These are difficult times.

There is no precedent out there, and there is only limited guidance to help the hospitality industry through this trauma.

The decision you have made, whether it be to close down entirely or remain open for carry out and delivery, is the right decision for you, your employees, your values and your community. 

Our hearts are with you. We thank you for the choice you have made, and for the actions you are taking to keep us all safe and healthy. 

Weathering the storm

For those of you who have chosen to keep your businesses open, creating an accessible online presence is now more important than ever.  From your social media pages to your website, your online presence is now the main channel for you to communicate with potential customers and for customers to find you and make purchases. 

Accessibility in the digital domain means making it easier for customers to find the information they seek and minimizing hassles when making purchases. 

Easy to find information

Several weeks ago, when the quarantine was still in early days, I called Passerotto in Chicago and bombarded them with many questions. 

“Can I make an order for delivery today?”

“Will you deliver to my address?”

“How can I include a tip?”

The food was fantastic, so I made another Passerotto order again last week. On my second time around, I noticed that the website and order form had been updated to include guidance on tipping, delivery, and order deadlines. They had improved the information on their website and made it easier for me to make an order.

Think about the questions you are most frequently asked over the phone or through social media. These questions are a good hint as to what information your customers need to complete their decision about where to buy a takeout meal. 

Some of these questions include:

• Are you open for carry out or delivery?
• What kind of products do you offer? Meal kits, re-heat meals or ready to eat meals?
• What neighborhoods will you deliver to?
• If you are using a third party service to manage deliveries, like Grub Hub or Caviar, can you provide a link to the relevant online order page?

Making this information easy to find on your website means that your staff will save time in answering questions over the phone and your customers will find it easier to make orders. It also means that your website is more likely to pop up in the search results when people Google the keywords that are relevant to you. 

Easy to read information

Everyone is stressed and anxious nowadays. In these circumstances, it’s completely understandable that people will find it harder to read and understand things. This is why it’s important to make sure that the content you put online is easy to read. 

You can make your online presence easy to work with by:

• Writing in plain English. You can use the Read-able readability checker to ensure your website has a good reading level.
• Providing key information like menus in text form instead of image or PDF form. This means that screen readers will be able to read the information out loud and Google will be able to pick up your menu and boost your search results.
• Adding captions to videos and image descriptions to pictures, especially on social media. While this helps people who are hearing impaired or vision impaired, it also aligns with how people scroll through Instagram and Facebook nowadays.

If you want to learn more about how to strengthen the accessibility of your business’s online presence, you can visit the Accessibull Guidelines.