WEBSITE STUDY 2 - MERCHANTS RESTAURANTwww.merchantsrestaurant.com
Merchants Restaurant is one of downtown Nashville's oldest and most establish fine dining destinations in the Middle Tennessee region. The original building was a three-story structure and included a pharmacy, wholesale drug company and a hardware manufacturing facility. The building went on to serve as a hotel, one of Al Capone's speakeasies, a brothel, a honky-tonk dive bar and eventually in 1988 after careful refurbishment, a the fine dining restaurant it is today. Merchants Restaurant is now owned and managed by Southern Restaurant Group, who Logic House Media developed several sites for over the last few years including Mere Bulles, Princeton's Grille, The Trace, Santa Fe Cattle co. Bistro215 and others.
The original website was very "home-spun" and limited in features and graphic appeal. In 2003, Logic House Media re-developed the site completely in Flash, incorporating a "modern classic" look and feel at management's request. This site, like several others we developed for Southern Restaurant Group, included an administrative area for owner controlled updating. Logic House Media photographed the entire restaurant, chefs, food and video clips for use on the website.
In
the spring of 2007 it was time for an update and careful consideration
of the restaurant's alternative services: private dining, banquets
and receptions. The restaurant's entire third floor is devoted
to private dining events and ideally it would be booked up as much
as possible. Most of the restaurant's marketing is devoted to print
publications promoting their candidacy for wedding receptions.
Several destination websites include Merchants Restaurant in their
links, however, it is also important to utilize the web's natural
marketing opportunities through search engines.
With search engine optimization in mind, we redeveloped the website to naturally climb in search result positioning. Besides skillful manipulation of the programming code of the website, we also provided key search related services which act very much behind the scenes, all without infringing on their print marketing budget.
The restaurant's incredible executive chef, Gregory Treep, changes the menu often to add variety and flow with what is seasonally appropriate. The original menu updating system allowed each menu item to be changed individually, since usually menu changes are small. Gregory likes to change more than one or two things at a time and Merchants provides four different types of dining menus and several private dining packages.
Their manus are produced in Microsoft Word in a very simple format which can be inserted into their menu sleeves. Their current administrative area streamlines their online menu updating by allowing them to upload entire menus with a single click, instantly posting to the public website.
In addition to menu updating, Merchants Restaurant Management is able to update all of their private dining online information forms and hours of operation. Inline interactive Google maps provide a way for out-of-towners to find the restaurant directly from the website. A full-fledged online reservation system isn't applicable to the restaurant's needs, so a very low profile reservation request application provides a simple solution.
