In today's world, it is as essential for a restaurant to have an online presence as it is to have a physical location. People contemplating a meal often make it their business to search online to find a place, and if their prospective first-meal-location happens not to have a decent online presence, it's very likely not going to be the place that they come to. So a restaurant has to make its online space as attractive as it makes its physical space. One strong way to do that is to create a Google Virtual Tour and combine it with some tasty photography. Here's how.
Prospective patrons typically take to the internet when seeking a restaurant.
The content they find online serves as that all-important first impression. A Google Virtual Tour can help your restaurant make a wonderful online first impression. Customers can pan and tilt through your space in 360 degrees. That makes a tour equal to an image in the internet context—a tour can convey the vibe of a restaurant as much as a photo. Want to know the inside scoop? Your tour can be enhanced with professionally shot images. Hearing that professional image should serve you well in other contexts: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
Customer trust is built on the level of transparency a business provides.
A restaurant's virtual tour offers unmatched exposure and sincerity about the appearance and arrangement of the establishment. It presents the restaurant in the best possible way and confidently displays the establishment's menu items. When a customer takes the virtual tour, they can visualize the layout of the restaurant and, more importantly, the cleanliness. They can appreciate the "look" of the restaurant and, through the tour, get a sense of how the restaurant "feels," which is crucial for certain types of diners who have particular requirements.
The restaurant industry is highly competitive and sees many new establishments opening every year.
For these newcomers, the challenge is to capture the attention of potential customers and to etch their name in the market. But what if that potential customer could take a virtual tour of your establishment before it ever opened? It’s happening now, thanks to Google and some innovative restaurants. The tours themselves are not new, but what these restaurants are employing is a Google Virtual Tour. It is effectively a "come on in" to potential customers.
An online presence is essential for every business, and Google is the leading platform in this area.
Your business can benefit greatly from the visibility that Google offers, especially if it is location-based. Virtual tours of your business can be directly integrated into Google Search and Google Maps, and these give you a huge leg up in the rankings when people are looking for what you offer. If a person searches for restaurants near them, a virtual tour of your restaurant will make you 12 times more likely to show up in the search results.
Customer engagement and conversion can benefit from Google Virtual Tours and other interactive content since these media compel potential customers to linger longer within your website or Google listing. They allow potential customers to experience almost an alternate reality, wherein they encounter your offerings in a way that still photos don't quite allow. Interactive content is simply a great way to get potential customers to interact with your Google listing, and in this case, the fairly recent "magic" of the restaurant tour.
Consumers today want information about a business, and they want it fast.
They expect it to be online. And they want it to be a thorough enough amount that they're rendering a decision based on the kind of virtual panel that the online tour represents. And with Google Virtual Tour, today's consumer can practically experience the business in question; they can navigate a restaurant, see the front of the house, and the back of the house, and feel confident enough in the decision not only to explore dining there, but also to pull the virtual trigger that amounts to a decision that they're going to explore further in this decision-making process.
Summary
All these advantages ultimately converge on one colossal victory for restaurants: more reservations and foot traffic. When potential patrons can't visit your establishment in person, an online tour provides the next best thing. They can preview the vibe of your restaurant, and upgraded visuals allow them to really imagine themselves dining there. Of course, if we're talking about any dining establishment that might cater to tourists, an online tour can be a real boon in convincing people to drop by. After all, who isn't going to feel more comfortable choosing a place to eat when they can virtually check it out beforehand?
