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City Edge Catering does office and event catering for workplaces in Canberra and Queanbeyan: lunch packages, morning teas, functions, and food for people with dietary needs. This week its new website went live at cityedgecatering.com.au, built and run by Spidee.
Here is what changed, and what we think any catering business needs from its website.
From an older site to a fast new one
City Edge's old website was a WordPress site on a shared hosting plan. Customers read the menu there, then described what they wanted in an enquiry form.
The new site is a Spidee site. It loads quickly on a phone, which matters when the person ordering is an office manager between meetings, and the menu, prices and ordering all sit in one place.
Ordering from the full menu
The biggest change is online ordering. Customers now build their order themselves:
- They pick from the full menu, with every price shown.
- They choose the date and time they need it.
- They send it as an order request.
There is no payment online. City Edge checks each request and confirms it with the customer by phone or email. The order lands in City Edge's inbox, and the customer gets a copy by email plus a printable version of the order for their own records or their finance team.
We wrote more about how the ordering works, and why there is no checkout, in City Edge Catering now takes orders online.
A homepage written for search
When a Canberra office needs a lunch for twenty people, they search for it. The new homepage is written around that search, catering in Canberra, and says plainly what City Edge offers, where it delivers and how to order. Clear words on the page help both the people reading it and the search engines deciding what the page is about.
Email that kept working
For a caterer, email is where the orders, changes and confirmations happen. Losing it for a day during a website move is not an option.
As part of the move, City Edge's business email moved to Zoho Mail, with two mailboxes: one for catering enquiries and one for the kitchen. We set the new mailboxes up alongside the new website, so mail kept arriving the whole way through the switch.
A switch with no downtime
Spidee looks after City Edge's domain and its settings. That meant we could prepare the new site and the new email in advance and then move the address over in one step. The website stayed up throughout: customers who visited during the change saw a working site, first the old one and then the new one.
Moving your own site? Ask whoever is doing it two questions before they start: what happens to my email during the move, and will my website be down at any point? A good answer to both is "nothing" and "no".
What a catering business needs from its website
City Edge's launch is a good checklist for any caterer, cafe or food business that takes orders from other businesses:
- The full menu, with prices. Office managers are often working to a budget and need to see costs before they ask. A PDF they have to download, or "price on request", sends them to the next result.
- An easy way to order. Let customers put the order together themselves, with the date and time, rather than describing it in a free-text form. You still confirm every order before it is final.
- A copy for the customer. An emailed copy and a printable order save a round of "can you send me what I ordered?" and make life easier for whoever approves the spend.
- Email that works and looks professional. Separate mailboxes for enquiries and the kitchen keep orders from getting lost, and an address on your own domain looks like a business people can trust with their event.
- A homepage that says what you do and where. Name your suburb or city and your services in plain words, so the right customers find you.
- Your phone number on every page. Some customers will always want to call, especially for a last-minute order.
Where Spidee comes in
City Edge's site is a Spidee done-for-you build: the website, the ordering, the email setup and the move from the old site. If your business takes orders, bookings or enquiries and your website is not pulling its weight, tell us what you do and we will show you what a new site could look like. Or see three designs for your business, free.
Want this for your business? See how quotes and orders work on a Spidee website.
And if you need catering in Canberra or Queanbeyan, City Edge Catering is ready to take your order.