The Patio Nobody Knows You Have

Tables in the sun, invisible online

Plenty of restaurants and cafes have a patio: a row of tables on the sidewalk, a deck at the back, a courtyard behind a gate. Many never mention it online.

The website has the menu, the hours and a photograph of the dining room. The listing on Google shows the front door in winter.

Then the first warm weekend arrives, and people search on their phones for somewhere to sit outside. They find the places that say they have a patio.

Yours is not among them, even with empty tables in the sunshine.

How people look for a patio

Patio searches are made on the spot or the evening before. People type "patio" with a neighbourhood or a street, or ask for somewhere to eat outside near where they are standing.

Google's map lists up to seven businesses for searches like these, and search engines can only match the word to places that use it: on their website, on their listing, in their reviews.

Then people look at photographs. A patio that cannot be seen in any picture might as well be closed.

What patio seekers want to know

• That it exists, in words as well as pictures.
• What it is like: sun or shade, view, cover and heaters.
• When it opens for the season, and its hours.
• Whether tables can be booked or are first come.
• Who is welcome, from children and dogs to large groups.
• What happens when the weather turns.

The fourth decides plans. A group choosing where to sit outside on Saturday wants to know whether they can reserve a table there, and a site that does not say leaves them guessing.

Put the word where it can be read

Search engines read words much more reliably than pictures. Say "patio" in a sentence high on the home page, and repeat it on the page with your address and hours.

A short patio section, with two or three sentences and a photograph, gives the word a place to live. Describe it plainly: how many tables, sun in the afternoon, covered or not.

Name the photograph's file after what it shows, and describe it in the image's text alternative, the short description read out to people who cannot see it. Both help the picture turn up in image searches.

Photographs that show it

Take patio photographs on a bright, dry day, with the umbrellas up and, if you can, people at the tables who have agreed to be in the picture.

Shoot from where a guest arrives and from a seat at a table, so people can see both what they are walking into and what the view is.

Add them to your Google My Business listing, which also shows them on your Google+ page and in the map, and to your website and Facebook page. Replace winter shots of empty, stacked chairs.

Take a new set each spring. Umbrellas, planters and furniture change, and a photograph from three summers ago shows a patio that no longer looks like that.

A worked example

A pet bakery in a converted house on a neighbourhood shopping street bakes biscuits and birthday cakes for dogs, and serves coffee to their owners from a counter by the door.

Along the side of the house is a fenced patio with five tables, water bowls and two big umbrellas, where owners sit with their dogs on fine days.

Online, the patio did not exist. The website talked only about the baking, and the photographs on its listing were taken through the front window two winters ago.

People searching for a dog-friendly patio in the neighbourhood found two cafes a few blocks away, both of which said so on their sites.

Before the first warm weekend, the owner photographed the patio with customers and their dogs, added the photographs to the listing and the site, and put "dog-friendly patio" in the home page's first paragraph.

The contact page now says the patio opens on weekends from late March and every day from May, weather permitting, and that tables cannot be reserved.

Listings and review sites

Several review sites let a restaurant say it has outdoor seating in its details. Check each one you appear on, and tick the box where it exists.

When the patio opens, post it: on the Google+ page, on Facebook and wherever you post regularly. A photograph and one line with the date is enough.

Reviews that mention the patio help search engines match it as well, and they come on their own from guests who enjoyed it.

Hours, bookings and the weather

Patio hours are often different from the dining room's. Say when the patio season starts, the hours it is open, and that it opens weather permitting if that is the case.

If the patio has heaters or a cover, say so. They are what make a West Coast patio usable in April and October.

Say whether patio tables can be reserved. If your online booking system has a seating choice, add the patio; if tables are first come, first served, say that instead.

On days the patio is closed for rain, a line on Facebook or the website's home page saves guests a wasted trip.

The counter-case

A patio of two tables on a busy road is worth a sentence, not a campaign. Say it exists and keep the photographs honest.

A patio that is often closed, by noise, wind or a short season, should be described as it is. Guests who arrive expecting a sunny courtyard and find a shaded strip by the bins do not come back.

And a restaurant whose patio is not much of a draw need not lead with it. But any patio worth sitting on should be named, photographed and given its hours before the weather turns warm.

Before the first warm weekend

1. Photograph the patio on a bright, dry day.
2. Add the photographs to your listing and website.
3. Write the word patio on your home page.
4. State the season and hours it is open.
5. Say whether tables can be booked.
6. Mention dogs, children and cover where they apply.
7. Post on the day the patio opens.

Step three is the one that lets people find you at all. Photographs persuade people who have already found the patio; the word on the page is what brings the search to you in the first place.

Replacing the out-of-date pictures customers check before visiting is covered in an old shopfront photo in the map images.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.