The Restaurant at the End of the Internet
I recently read about a new ’concept’ restaurant in London, advertised to be a first of its kind.
A 24-hour diner in the heart of bustling London, serving an all-you-can-eat English buffet. The menu included traditional food with a ‘modern’ twist, such as Smokey Mint, Leek & Potato Soup, Bangers with Apple Mash, and the classic Eaton Mess with Pomegranate and Passion fruit. On Sundays, there would be a special roast buffet with Baked Alaska making an appearance.
You can imagine my excitement. I tried for months to book a table for a friend and to sample the menu.
Then, two days before the feast, I heard some disappointing news.
The restaurant had to close its doors. The official story was that the kitchen staff were not prepared for the hungry crowds at 3:00 am, and the buffet ran out of food three weeks in a row. Complaints and disappointed reviews were all over social media.
The media reported that the owner of the restaurant was unable to comment; as he was currently opening up three other restaurants in Europe. Then the rumours started spreading. Health Inspection notices condemning the restaurant appeared on the windows. The “vegan” bubble and squeak actually contained bacon and cheese!
So what happened next?
Well, the restaurant never existed. I made it up.
The restaurant was actually a website.
A website with the intention to serve nutritious, fresh content turned
content-creation disaster. The promise of quality on a daily basis could not be sustained against the ever-increasing internal and external issues.
Audience-first thinking
Some of us like to eat at family-friendly buffets, others revel in three-course dining at exclusive restaurants, and some are happy with a 3am dirty bird.
We make our choices based on certain factors. The time of day, our budget, and what kind of food we’re craving. Your users are similar. They’re hungry. They may not always know which kind of food they’re craving — but they know they’re hungry.
It’s up to you, as a business, to know what kind of restaurant you are.
You need to serve content that appeals to your visitor’s appetite whilst maintaining your reputation. It’s up to you to do the research so you know how to market your restaurant best. Do you even content, bro(or have a team)?
Not everyone is a Vegas-style buffet, and that’s okay too. A selective, ‘seasonal’ menu may well give your audiences more of what they desire. Egg and avo on toast can be exactly what your target audience is after — simple, but if done well, so satisfying.
And, hey, maybe you are a Michelin-starred affair, and can afford to cater to your audience with exquisitely crafted three-course meals. Maersk’s B2B social media strategy is incredible if you want to see how the experts do it.
You need to decide and plot your content strategy according to what is now, and your prospective future growth.
Think of your content as if it was the food you are serving
If your content is tasty but marketed on an old platform it’s unlikely you’ll get rave reviews. Your managers, let alone your customers, don’t want to sit on dodgy chairs with plastic cutlery. Sitting down and talking to your agency about what’s realistically possible within your scope, your budget, and most importantly your resources is key. Maybe open a pop-up food stall first, to trial your content and align your research. Before taking it to the market you’ll find out if there really is an appetite for bacon flavoured ice-cream.
You also need to be clear on your serving times and ensuring your menu has enough variety that your audiences come back for more.
Consistent variety? (It’s not an oxymoron)
No one eats the same thing every day if they can help it. But this doesn’t mean you have to re-invent your menu on a weekly basis. You just have to think of new, creative ways to serve your content to your audiences to keep them coming back. If that’s re-using today’s veg in tomorrow’s bubble and squeak, that’s OK. Be as resourceful as you can.
Try it yourself
Internal teams can source user generated content for your social feeds. Company culture surfaces up with any social media channel you already own. It’s completely natural, can be easily curated, and affordable.
Ensure your kitchen has the staff
Match your budget to your resource availability. A lot of businesses expect their kitchen staff to deliver these three-course meals, every day, to thousands of customers. But sometimes, the kitchen staff is just one chef, taking the heat alone.
If that sounds more like your company, take into consideration that launching a new website may require additions to your Brigade de Cuisine — a Sous-Chef and maybe a few Cuisiners. These may not be new hires (even though it’s probably a good idea to have dedicated content-creators), but the workload will need extra effort. In an ideal situation, you want to equip your team to be able to keep up with audience demand while you create the site.
Content creation is an ongoing process
It should start concurrently to your build.
In an ideal world, we’d all be create websites based on purposefully written content and ideate and design in tandem with your content team. And to continue doing this, sustainably, for a long time after launch — with long term content planning… this is called a content strategy.
The project (or product) will be more effective if your teams have a constant flow of content to work with and can work alongside the content creator(s).
This also applies after launch. More content equals returning customers. Customers always want more content.
If you leave your team to wait for the content, the project can run late, the budget will churn, and you run the risk of a disjointed and mismatched design experience, because if we create without content, we’re essentially assuming that the design will be fit for purpose. This content will be the basis of design and UX decisions, which could cause your user experience to suffer. The project could, in effect, be a flop (like a soufflé!).
Too many cooks spoil the broth
It’s important to keep your content team connected and communicating effectively. It’s great to have a lot of content creators. But your editorial team should always be a close knit team of multi-disciplinary individuals with decision-making power (the ultimate power to press ‘publish’ on the site). Senior stakeholders should trust their content chefs to deliver to their customers.
And everyone should sample the content often, to ensure quality standards
are high.
Bon appetit!
*This is an article I wrote about four years ago, but it was never published. I was going through my portfolio the other day, and realised these issues are still coming up for larger companies, so even though it was written a while ago, it’s still relevant. So here it is… let me know what you think, or what your experiences with building websites with and without content have been.