Eddie
Hey everyone, looking to get a bit of insight from others. Hopped on Upwork to see if I can find someone to build me a site and had a few things brought up (picture)
I'm totally new to know Search Engine Optimization (SEO), basically all I know are local citations are important, and key words for what I want to rank in my industry.
I am a small local family restaurant looking to build my online presence with a website and social media. We have Fb and Ig, but no website yet. The plan is to get analytics, and be able to run proper ad, as well as showing up on Google when they search for my country's food in my state. I like to do things myself, but understand this is a fast pace field. Considering having someone build it on beaver builder that way I can change item pricing on my own as well as avoid monthly fees
Is the proposal above correct? If I should avoid WordPress, than what is recommended? Not sure what static and dynamic websites are. If you have any experience in building websites for restaurant / cafes and wouldn't mind consulting me feel free to me.
1) As you already acknowledged, never use WordPress for a restaurant website – load times will bounce the customer off the site. The website should load in nano to milliseconds. Many restaurant owners don’t understand this they want the best theme with all plugins etc. which slows the speed of the site. Like mentioned in your post, if the website doesn’t load in 1-3 secs, I’m gone you lost me as a customer.
2) When you make the website dynamic meaning customers creating accounts and processing payments etc, speed will suffer. Always aim to get static responsive website.
3) Online Ordering & Chatbox should be separately integrated into the website so that speed doesn’t suffer via widgets.
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1 is only true if you have a crappy developer. Agree with 2. 3 can also be true, but not necessarily. In regards to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), WordPress is perfectly fine and if it's done correctly you will easily be able to change the prices and anything else on the site.
Baskin
Disagree with all three. WordPress is fine for restaurant websites and can be speedy if used right.
I don't recommend using static websites in 2020 you need to be able to change things easily and quickly.
What does he even mean by widget? Does he mean WordPress plugin? Most chat plugins are just putting JavaScript in the header of a site. Installing it manually is the same process. Although I do agree you should minimize plugins. Most chat plugins are fairly minimal though since they are not actually hosted on your site. If he is recommending against using chat software that is not self hosted, that is a whole debate to be had and not a game changer for most businesses.
Bertin
I disagree with 1,2,3 I manage a company site and use WordPress and have speed in nano seconds and 99% SEO optimized, ranked #1 on Google Search, and plugins for chat are like Baskin said most are just javascript in footer or header. I do not recumbent static sites for restaurants as content is forever updating,
Sean
#1 is flat out wrong. Like, GTFO wrong.
#2 and #3 aren't really wrong or right, they're ill informed and poorly worded.
Those things CAN slow down your site but it depends on how you implement them.
The same could be said about anything on a site.
I've built some of the fastest websites in the world, including for restaurants, and I'll tell you that these points are, at best, some low resolution thinking. If this is a developers proposal to you I recommend you pass on them. They may be ignorant of what they're talking about but it's more likely they are aware it's bad info but are more interested in selling you on what's easy for them and not what's good for you.
I'll also add that page speed isn't everything. Again, page speed is a feather in my cap but the truth is there's a ceiling to its usefulness. There are technical thresholds you want to meet for search engines and you want a good user experience but past those points it has diminished value. All you really need to have is good hosting and efficient web design. Page speed matters but only to a point.
Final thought, if you're comfortable with WP then stick to that. If a freelancer or agency wants to sell you something else, then they're not the ones for you. WP developers are only slightly less common than rocks and there's no reason you can't have a great website built for your restaurant on it.
Shane
This really depends. Imho
In the features you plan to have for your client tell.
WordPress is fine, yet many developers do not know how to build on it properly which I feel is this guys issue.
Also some features you may want like tracking deliveries the plugins do in fact slow down your site mainly because they are built clunky.
So now after I know what features you want, like online ordering sending to your current post may need customized built plugins.
If this is the case I would also suggest a static site as he is.
What this guy did is not ask you as a client what features do you want, people decide what they are going to use first which is wrong.
Why use a Content Management System (CMS) if your site wont need it or benefits from it.
People need to get back to collecting the content, designing for user experience, do keywords research, and than and only than start designing the site and components around the content and not try to paint by number in a theme.
You can find me on Upwork to discuss this more if you like or message me here.
I would need to know more before giving you an honest opinion on which you should use.
why would you suggest someone that wants online ordering a static site? That's the opposite of what you need for ecommerce.
Shane » Baskin
static sites do not mean they are not functional.
You can have a database for the ordering system yet the website itself is static.
You are not trying to rank the ordering system, why have the static pages built in with the CMS of the ordering system or even the GPS tracking , this can all be done as well with cellphones and a custom built app to feed data back to the site from the delivery guy who may hit a button saying which order he is delivering etc. Or you could make it even tell your drivers which orders to take and what route etc.
When I can use email or even SMS to send the order to their point of sales.shit might be able to build a 100% html CSS ordering system that is like Pizzahut where you can pick and choose toppings.
Why do people think this stuff needs to be so complex
Baskin » Shane
I'm not talking about app development. I'm just saying that a pizza place that requires an ordering system is a very bad example case for using a static site. There are some cases where a static site is better, this is not one of them.
As you said yourself the ordering process would not be on a static site. Having parts of the website on a cms and parts of the website as static files is impractical in most cases. It would also no longer be a static site anymore at that point?
I think creating an app and hosting a site with a mix of static content and a cms is being complex lol.
This may satisfy you: Is WordPress Really the Best Web Development Platform?