How 55 WallStreet Grew Website Traffic on a Brand New Website
55 WallStreet is a nifty and highly popular nightclub, pub, and bar in Bangalore's JP Nagar. Kumar Dahiya, the restaurant owner of 55 WallStreet comes from a software technical background and was excited when we discussed with him the opportunity that a website would present to his business.
How can a website add value to a Restaurant Owner
Many restaurateurs are unable to see the benefits of a restaurant website. Moreover, many website designers are unable to understand the F&B industry and cannot visualize features that can help restaurant owners. Those who do, are unable to keep the cost under control.
As a result, most restaurant websites (even the bigger and top restaurants) are aesthetic but lack functionality and stickiness. However, websites can bring in tremendous value and make websites super exciting and relevant. Fortunately, Kumar had a deeper understanding of web technology and we discussed various aspects of what his website would be like.
Website features for the restaurant industry
55 WallStreet is a vibrant, thriving, energetic nightclub with an event every evening. It is well-known as the party place of South Bangalore. The nightclub also has many offers for lean periods. Kumar also employs photographers to take photos of his guests as they enjoy themselves at 55 WallStreet.
We wanted to work on these successes and take them online so that the website would be full of fresh, exciting, and relevant content. We had to create features that would resonate with the nightclub's target audience and increase the stickiness of the website.
As we studied 55 WallStreet's unique value proposition and target audience, it became clear that the website would have to amplify the regular events and the customer photos. While we would create various sections like the menu section, contact us, products etc., we would have to create dynamic sections that would showcase and highlight the attractions of the nightclub.
We also wanted to make sure that we could increase engagement and drive cross-engagement across the website, Facebook, Instagram, and Google My Business. We started working on the website features and discussed with the 55 WallStreet management team how we would make his website epic and engaging with his customers and how we would increase his customer base.
Events Calendar - Events are a big draw and while these were being published on Facebook and Instagram, we wanted to create a dynamic calendar that would not only help promote the events but also improve SEO due to more dynamic content. The events calendar had to be dynamic and so we included a feature of auto-unpublish once the event ended.
Customer Photo Gallery - A customer photo gallery amplifies the brand image of a nightclub and creates excitement amongst the target audience. We wanted the customer gallery to amplify the good times at the nightclub and to serve as aspirational to those who haven't been there. You can see the galleries here.
Quick Turnaround Time - We also made sure that the nature of the business required fast turnaround time. This is critical to the restaurant industry.
SEO Guidelines - We wanted to make sure that every page adhered to SEO guidelines and that each page would have Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs, page title and meta description.
What about the website development time and costs
The 55 WallStreet management was excited about the entire website idea but was worried about the costs and timeframe involved. It was just 10 days away to New Year's Eve and they wanted the website to go live. We delivered the entire website in just 6 days. We had also worked out an all-inclusive, hassle-free, affordable package that costs less than US$ 200 per month.
Kumar and his team were delighted.
Results matter and they did
Within three months' of its launch, the website started generating organic traffic of upwards of 2000 users every month which peaked to over 3500 December 2019. Moreover, the revenue generated by the website saw a 10x return within the first 8 months.
What about page loading speed
Yes, page loading had to be fast, really fast. We wanted to make sure that a page with hundreds of photos would load really fast. We ran a GTmetrix test and here are the results for a page that had about 100 large thumbnail images which were 800x600 pixels wide and another 100 which were 260x260 wide. With about 200 images the page loaded in 0.9 seconds when tested from Mumbai, India. That is a pretty impressive score!
