A cafe can become a special place for everyone. One can treat yourself to a nice meal, or enjoy them with their friends. A cafe with a good coffee shop layout and design is a good casual place to conduct a meeting or business, such as freelancers. Sometimes, one even can meet their fated-loved one in a cafe. There are many things that one can do in a cafe.
Besides a nice place for doing almost anything, a cafe can be considered a good business. An owner of a cafe is expected to make $60.000 to $160.000 on average. There are also many business models, such as purchasing a franchise, an online cafe, and so on, that you can choose if you want to start opening a cafe.
It does not mean that opening and running a coffee shop is easy. There are many competitions that you will face once you get into the market. You will find yourself fighting for a single customer with the big and small player. Statistics showed that the life span of a coffee shop is two years on average.
However, it also does not mean you must shy away from opening your own coffee shop. Every business has its own risk, right? Every business, especially the established ones, is always a tough nut to crack. Instead of running away and abandoning your dream of opening your own coffee shop, you need to prepare your coffee shop better instead. Learn more about the industry and get to know the strategies being used in the business.
One way you can do to support your cafe business is by creating a website. Having a cafe website can help your cafe to be found more easily since more and more people are going online. Cafe websites also allow you to inform your customers of your cafe’s details, such as the menu, opening hours, and locations of your cafe.
Fortunately, creating a website is now easier than ever. You do not need to have expertise or knowledge about programming to have your own cafe website. Today, you can find website builders that can help you create a cafe website easily within a minute. You can even find some that offer help for free. However, to gain an edge against your competitors, investing some of your money in a paid website builder that offers more features and design options is always a good option. Strikingly is the website builder when it comes to ease of access at an affordable price. Not only you can create your website easily, but you can also find many guides and tutorials from Strikingly about how to optimize your website and make it look more stunning.
Are you ready to open the coffee shop you always dreamt about? Follow these simple steps to have your own cafe website.
- Create a Plan
Not only planning your business, but you also need to plan your website. Planning your website can later make the process of creating your cafe website smoother. You need to prepare the layout and design of your website, some materials, texts, images, videos, icons, and so on, that you will put on your cafe website.
- Create a Brand
The first thing you need to prepare is the brand of your cafe websites. Your brand will affect other contents of your websites. Your choice of which images to use and how you present those images, for example, will depend on how you want your cafe to be perceived by others.
But what is a brand?
Put simply, a brand is a sense in the forms of images or feelings that your customer has when they come into contact with your product. For example, your cafe can give a sense of a futuristic workplace, family-friendly, and so on.
Is a brand that important?
Yes, of course. With a brand, you can make your products, services, or businesses to be more than just that. A brand can help you to attract more customers by relating to the feelings, purposes, or even missions that your customers believed in.
With a strong brand, you can expect to have many loyal customers that will not budge even though your competitors are doing something new. People do not only buy your product but also what you believe in and stand for.
How do you create a brand?
There are many ways that you can do to create a brand. However, one of the most compelling ways to do it is by telling your own story. People love stories. People love to root for characters who are trying to achieve missions or goals they believed in. Tell the story behind your cafe, why you open it, and what it stands for. Create a strong image and feelings from that story.
- Plan Your Visuals
Visuals are one of the strong points of a website. These include images you used in your cafe website, the color scheme you apply, and the layout.
Let us start with images. When it comes to your cafe website, you have to consider the quality of your images and consider your images’ specifications, such as width and height. Strikingly provides guidelines about the optimal height and width for your images.
Next is the color scheme. If you think that colors are just something that needs to be there on your website, then you cannot be more wrong. A great color scheme can help you to shape the personality of your brand. Take a look at other coffee shop websites and learn how they do plan their color scheme.
Lastly, you need to plan the layout of your cafe website. Usually, a cafe website consists of a title section, an about us section, sections that contain detail such as menu and operating hours, and contact sections. Other than that, you also need to consider the order of each section to create user-friendly navigation. Again, take a look at different cafe website designs and learn from them.
- Choose A Template
Strikingly offers you many kinds of coffee shop templates to choose from. To make it easier for you, you can look for a template based on a category. If you still want more, you can always find other websites that are created by other Strikingly users. You can always learn something from websites that have been published.
Image taken from Strikingly website
Once you have chosen a coffee website design, it is time to build your cafe site.
- Develop Your Title Section
If you want to get the best results from your cafe websites, you need to start your branding from the title section. This section is often the first one that people see when they come to your website. It means that this section has a huge influence when people decide to stay or leave from your website.
There are many things that you can do to keep visitors stay on your cafe websites. You can use a high-quality background image on the title section of your cafe website. You can also add a touch of your brand personality here.
Image taken from Strikingly user's website
- Tell Your Story
Once you have an excellent title section, it is time to tell visitors more about your cafe websites. You can tell the story of your cafe, or the brand that you have prepared before in the about us section. You can easily create it using the text section provided by Strikingly.
Image taken from Strikingly product
- Add More Details of Your Cafe
Once your visitors are sold on your brand, you can start informing them about your cafe’s details. It includes booking availability, menus, and operating hours. You can combine texts and images to make those sections more appealing.
Image taken from Strikingly user's website
Other than the three mentioned above, you need to add the location of your cafe. You can do this by using text sections or any sections you can text into, or you can add the Google Maps app that shows the location of your cafe to your coffee shop website.
Image taken from Strikingly user's website
- Help People Reach You
Once you have everything in place, you need to put some contact information for your visitors or customers to reach you. Through those contacts, visitors or customers can make reservations or ask questions regarding your cafe. You can also connect your social media links to further boost your online presence.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Now that you know how to build your own cafe website. Building a great cafe site requires a huge amount of planning. You need to plan your visuals and prepare materials, such as brand, images, and so on, before creating a website. You can create a website easily by using a template. Strikingly offers collections of templates for you to choose from as your coffee shop website design. Once you have your template, you need to add crucial sections for a cafe website, such as title, about us, details, and contact us section.
Having a website can help you to create and grow your coffee shop business. With a cafe website, you can easily promote your shop including its menu, operating hours, and so on, while building an online presence to gain an edge against your competitors.
Are you ready to start your coffee shop business? Start your branding today with Strikingly!
