A restaurant website is a great way to communicate and advertise your restaurant. You can post your menu, photos of the interior, customer reviews — all of which will help attract new visitors. You can even organise online sales of food and drinks and add a bonus system — this will help you build a loyal audience that will come back for new orders.

Just having a website on Google will increase the visibility of your establishment and attract new customers.

If your restaurant does not yet have a website, you are losing most of your potential customers, and if you do not have a Facebook or Instagram account, your restaurant’s marketing strategy has a lot of room for improvement.

What should be on the website and what customers want to see

Information about the restaurant

The restaurant description gives potential customers an idea of what they will get if they decide to visit your restaurant. The description is a great place to share your mission and values, and what makes your establishment unique.

The description of your restaurant should not be long, but it should give customers an idea of how your restaurant differs from others or why it is unique.

Visitors come to your website to see what you have to offer. You don’t need to put all your menus on the home page, but your main „hits” should be there. Add photos from each food category to the home page. For example: salads, burgers, pizza, main courses, and desserts. Whatever is most frequently ordered at your establishment.

Do not forget that the menu should not only be beautiful, but also convenient. For example, so that a visitor to the site can take a step back at any time and look at other categories.

Photos of dishes

Particular emphasis should be placed on the quality of food photos – the more appetising the photos, the better the dishes will sell. The photos in the menu should correspond to reality – what is in the photo is what is on the customer’s plate.

Schedule

Many of your customers are interested in knowing whether they will have time to get to your establishment and plan their time better, as well as understand which days you are open. Do not forget to provide this information; nothing could be worse than your restaurant’s doors being closed in front of a customer.

Contacts and address

If a customer has already tried food delivery from your establishment and wants to enjoy the live atmosphere and get to know your place in person, they need to know where to go. To do this, provide your establishment’s address and contact telephone number on the website. This will also allow customers to quickly find your contact details and book a table by phone.

Place the number and address in a visible place on the page so that you have quick access to this information and do not have to search for it for a long time. It is better to use plain text as a phone number rather than an image so that you can copy it to your smartphone and call immediately. Don’t forget to add a Google Maps widget in the „Contacts” tab so that you can immediately see the area on the city map and get directions.

Convenient access to the website from your smartphone

To attract customers, you need a website for your restaurant or café. Recently, everyone has been using phones more often than computers. This also applies to food delivery – it is easier and faster to place an order from a smartphone. Therefore, it is very important to adapt your website so that it displays correctly on a smartphone screen. If your website is not supported by mobile browsers or is difficult to view on a smartphone, you may lose some of your potential customers.

In the mobile version of the website, pay attention to the location of categories and dishes, and optimise the size of photos so that your website does not take too long to load.

The most important thing on the website is online ordering and delivery.

Most people visit a restaurant’s website to order food. If you have created a website not only for image and as a showcase, organise online ordering on it. Of course, you can put the menu and contact number on the website for ordering pizza or sushi by phone, but this is not very convenient. In addition, you need more people to handle calls and take orders.

A potential customer would rather choose a website where everything is automated and it only takes a few clicks to order food and confirm by phone. The optimal solution is to integrate the facility with your establishment’s food delivery automation system. For convenience, the website should have a „Shopping Cart” where you can add dishes and review your entire order to make corrections. For example, to add quantities or remove items.

When working with online orders, add a 'Delivery’ section to your website, describing the delivery terms, cost and estimated time. This is necessary so that the customer can immediately understand whether the terms are suitable for them, allowing you to reduce the time spent on the phone after accepting the order.

Ways to create a website

Commission the creation of a website

If you have not yet had any experience with commissioning a website, prepare yourself for an exciting adventure. The first thing you should understand is that ordering a good website is not that simple, namely:

formulate expectations and goals correctly
find the right contractors
Don't overpay or save too much money, so that you don't end up throwing your work in the bin.
get your website on time

It can be either a company or an individual contractor. Always inquire how many people will be involved in the development of the website to form expectations regarding how the website will look and function.

There are independent contractors – freelancers who can implement a high-quality website – and, conversely, companies with large staffs that may not meet your expectations.

Assess the level of knowledge of those who will be working on your website, their portfolios, their interest in your project, and their clear communication skills. Of course, this is very difficult without experience of such cooperation.

Create a website yourself

What you need to create a website yourself:

Understanding the structure of the website, what should be on it
Visual aspect (design, colour scheme, typography, etc.)
Content (text and photos)
Knowing how to make a website user-friendly
Technical page

Understanding the structure of the website, what should be on it

As for the structure of the page and what should be on it, we decided on this at the beginning of the article.

Visual aspect

You can spy on successful restaurant website implementation options from your competitors. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no shame in imitating effective solutions, although copying them one-to-one is not worth it.

Content

The content should be well-written, unique, and appealing. If you don’t know how to write beautiful texts, it’s better to hire a copywriter — the quality of photos and food descriptions has a big impact on sales.

Knowing how to make a website user-friendly

It’s quite a science, but to put it simply, imagine that you were a user of the website and wanted to answer the main questions yourself. How much effort would you have to put in and how easily would you find the information you need?

Technical page

This point may be the most difficult, especially if you choose the programming path without the necessary knowledge, so if you want to do it yourself, there are several solutions we can consider.

Programming from scratch

The most creative and free, but also the most time-consuming process, comparable to tailoring a bespoke suit. Writing a website or web application requires serious knowledge not only of programming languages themselves, but also an understanding of many other aspects.

It is suitable for those who have knowledge in this field; if you have it, you can confidently start developing your own website.

Creating a CMS-based website

Creating websites from scratch is a very costly endeavour, not accessible to everyone and not always necessary. Currently, the practice of reusable solutions is very common in this area, and one such solution is WordPress. A large number of solutions and templates are available for use.

You will need knowledge of how to install and configure this system; programming is practically reduced to zero here.

There remains the matter of purchasing and managing the website name (domain) and the place where it will be stored (hosting).

One of the cheapest methods, but it requires a lot of time and skill.

Development in the website builder

The main advantages of using website builders are their user-friendly interface and ease of customisation. Numerous ready-made templates and free hosting allow you to quickly launch your project online – the functionality of the designers allows even beginners to quickly create a website. What’s more, for a small additional fee, most builders offer additional options and features for developing and expanding your project.

One such builder is Wix, a builder with simple functionality and an intuitive interface. It is often used to develop budget solutions, but it has quite a few limitations.

Free versions will have their limitations, and the knowledge and time to build such a website are also essential if you want your website to not deter customers – all the skills mentioned above are needed here, except for the technical ones.