How a High-Impact Website Increases Foot Traffic for Nightlife Venues

How can your nightclub, bar, or pub get more patrons through the doors? We know that most patrons use their smartphones to make last-minute decisions about where to go out. Grabbing this attention is essential if you want to fill your club each night. 

Customers prioritize three things when deciding where to go for a night out:

• Proximity
• Value
• Trust 

You can check all three boxes with effective web design. We’ll show you how.

WordPress Development and Design for Nightclubs

By far the most popular choice as a website host, WordPress offers endless opportunities for customization and SEO. This makes it a great choice for nightclubs and other entertainment venues, where standing out from the crowd is crucial. 

Because WordPress can be customized almost infinitely, it’s a great framework to add location-specific signals, like 

• Integrated Google and Apple Maps 
• Tap-to-call 
• Book now buttons

Your website’s design and technical optimization need to work together to grab the attention of patrons. Make sure you have SEO plugins installed, and optimize for high-intent searches like:

• “Bars near me”
• “Nightclubs open tonight”
• “Open Mic Night”
• “Live DJ”

All of these tactics make it easier for patrons to bridge the gap between discovering you online and actually walking in the door. 

Joomla Development and Design for Bars

Joomla is another popular choice for bar website design. If you’re going this route for your website, we recommend using a developer to get the most functionality out of Joomla. It can be used as a full CMS as well as a customer-facing website. This makes it a great choice for bars or clubs that want to offer reservations or VIP-only experiences. 

Just like with WordPress, good responsive website design on Joomla means reducing friction between patron discovery and booking or visiting. 

In other words, don’t make people work too hard to find your location, menu, hours, or events. They’re after a good time, after all — make it as easy as possible, and they’re more likely to choose you over a competitor. 

Squarespace Development and Design for Nightlife Venues

Squarespace, one of the most popular drag-and-drop website builders, powers somewhere around three million websites globally. It can be a good choice for your bar website design, especially if you need to get up and running quickly. 

Though you’re a little more restricted to templates with Squarespace than you would be with WordPress or Joomla, there’s still a lot of customization available in Squarespace. For bars and clubs, we highly recommend integrating as much photo and video marketing as you can.

Your website is like the front door of your bar, so customers who are quickly searching for something to do tonight should feel like your website offers a peek inside the doors — making them say, “Hey, I want to step inside and be a part of this!” 

HTML5 Development and Design for Entertainment

While some website design tools use pre-made templates and others are basically a blank slate, most websites have one thing in common — they use HTML5. This means that a developer can easily make changes directly in your site’s code. For nightclub and bar website design, this usually includes:

• Updates for better mobile responsiveness
• Customization beyond templates
• Quickly updating broken tags and code 

The good news for venue managers is that you probably don’t need a brand-new website. If your site isn’t displaying properly on mobile or you just want a better on-brand vibe, a developer can probably make those adjustments fairly easily. 

Shopify Development and Design for Event Venues

Isn’t Shopify just for selling stuff? Not anymore — Shopify has become a popular solution for event booking.

Your Shopify event page design can make the difference between patrons deciding to try out your themed night or staying home. While Shopify is pretty user-friendly, it’s important to get the UX design just right so that patrons can easily find you and navigate your offerings — leading them to actually reserve a table. 

Dynamic Landing Pages for Nightclubs

Nightclub marketing is strongly dependent on proximity searches and special events. An optimized, user-friendly website is essential, but you also need to promote your events. Nothing kills interest faster than going to a website, seeing a really cool performer or theme night, and realizing that it is already over.

Dynamic landing pages are a great solution to this common problem in bar, pub, and nightclub marketing. They’re built around a basic design shell that remains the same — usually your brand’s theme and physical address and contact info — while the content automatically updates based on preset criteria. This makes them perfect for promoting time-sensitive events, like an open mic night every Thursday. You can also link them to ads, social media posts, or specific search terms to help match specific offerings to patrons’ inquiries. 

Geo Landing Pages for Bar Franchises

Geotargeted landing pages are a subset of dynamic landing pages. The information changes to display the details for the location closest to the searcher. This makes it ideal for nightlife managers who are operating multiple locations — for example, an eastside and westside location, or even a franchise.

If your menu changes, you can update it in just one location or across all of your geo landing pages. This makes it even easier for patrons to choose your venue, since they see details specific to their location. 

Application Development for DJs

Marketing is especially tricky for DJs. Not only do you have all the same challenges as a venue, but you are mobile! 

A customized application can be a great way for DJs to capture interest. With your own app, you can let patrons stream your music, submit song requests, see a list of your upcoming shows, and book a session, right through the app. Just like with responsive website design, your application needs to work perfectly on mobile devices. We recommend working with a developer to get it right. 

FAQs: Nightclub Marketing Tips

In a fast-moving, dynamic industry like nightlife, your marketing needs to adjust frequently to keep up with patron interest and shifting offerings. You aren’t offering dental cleanings here — your digital presence needs to convince patrons to visit tonight — not sometime in the future.

A responsive website design is all about capturing high-interest online traffic. When patrons search “clubs near me” or “ladies night in CITY_NAME,” your venue needs to offer an appealing, user-friendly website that makes it easy for patrons to choose you over your competitors.

Here are some of the most common questions our digital marketing experts get about marketing in this fast-paced niche. 

Why does website design matter for bars and nightclubs?

Patron decision-making tends to happen very quickly in the nightlife industry. People use their phones to conduct searches and form impressions of a venue’s atmosphere at a glance, based on visual cues from its website design.

Because of this, nightlife websites must provide top-notch UX. Make it incredibly easy for patrons to find your location, hours, and menu directly on your website. Use photos extensively on your landing and home pages so patrons get an immediate impression of your vibe. 

Should a nightclub website be mobile-first?

Absolutely. Most local-intent search behavior is mobile. Patrons make decisions about where to go for a night out very quickly, so it’s important that your website loads quickly and reduces friction. Some of the best ways to do this are to include CTA buttons like “Tap to Call” or “Check for a Table.” You should also make it very easy to navigate your website, with clear “special events” and “hours” headings visible from the home and landing pages. 

What features should a bar website include?

Bar websites need to clearly communicate proximity, value, and trustworthiness. Reviews, hours, and menu pricing are foundational ways to do this. To stand out from competitors, clearly highlight the information patrons want to know, like:

• Up-to-date event calendars optimized for mobile
• Google and Apple Maps integration for one-tap directions by car or foot
• VIP booking options 
• Photo galleries — make them feel immersive so patrons want to join in
• Drink menus — people want to know the options and the prices 
• Clear calls to action — make the next steps obvious 

How can website design increase foot traffic?

People use their phones to look up dining, drinking, and entertainment options near them. A mobile-first, responsive website design makes it easy for people to find nightlife venues and either make a booking or stop in. Remember, people live hybrid lives — patrons might be standing right in front of your club and still look up your website before deciding whether or not to go in. It’s crucial that your website encourages them to take this step. 

Do bars need separate pages for recurring events?

While it might seem appealing to ‘set it and forget it’ for recurring events, you can get much better results with specific, time-defined listings. This is because search engines tend to prioritize events with specific dates when showing people results for high-intent searches like “dance clubs open tonight” or “live DJ near me.” A good developer can set up a dynamic event page design to automatically update for recurring events like open mic nights, ladies’ nights, BOGO promotions, happy hours, and more. 

Is your website bringing foot traffic to your nightlife venue? Check now with a free, comprehensive website audit.