as its dining and wine services.

Strength: The website of Circa 1886 is pleasantly laden with visually attractive and practical information and features. From reservation, menus, photos, special events, and restaurants' history and contact, all details are given handily. The colors, high pixel photography, and compatible font add liveliness and vibrancy to its appearance.

Weakness: There is no evident weakness in the website design and interface. However, it is recommended for Circa 1886 to enhance its search by adding more meta tags to its web design.

Opportunity: In the recent era, almost all businesses are opting for improving their social and digital presence through the utilization of mobile apps. Circa 1886 has not developed its mobile application yet. The website of the subject restaurant has almost all the apparent features of a quality and effective website and incorporation of mobile application option can affect the traffic and users-base to an extensive extent.

Threats: Similar to Alinea Restaurant, Circa 1886 to have threats of easy market entrance in the industry of hotel and hospitality. And local and international restaurants are endeavoring tirelessly to boost the productivity of their business operations through social media and other similar junctions. Therefore, Circa 1886 has to be vigilant regarding counter-strategies to attain maximum competitive advantages.

Oriole

http://www.oriolechicago.com/

Oriole is a Chicago based high-end kitchen restaurant service, that proffers new American tastes along with tranquil and minimalist, yet stylish ambient. The official website of Oriole carries a modest and simplistic design.

Strength: Oriole's reticent display is designed with light colors, but regardless of minimum visuals the website fulfills all informative requirements. It has online options for reservations, contacting the restaurant's management or authorized team, and embedded the links of its Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Moreover, the site maintains its press section as well, through which it is possible for users to access the articles regarding the updates and reviews of Oriole.

Weaknesses: Lack of colors and sufficient graphics and photographs is evident from the very first click on the web address. When users click on menu or beverage tabs, they expect to see something, to explore the offerings of the restaurant through content and pictures, but these tabs are as bare as the entire website. On the other hand, Oriole does not have a mobile application as well.

Opportunity: Oriole's website is swarmed with Meta tags that are a good omen because, through such implications, it can be easily accessed by numerous visitors. However, Oriole should consider its basic web design cautiously to make it attractive, vibrant, and effective as any successful restaurant website to retain the visitors' traffic.

Threats: The lack of festooned web design of Oriole is a threat to the website itself. By a first look, it does not seem like a restaurant website at all and seems like a generalized blog. Therefore, to attain exacerbated advantages through its Meta tagging strategy and modesty, Oriole needs to reform the basic portrayal of its websites' interface. Because all the fruitful restaurant businesses have sizzling, colorful, and vivid visuals and font etcetera, and Oriole needs to benchmark such standards.

CONCLUSION: DOS AND DON’TS FOR THE PROSPECT WEBSITE FOR THE DOWNTOWN RESTAURANT WEBSITE

By analyzing the web designs of three renowned American fine dining restaurants' websites, it becomes evident that a restaurant website should have certain components to create an effective web presence. According to the above-given SWOT analyses and other underlying implications, Downtown Restaurant has to design and develop a website that adopts all the strong points and evades the peril of fall prey for elucidated weaknesses.

Downtown Restaurant's website should proffer relevant and unique content that should be synchronized its business strategy and style statement. On the other hand, the interface of its website should feature a sufficient quantity of food and ambiance photography so users could get attracted by the tempting depiction. Moreover, incorporating maximum meta tags will assure the restaurant to have a persistent and frequent visitors’ traffic, that will increase its business efficacy, reputation, and rapport simultaneously. On another hand, an easy and convenient home page is imperative for Downtown Restaurant’s website, so users could explore the basic attributes, offers, and packages without getting involved in pestering process of elongated registration and signing in. The Downtown Restaurant is recommended to add all relevant information regarding its contacts, history, management, menu, venues, and other offers to supply the users with a chance to explore all possible events online. Furthermore, the restaurant has to establish its profile on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, and twitter etcetera, and all these social media platforms should be synchronized with the official website, so users could access the authentic account of business instead of becoming fooled by imposters.

On the contrary, all the weaknesses of analyzed websites are warning signs for Downtown Restaurant, and therefore all potential err should be avoided. The restaurant is recommended to add the option of mobile optimization and app on its web page so the users could download the app and use the services offered. Moreover, the restaurant has to stay away from poor and insufficient content, as well as from the low-quality images and deficient textual and visual information. It is observed that long and boring subscription procedurals divert the attention of users, and in turn, they prefer to go with a website with minimum hassle and time effective portal instead. Therefore, Downtown Restaurant’s website should be designed according to the time-saving principles. Further, the design of the website should not be extremely modest either exaggeratedly vigorous, and a site map should be included for the sake of ease of searching desired service of the query.

Similarly, Downtown Restaurant can implement different innovative technologies, such as online transactions and sponsored marketing strategies to nurture its opportunistic grounds. New entrants in the hospitality industry are, and will always be a threat to the restaurant, but it has to devise a smart plan sheet to design a flexible web design in order to mark a score through its web presence. In short, a restaurant’s website should be a complete package of convenience, modernity, graphic attraction, comprehensible text, easily accessible information, and coherence is a must.

Reference

Alinea. (2019). https://www.alinearestaurant.com/

Charleston SC Restaurants | Circa 1886. (2019). https://www.circa1886.com/

Oriole. (2019). http://www.oriolechicago.com/