IN THIS ARTICLE · 8 PARTS
Most people decide where to eat on their phone, often a few minutes before they leave. A restaurant website has one job: answer their questions so quickly that booking a table with you is the easiest choice.
The four things guests look for first
Put these on the homepage, visible without scrolling on a phone:
- The menu, or a clear link to it.
- Opening hours, including holidays and days you are closed.
- Where you are, with a map link and parking information.
- How to book: a call button, a booking form or a link to your booking system.
If any of these takes more than one tap to find, you are losing guests to the restaurant next door.
A menu people can read
Many restaurants upload their menu as a PDF or a photo. On a phone, that means zooming, scrolling sideways and waiting for a large file. A menu built as a normal web page loads fast, is easy to read, can be updated in minutes and can be found by Google when someone searches for a dish. The UK Government Digital Service makes the same point about PDFs in general: they require a lot of zooming and scrolling on a phone and are hard to adapt for accessibility [1].
Group it by category, show prices and mark dishes for dietary needs. When we built the site for Restaurant Dejavu in Dobrich, the full menu by category was one of the first things we set up.
Photos that make people hungry
Show your actual dishes, your room in the evening light, your terrace, your team. Real photos beat stock images every time. Read more in what photos to use on your website. Research by Nielsen Norman Group shows that people ignore generic stock photos but study real photos of people and products closely [2].
Events and private bookings
If you host birthdays, weddings or company dinners, give each kind of event its own page with what you offer, capacity and an enquiry form. These pages bring in some of your most valuable bookings and are found by people searching for "wedding venue" or "birthday party restaurant" in your town. See why pages by city and topic work.
Bookings: phone, form or system
A call button is enough for many restaurants. If you get many requests or want to reduce no-shows, an online booking system can help. We go through the pros and cons in online bookings: when are they worth it?
Your Google Business Profile matters as much as your site
For restaurants, Google Maps is often the first place people look. Keep your profile complete, add photos, link to your menu and website, and answer reviews. Step by step: how to set up your Google Business Profile. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results [3], and a Harvard Business School study found that for independent restaurants each extra star in the online rating was associated with 5 to 9 percent more revenue [4].
A restaurant website works when a hungry person on a phone finds the menu, the hours and the booking button in seconds.
What to leave out
Autoplay music, intro animations, long "our philosophy" texts on the homepage and menus that are months out of date. Keep the site fast and current, or let someone do it for you: that is what our monthly plan is for.
References
- GOV.UK Government Digital Service. "Why GOV.UK content should be published in HTML and not PDF." gds.blog.gov.uk
- Nielsen Norman Group. "Photos as Web Content." nngroup.com
- Google Business Profile Help. "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google." support.google.com
- Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. "The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?" library.hbs.edu
