LetsEat! News

New dashboard design

Sat, 01 Nov 2014 13:06:26 -0700

To make room for some big upcoming features, the dashboard’s navigation has been completely redesigned and the tabs have all been moved over to the left column. To keep things easy, the links haven’t been reorganized for this redesign–that will happen in the coming weeks though.

This is just the beginning; more updates are on their way. Hope you like it!

6 Additional Themes Added to the Theme Gallery

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 22:05:51 -0700

6 additional themes have been added to the theme gallery, including 4 that have a new side column navigation format that works well for restaurants that need a lot of pages. They’re all available immediately for everyone, so check them out if you’re interested in refreshing your website’s look and feel!

10 New Themes

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 19:48:00 -0700

In the recent weeks, new 28 fonts were added to the design editor, and a new background photo gallery was made available as well. Today, Let’s Eat is proud to announce the first in a series of updates to the theme gallery.

If you’d like to give your site a new look, head over to the Theme Gallery and try out a new theme!

28 New Fonts

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:12:39 -0700

Let’s Eat’s restaurant web design editor has 28 new fonts and updated versions of many of the the old ones with improvements to bold and italic characters.

These fonts are available immediately for use by all users by going to Appearance » Design Editor. Please note that some of the older fonts have been replaced by improved equivalents, although they will continue to be available if you’ve already selected them for your website.

Background photo gallery

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:20:09 -0700

Want to freshen up your restaurant’s website design? The design editor has been updated with a new background photo gallery.

With a few clicks, you can change the background photo of your website to one from a selection of high quality stock photography. There’s about a dozen choices right now, with more coming soon.

Of course, you’re still welcome to upload your own background photo, and with the new stretch-to-fit option, your background photo can take over the whole page without tiling.

Check out the background photo gallery today by going to Appearance » Design Editor » Background

New interactive theme design editor

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 21:09:18 -0700

Let’s Eat’s themes are now easier to customize thanks to a revamped theme editor. The new theme editor allows you to update your website’s fonts, colors, logo, and background photo without leaving the home page.

The new theme design editor can be accessed by going to Appearance » Design Editor, or by clicking the link on the dashboard. It is available for all users immediately.

There are more related features coming soon, so stay tuned!

Sortable navigation links

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:27:49 -0700

At the request of quite a number of customers, the order of the navigation links in Let’s Eat websites is finally fully customizable!

To change the order of the links in your website (and mobile site, if you’re using the latest mobile design), just go to Settings » Navigation Link Order, and drag and drop your links into the order you want them in.

If you are still using the older iPhone-style mobile design, now’s a great time to upgrade your website–it’s free! Just go to Appearance » Mobile Design, and click the link in the banner.

If you’re using the old-style narrow page design, you’ll also need to upgrade your website to a newer theme by going the Theme Gallery page (Appearance » Theme Gallery).

A new product from Let's Eat - Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:58:55 -0800

Let’s Eat is proud to announce the public release of So Satisfied (sosatisfied.com), a restaurant customer satisfaction survey builder.

Ever wonder why some customers are regulars and others aren’t? Find out today, by asking your customers directly, with an online satisfaction survey.

With So Satisfied, Let’s Eat aims to make building a customer survey for your restaurant as easy as it is to build a website. When you sign up, everything is immediately ready to go: useful, restaurant-specific questions are generated for you automatically, and there’s no configuration necessary.

All you, the restaurant owner, needs to do is print out our table tent. It’s set up for you when you sign up, with a custom QR code and URL. Either leave it at your hostess/cashier stand, or post it to the inside of your front door for guests as they leave. Any customer with a smart phone can simply scan your QR code and fill out the mobile-friendly satisfaction survey.

You can embed a So Satisfied survey in your Let’s Eat website through the Marketplace tab or by adding a subdomain (like survey.myexamplerestaurant.com).

So Satisfied has a free 14-day trial period, and no credit card is necessary to get started. Try it out today, you’re guaranteed to like it!

Some minor updates to Let's Eat

Wed, 26 Feb 2014 12:53:00 -0800

In case you didn’t notice, a few new features have popped up around Let’s Eat, built at the request of customers. If there’s something you’d like to see added, feel free to email support any time!

Monday through Sunday scheduling

Here in the U.S. we usually start our calendar weeks on Sundays, so the schedules have always been formatted that way. At the request of non-U.S. customers, there is finally an option to mark your schedules to start on Mondays!

To make this change, just go to Settings » Business Hours » Edit and check the box that says “Start week on Monday”. Once you do this, your schedules will start on Mondays instead of Sundays. Don’t forget that you also have the option to use a 24:00 style time as well.

Instagram

There’s now an option add a link to your Instagram page in the Social Media section (Settings » Social Media).

Slideshow options

Slideshows have a few new options. You can now set the interval between slides/changes and also choose between a sliding animation and fading animation.

To change your slideshow settings, go to Pages » Gallery » Gallery Preferences.

Online ordering for non-U.S. customers

Up until recently, the only widget options for online ordering with Let’s Eat have been EatStreet and OpenDining. Unfortunately, these options are only available for customers in the U.S. and Canada.

GloriaFood is a new online ordering system available for Let’s Eat users in other countries. If you’d like to add online ordering to your Australian or U.K. restaurant, you should give them a try!

Mobile Traffic Closes in on 50% for Restaurant Websites

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:11:47 -0800

Let’s Eat (www.letseat.at) has aggregated the traffic statistics of 14,000 websites over 4 years to present you with some interesting insight into the behavior of visitors to this niche market.

Aside from a slight plateau in recent months, mobile traffic has increased at a regular rate over the last 4 years from just 3% in October 2009 to 43% in October 2013.

Weekend Traffic Leans Heavily Mobile

Stats from the past 12 months show that the number of visits from mobile devices surges from a third during the week, to nearly half of all traffic during weekends.

This can be attributed to many things, including workers being more likely to surf in from desktops at the office during the week, and also from being out and about throughout the day and evening during weekends.

These numbers are aggregated from the entire year as those totals are statistically more significant than the monthly totals. Based on the overall trends, there’s no doubt that weekend mobile traffic now accounts for well over 50%.

Larger Metro Areas Trend Mobile

Numbers from the most recent year also show a distinct connection between population size and mobile traffic. Despite a slight discrepancy at the top, the overall message is that the larger the metropolitan area your business resides in, the more mobile traffic you can expect to have.

Surprisingly, this pattern continues with tech-heavy areas like the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle-Tacoma. Smaller communities such as Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto and Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo/Battle Creek tend to have lower than average levels of mobile engagement.

2014: The Year Mobile Finally Takes Priority for Restaurants

This coming year may be the first where web designers in the service industry are hired to design for mobile devices first, with traditional desktop browser designs becoming a secondary “like-to-have” feature.

For low margin businesses like restaurants, the extraordinary cost of hiring a designer to do both mobile and desktop designs may lead to the increased adoption of responsive designs, or possibly even mobile-only websites.

About Let’s Eat

Let’s Eat (www.letseat.at) is the most popular website builder made specifically for restaurants, with over 14,000 websites built since 2008.

Add Online Ordering, Reservations, and Career Management to Your Restaurant's Website

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:25:00 -0700

Let’s Eat has partnered up with EatStreet, Taskvilla, and SeatMe to offer new ways to extend your restaurant’s website. The new apps are available for installation in the Let’s Eat Marketplace.

Add Online Ordering to Your Website

Let’s Eat has teamed up with EatStreet to offer low cost, no-monthly-fee online ordering to your website.

EatStreet provides all the technology you need to take and receive online, mobile and social media orders. They do all the work including menu set-up and data entry, and are there when you need them with 24x7x365 customer service.

There’s no cost to get started and no monthly fees. You simply pay a small commission on any orders you take through their system.

You can add an EatStreet online ordering page to your website by going to the Marketplace tab in your dashboard and looking for EatStreet.

Post and Manage Open Job Positions

Taskvilla allows the busy restaurant owners to accept job applications right from their website, no more paper applications or messing with emails.

Simply direct applicants to your Let’s Eat website and Taskvilla accepts the job applicant, organizes and alerts you when someone applies. View your open positions from your desktop, tablet or phone at anytime.

Adding Taskvilla to your restaurant’s website is easy– just log into Let’s Eat, go to the Marketplace tab, and look for Taskvilla to install the widget.

Add Online Reservations, Waitlist Texting, and Floor Management

SeatMe is a cost-efficient new way to manage your restaurant. With SeatMe, you can take online reservations, manage your floor, and track your walk-in guests, all from one place. To get started, just install their widget on your Let’s Eat website by going to the Marketplace tab.

Mobile Design Reboot

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 13:23:49 -0700

A lot has changed since Let’s Eat first launched back 2008. At the time, Blackberry phones were leading the pack with their own proprietary browser. In fact, Let’s Eat’s original mobile layout was tailored specifically for Blackberry phones.

Then came the iPhone and another mobile redesign. For a few years, an iPhone-style layout was plenty for most restaurant websites and Let’s Eat used a modified iOS-style layout to much success.

These days, mobile devices come in all shapes and sizes, with no leading players, and dozens of Android, iPhone, Firefox, Ubuntu, and Windows phones, tablets, and other devices redefining the market. 30% of visitors to Let’s Eat restaurant websites come from these non-desktop browsers (more on that soon).

Starting today, all previous Let’s Eat restaurants have the option to upgrade their mobile website layout to a new, responsive layout that is fully compatible with all modern mobile web browsers. All websites created after today will automatically be set to use this new layout.

Rather than having one standard mobile design, the new mobile layout designs match the colors and background of their desktop counterparts. They are also quite a bit more customizable than the previous designs were.

The new layouts require the use of the latest designs, so if you are still using the classic style (pre-2011) layout designs, this would be a good opportunity to upgrade.

What is responsive design, and how does it affect your restaurant’s website?

Responsive design is a different from traditional mobile design in that rather than creating a separate website with a separate web address for mobile users, it utilizes one web address, and simply shifts content around to fit various screen sizes. This means your website will look good to customers regardless of the height/width of their screen or browser, and will contain all the same information.

You can see an example of this by visiting the Let’s Eat demo website with a desktop browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 9+) and shrinking your screen size down.

All visitors to the old mobile subdomain (i.e. http://m.myexamplerestaurant.com) will be redirected to the standard URL (i.e. http://www.myexamplerestaurant.com), so you will be able to send all users to the same URL regardless of whether they are out on the street or at home on their couch.

Upgrading is easy. Just go to Appearance » Mobile Design and click the link in the orange banner to upgrade!

Faster site navigation and some mobile updates

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:58:07 -0700

As LetsEat has grown over the years, the number of pages in the dashboard have exploded. To make it faster and easier to navigate around the site, drop down menus have been added to all the main links.

This week, a few new features have also been added to the mobile sites. Widgets in the LetsEat! Marketplace, like the OpenDining and OpenTable ones, now accept a mobile link on their Edit page. This means you can more easily link to the mobile versions of your reservation or ordering apps.

The mobile sites also now allow for custom CSS and JavaScript, so you can do quite a bit more in terms of your mobile design now, with a little help from a web developer.

Add mobile-specific links to your restaurant's website

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:45:00 -0700

If you use external services for things like reservations, surveys, online ordering, etc., you may want certain links to appear only for mobile visitors (like a link to the mobile version of a service).

Links from LetsEat! now offer the option to assign a platform (Web only, Mobile only, or Web/Mobile). This will allow you to set mobile or web only links to other sites.

You can create links to show on a list on a separate page or directly in your website’s navigation by going to Pages » Links.

Add photo headers to your custom pages

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:26:23 -0700

Adding a photo to custom pages has been made simpler with the photo upload feature. Just edit an existing or new custom page, and attach a photo to have it displayed above the page content. It’s as easy as that!

Add more than one menu item at a time with the new multi-upload option

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:25:54 -0700

It can take a long time to recreate your menu online, but starting today, Let’s Eat! has a new feature, bulk uploads.

Now, you can add basic information for up to 15 menu items at a time! It’s easy– just go to a menu in your dashboard and click the Multi-upload button to get started.

New Navigation Design

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:09:52 -0700

To make more room in the sub-navigation for upcoming features, the navigation has been changed to run vertically instead of horizontally, and has been spiffed up a bit as well. In addition to that, the account-level navigation links have been further separated from the restaurant-level tabs.

Hope you like the changes!

Built-in Web Stats

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:01:27 -0700

Ever wonder how much traffic is coming to your restaurant’s website, or which page visitors go to most? LetsEat.at now comes with built-in web statistics for all LetsEat! Pro websites.

WIth the new tracker, you can see basic info like which sites send you the most traffic, your percentage of mobile visitors, daily unique visitors, and most popular pages.

Of course, for more in-depth information, you can still install Google Analytics, but the new web traffic monitor offers a useful and simple to use way to track visitors. Check it out today!

White label dashboard

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:39:00 -0800

Manage multiple LetsEat! websites for clients? Want to resell LetsEat.at hosted websites? LetsEat.at now offers an unbranded version of the log in page and dashboard for website resellers and web developers.

Rather than logging into www.LetsEat.at, your clients can log into admin.yourwebsite.com and see your company’s logo in place of LetsEat.at’s.

The white label dashboard is, in most respects, identical to the ordinary dashboard. However, the following features are missing from the interface due to various technical and branding reasons:

- The LetsEat! Marketplace

- Facebook Menu App

- The help section

These features are still available when you log in through LetsEat.at (https://www.letseat.at/login). They are simply hidden from view in the white label version of the dashboard.

This feature is free for all LetsEat! Pro account-holders and is available immediately. There are more details in the help section: http://www.letseat.at/home/restaurant-help/letseat-at-white-label-setup-instructions

Please note that the LetsEat.at’s Terms and Conditions have been updated for this new feature.

Now Accepting Discover Cards

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:10:00 -0800

In addition to Visa and MasterCard, LetsEat.at now accepts Discover cards as a payment method. You can update your payment method at any time by going to the Billing tab, then clicking “Update information”.