In terms of design, people want a certain level of stickiness to their website. The objective of making a website Sticky can be described as intentionally providing content that grabs hold of the visitor's attention when they happen upon your site. This content is strategically placed and designed to get them to check out the website instead of navigating away to someplace else almost immediately. Another part of stickiness is creating a desire for visitors to return, and often. So what elements make a restaurant sticky (in the good way)?

Think about the experience of eating at your restaurant. How much of the time spent there is actually spent eating? 15 minutes? 20 minutes? The rest of the time invested into eating at your restaurant is in the discovery of it, the trip there, the approach from the street or parking lot, and all of this is just to get someone to the front door. Then there is entering the building, speaking with the hostess, being led to the table, reading the menu, deciding what to get, conversing with the server, ordering , waiting for the food to be prepared and served, then the guest gets to eat. Whew! So let's average out (for the sake of this discussion) that this whole experience takes more than an hour by the time they have gotten there, eaten and then left the building. That would mean that roughly less than ¼ of that time is spent eating. It is almost as if the food is ancillary to the rest of the experience. What are you doing to make the other 75% of their time experiencing your business a good one? What other content are you providing to give them a great return on their investment of time and instill in them a desire to come back?

Let's look at the visitors that you are trying to target and the content that makes a restaurant good and sticky. Other than food, add in content that is relevant to the visitor that you are trying to get in the door. Add in meeting spaces. Meeting rooms make for a good reason to visit your site by making it a short term work space where they can break for a meal. It can be a separate room or if that is not possible you can create a low traffic, quieter area for several people to comfortably gather near an electrical outlet. Pharmaceutical reps and other sales people are a great demographic to attract with this content, and they are loyal when treated well.

Add in sports content to attract the college age demographic and their alumni. If you are within 20 miles of a university you have a golden opportunity to grab that demographic and keep them. Utilize the flat screens, menus and table tents to push this content before game days. Make your space THE space to watch the games. Get your distributors to customize marketing materials for your area and your business.

Of course, add in WiFi. WiFi is proven to attract the first two demographics mentioned above and draws a demographic of its own: the tech savvy consumer. WiFi is proven to build loyalty while increasing repeat visits. Not only does it do this as a standalone amenity, but you can also use it to push content to make your restaurant even stickier. A managed WiFi service will allow for a welcome screen where you can push this content. It will also allow for the option for you to collect the email address of each user of this service so you can push this content after they have left the building. It will also allow for you to redirect them after log in to key pages on your website or social network page where you can even further push content. So go ahead, strategically add content to make your restaurant sticky for key types of visitors. In this economy a sticky restaurant is far better than one that is not sticky at all.