Latino’s restaurant in Erie, PA reaches 50 recommendations. Congrats!

August 9, 2010 – 10:17 am

Diningverse is celebrating it’s first major milestone together with Latino’s, an authentic mexican restaurant in Erie, PA. Latino’s has reached 50 recommendations from Diningverse patrons.

50 Recommendations for Latino's Restaurant

It’s no surprise that this excellent restaurant is by far the most recommended in Erie. When you read the recommendations on the restaurant’s Diningverse website, you’ll see a common thread. The food is great and the service is prompt and friendly. Here is a quote from Michael J. Houston’s recent recommendation: “Most kids beg their parents for McDonalds, ours constantly beg us to go to Latino’s. During the four years we have lived in Erie, we have dined at Latino’s several times and have never been disappointed.” And that’s just the beginning. You need to read the entire recommendation to really appreciate the passion Latino’s patrons have for this restaurant.

There is, however, one another important element to reaching 50 recommendations at Diningverse. The restaurant owner and staff simply need to ask for the recommendation! What can be simpler? Most of you know that there is no better advertising than ‘Word of Mouth’ or in the recent years  the ‘Word of Mouse’. Diningverse provides recommendation cards for all restaurants that setup their website on Diningverse. All that need’s to be done is hand out the the recommendation cards to happy patrons and ask for the recommendation.

This is something that Julio Reyes, the owner and manager of Latino’s, understands very well. Just asking for a recommendation can make a tremendous difference. And in the case of Latino’s Restaurant, the result is a staggering 50 recommendations and #1 restaurant in Erie, PA, with Lorie’s  Wildridge Restaurant in second place with 20 recommendations (trailing by 20 recommendations). It’s safe to say that Julio has the #1 spot in Erie locked up for a nice while.

So, congratulations are in order to Julio and his family (which also makes most of the staff). Keep up the great service and continue bringing smiles on your patron’s faces.

By Diningverse | Posted in Milestones | Leave a Comment

News flash … Online Ordering now available in Diningverse

August 4, 2010 – 3:53 pm

One of the top requested features for a while has been the integration with Online Ordering services. Today we are proud to announce that we have a simple and elegant way to integrate any online ordering service with Diningverse.

We added an Online Ordering section to the Info screen in Diningverse Restaurant Editor.

nline Ordering screen in Info section of Diningverse Restaurant Editor

Online Ordering settings screen

As you can see from the screenshot above, it’s incredibly simple to add Online Ordering service to Diningverse Restaurant website. Just paste in the link to your online ordering website and click the Save Changes button.

Once the link is saved, it appears automatically in the sidebar of the Diningverse restaurant website and is available on every page of the site.

Online Ordering link in the sidebar of Diningverse restaurant website

Online Ordering link in the sidebar

That’s it. Anytime a customer clicks the link, a new browser window will open and load the online ordering website.

Don’t have an Online Ordering service yet?

MenuDrive LogoNo problem! We have partnered up with our friends at MenuDrive to bring an excellent and super affordable online ordering to any restaurant. Existing Diningverse restaurants can sign-up for MenuDrive online ordering service directly from the Restaurant Editor.

With online ordering from MenuDrive restaurants can allow customers to order from their online menu. It’s a great way to increase ticket sales, streamline order-taking, and build customer loyalty.

Stay tuned for some extraordinary online ordering offers from Diningverse in partnership with MenuDrive coming very shortly.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Restaurants | Leave a Comment

Sending emails to restaurant patrons? Don’t. Save your money.

August 3, 2010 – 9:26 am

Plenty of restaurants take the time to collect email addresses of their patrons and periodically send out email campaigns promoting their restaurant. There are plenty of generic email marketing options and a few services that are geared specifically to the restaurant business (such as Fish Bowl).

Sending out periodic emails to restaurant patrons seems like a great idea. You ask them to give you their email address and you send them coupons once in a while. In fact, email marketing is one of the cornerstones of each ‘Customer Loyalty Program’. The question is how effective this type of marketing really is?

People are spending less and less time reading their email. The laboriously put together email campaigns go largely unnoticed. How many restaurant emails do your thing an average restaurant patron is willing to take a look at on weekly basis? The graph below displays how much time the Internet users in the U.S. spend on individual activities online.

Online activities graphAs you can see, Email occupies less than half the time than Social Networks/Blogs. Why is this?

First of all, for whatever reason, emails sent as a part of an email campaign are infrequent and extremely bloated. I bet you that reading an average email campaign from top to bottom would take you at least 15 minutes. According to the graph above, you’d have to devote about 3 hours worth of your ‘email attention’ to read this single email. That’s just not going to happen.

The rise of Twitter and the Facebook Wall clearly show that we’re moving toward frequent ‘bite sized’ information that one can just glance at and get the gist right away. Email just does not cut it anymore for this purpose.

The Diningverse Scoop (or D’Scoop) is an excellent way to keep restaurant patrons updated on what’s happening at a restaurant. It is automatically aggregated on the restaurant’s local area page and displayed to all patrons that recommended the restaurant and added the area to their ‘My Areas’. You can think of it as Twitter specifically for restaurants.

By Diningverse | Posted in Opinions and Rants | Leave a Comment

Customize your restaurant website look & feel

July 7, 2010 – 7:05 am

Up until now, the Diningverse restaurant websites have been very informative, easy to use and generally very handy. One complaint we heard over and over was that each restaurant had to use the same simple design for their restaurant website. This simple design was well put together and sported a universal look that was easy for the site visitors to use. However, it lacked the ability to visually distinguish the individual restaurants that maintain their Diningverse restaurant websites.

Well, this is now history.

Introducing the Diningverse restaurant website Design Editor.

Similar to Twitter, restaurant managers can now customize the look & feel of their Diningverse restaurant website. They can choose colors for various parts of their website design and optionally add a fully custom graphical header. As part of this update, we have also reworked the placement of various pieces of content.

Diningverse restaurant website design - before and after

The interactive Design Editor makes it incredibly easy to experiment with various colors or simply use colors from your existing branding to adjust your Diningverse restaurant website to fit your style. Mexican restaurant can choose bright and vibrant colors while contemporary eatery can go with more elegant darker colors. The sample website design changes in real time to give you an idea of what the final result will look like.

Diningverse restaurant website - design editor

You can use the color pickers or copy and paste the color code to match your exact branding colors.

You can keep it simple by sticking with the default header that includes the restaurant name in large, prominent font with a custom header color or you can have your graphical designer create a beautiful graphical header to give your Diningverse restaurant website even more personality.

Simple vs. Custom Website header

We hope that you’re as excited about this new feature as we are here at Diningverse. Go ahead and try it out! You can access the Interactive Designer through the Settings screen within the Restaurant Editor.

Restaurant Editor - settings screen with Interactive Design Editor link

Here are a few examples of Diningverse Restaurant Websites with customized design:

Let us know what you think. We’re already planning some more exciting features so stay tuned.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Restaurants | Leave a Comment

PDF online menus are evil

June 26, 2010 – 12:03 pm

Anyone visiting a restaurant website is interested in the following:

  1. Address/directions and phone number
  2. What’s on the menu
  3. How is the restaurant atmosphere

That’s it! By the way, the information of interest is interesting roughly in the order listed above. So what does that mean?

Restaurants that spend a lot of time on elaborate and ‘interactive’ designs for their site are missing the point and wasting their money.

The purpose of a restaurant is not to provide me with a ‘cool’ or ‘entertaining’ website. It’s to serve me great food and provide a great atmosphere once I’m at the restaurant.

But they need to get me to their restaurant first! How will they do that? It’s simple as 1, 2, 3.

  1. Show me what you serve
    A simple, descriptive on-line menu. It would be awesome if it had pictures of the dishes.
  2. Show me the atmosphere
    A few quality pictures of what your restaurant looks like, what kind of people dine there, what to expect when I get there.
  3. Show me what some other patrons have to say
    Recommendations are great. The more the better. The best ones are from people I know or the ones that go into detail and are super descriptive about WHY the patron liked the restaurant.

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s get back to the issue at hand …  the evil PDF menu.

First of all, PDF menus are a waste of my time. I have to download them, open in a PDF reader, decipher how they’re put together, ignore all the ‘graphical enhancements’. I understand why a restaurant may want to do this… they’re told that they need to be ‘selling the brand’. Give me a break!

Pizza Hut is selling their brand, Frankie’s Family Restaurant is just trying to get some customers.

During this time of information overload, restaurants need to provide accurate, timely information in a simple, clear and concise way. The online menu MUST work on smart phones, hand held devices and should not rely on some 3rd party software such as PDF reader (or Flash player). Get me to your restaurant first… then sell me your uniqueness through great food and outstanding service.

If you’re restaurant owner or manager, you don’t need to hire an advertising or marketing company to ‘manage’ your website. Save your money to buy expensive kitchen equipment. Restaurants using the Diningverse Restaurant websites can manage their menus online with minimum computer knowledge in real time. Simple, quick and cost efficient.

By Diningverse | Posted in Opinions and Rants | Tags: , , , | Comments (2)

Behold… one-click social publishing

June 17, 2010 – 11:24 am

Recently we have introduced the Simple Sign-in functionality to Diningverse and with that comes another amazing feature… one-click social publishing to your favorite social networks.

Here is how it works

After you sign-in to Diningverse using the new Simple Sign-in functionality you can recommend restaurants through their Diningverse profile. Just write your recommendation for that restaurant and click the Recommend! button.

Submit your Diningverse recommendation

Submit your restaurant recommendation

Your recommendation is posted on Diningverse for the restaurant. In a couple of seconds a window pops-up with the options to publish your recommendation to Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and Yahoo.

Publish to social networks

Publish your recommendation to social networks

You can connect your Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and Yahoo social networks accounts to your Diningverse profile through super simple authentication (this only needs to be done one time) and you’ll be able to publish your recommendations to all your accounts with just one click.

Of course, you can adjust your recommendation before you publish. The recommendation does not need to be exactly the same as the one you left on the restaurant website but you should keep it similar. You can choose if you want to publish to all your connected social networks or just to specific ones each time you recommend a restaurant.

We hope you like this new feature. Let us know what you think and give us some feedback how to make it better or if you have some additional features in mind.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features | Tags: , | Leave a Comment

Erie Rib Fest Not Just For Ribbers

June 9, 2010 – 11:34 am

One would think that the Erie Rib Fest would be a great place for local restaurants to bring samples of their signature food, however, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

I actually asked Kathy Danielson of  Performance & Event Management why we didn’t see this and the reason was staring me right in the face.  These companies have huge pieces of equipment geared specifically for outside cooking, storage and refrigeration……something few restaurateurs have at their fingertips.  And it is no small task to staff a 4 day event that runs 11AM-11PM.  So, I get it now!  And now I understand why she asked Diningverse to be a sponsor.  Yep, the restaurants could have a presence and get some exposure without serving food…..brilliant!

Erie Rib Fest 2010

Erie Rib Fest 2010

So, in less than a week, with the help of Creative Imprints Systems and Apple Creative Group we got some Diningverse t-shirts made.  We rustled up some coupons and Gift Certificates from Nelson’s Tavern, Lorie’s Wildridge, Ricardo’s and Latino’s. Alice DeGeorge of Presque Isle Printing put together our ballots in a few hours.

During the 4 day event, the Diningverse booth became the hub for supplying water to the Dance Elite Company.  We lured the crowd with handy wipes and “clean” Diningverse t-shirts.  Many signed up as new patrons using our newly launched Simple Sign-in….smooth!

The daily drawings for the dining gift certificates reaped 5 lucky winners: Michael Trayer, Bonnie Lee Mikula, Judy Brown, Jacob Stevenson and Phil Senita. Those that did not win can stay eligible for upcoming contests by becoming a patron of Diningverse.

As we enter tourist season, we want to remind people that local cuisine is never a local secret.  We want people visiting Erie, PA to be able to easily find our local independently owned restaurants. Every town has its own unique flavor, signature food or something that it is noted for.

Although it was just “Ribbers” serving food at the Erie Rib Fest, Diningverse was there promoting local independent restaurants.

By Chris | Posted in Branding and Marketing, Contests | Tags: , | Leave a Comment

Simple Sign-in arrives to Diningverse

June 1, 2010 – 9:45 am

We understand that it’s a pain to create a new username and password every time you want to use a service or website on the Internet. At Diningverse we’re really trying to make it as simple and painless as possible to recommend restaurants, create lists and personalize your experience. Until recently it was not possible without creating a Diningverse account with it’s own username and password (actually using an email account for the username).

Guess what, there’s no need to do that anymore. Diningverse patrons can sign-in and start their new Diningverse account using an existing account with Facebook, Google/Gmail, Yahoo, OpenID, Twitter or Windows Live ID.

Simple Sign In

Simple Sign In

Just choose one of the options to connect your Diningverse account and the rest is completely automatic. Anytime you return back to Diningverse just sign-in with the account you’ve connected.

Simple Sign In for Returning Patrons

Simple Sign In for Returning Patrons

You can check which account you have linked to your Diningverse profile while viewing your My Diningverse pages.

Profile Connected

Profile Connected

That’s it. Enjoy not having to remember yet another account username and password and have fun recommending restaurants on Diningverse.

Diningverse Legacy Accounts

The patrons with existing Diningverse accounts can connect their existing profile to one of their other accounts with Facebook, Google/Gmail, Yahoo, OpenID, Twitter or Windows Live ID. We are planning to discontinue the legacy Diningverse account sign-in by the end of June so we encourage all Diningverse patrons to connect to one of their other accounts soon.

Follow these simple instructions to connect your existing Diningverse profile to one of your other accounts.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Patrons | Comments (2)

…and the winner is SafeNet

May 30, 2010 – 10:59 am

Congratulations to winners, Donald Hoover and Linda Lecce, each recipients of a $50 Diningverse Gift Certificate donated as part of the Local Small Businesses That Care Charity event.

A number of area businesses donated over $1,100.00 worth of goods and services to be raffled off as part of a gift basket, with proceeds going to a local charity. The contest was the brainstorm of Mark Ericson of Penn Automotive who took on the task of organizing this well received event.  In fact, it was so well received by the community that Mark had to coordinate a 2nd drawing.

Donald, our first winner, chose his gift certificate for Ricardo’s, a favorite local restaurant noted for their fried zucchini, pasta and other Italian/American dishes.

Linda has not chosen a restaurant for her $50 Diningverse gift certificate as yet.  This is not surprising; there is a pretty wide selection of suggested and recommended restaurants.

But, we think the real winner is SafeNet Center, the local charity chosen to receive the proceeds from the event.

By Chris | Posted in Contests | Tags: , , , | Leave a Comment

Visitor stats now available for full profiles

May 8, 2010 – 2:26 pm

Much requested and long awaited feature is now available in the Restaurant Editor. Restaurant Managers can now review their visitor statistics (stats) on the Restaurant Editor Dashboard.

Visitor Stats on Restaurant Editor Dashboard

Visitor Stats on Restaurant Editor Dashboard

We decided to keep it simple and show the following stats (as you can see on the picture above):

  • Lifetime pageviews (combined total for all pages in a full profile since profile inception)
  • Lifetime recommendations (total recommendations from patrons since profile inception)
  • Pageviews for last 30 days
  • Pageviews for last 7 days

Although we did not add this feature until now, the visitor stats are available for all full profiles since their creation (going back as far as almost 2 years). We are using Google Analytics to collect the visitor stats for each profile, which enabled us to go back and retrieve the detailed numbers for each profile.

Restaurant Managers can now see how their profile is doing anytime they login to their Restaurant Editor.

While working on this feature, we have encountered an interesting fact (although expected, now confirmed): The full profiles with better, richer content and more recommendations receive significantly more visits and this collect much more pageviews.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Restaurants | Leave a Comment
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