Building a restaurant website: the pages and details that get bookings

Most visits to a restaurant website last under a minute and happen on a phone, often on the pavement or just before leaving. Guests want to know what they will eat, what it costs and whether there is a table. Everything else comes second.

Four pages are enough

• Home: one sentence on the cooking style, a good photo, today's hours and a booking button.
• Menu: dishes, prices and set menus.
• Booking: a short form or a link to your usual tool.
• Contact and directions: address, map, parking, tappable phone number.

A restaurant does not need ten pages. It needs each one to answer one question quickly.

A text menu, never a photo

A photo of the menu or a PDF reads poorly on a small screen, cannot be translated and tells Google almost nothing. An HTML menu updates in seconds when a dish changes, stays readable on a phone and can appear in results when someone searches for a dish nearby. Show prices including VAT.

Allergens, dish by dish

In the EU, information on the fourteen regulated allergens must be available to guests. The website is the ideal place: a discreet line under each dish avoids repeated questions and reassures the people concerned before they book.

Booking visible everywhere

The booking button should sit at the top of every page, next to a tappable phone number. If you already use a booking service, link to it; otherwise a form with date, time and party size is enough to start.

Hours, directions and accessibility

Give lunch and dinner service, closing days and bank holiday hours. Mention parking and step-free access: frequent questions that make people hesitate.

The Google profile matters

Many guests will never see your website: they will read your Google business profile. Keep exactly the same name, address and phone number on both, link the profile to your menu and reply to reviews. Each strengthens the other.

Photos, but light ones

Ten good photos of the room, the dishes and the team beat a gallery of a hundred heavy images. A slow site on mobile loses the guest before they see the menu.

The most common mistakes

• An outdated menu: a dish that no longer exists or a price that has changed, and trust goes with it. Set aside five minutes at every menu change to update the website.
• Conflicting hours between the website, the Google profile and the restaurant door. A guest who finds the door closed does not come back.
• Music or video that plays on its own: it eats mobile data and drives people away.
• A booking form without confirmation: say when and how the table is confirmed, by email or by phone.
• Forgotten legal pages: a legal notice and a privacy policy are still required, even for a small website.

The pre-launch checklist

Open the website on your phone, on mobile data, and go through a guest's journey: find the menu, find the price of a dish, book for Saturday night, find the address. If any step takes more than a few seconds, simplify it. Then ask someone who does not know the restaurant to do the same: their hesitations will tell you what to fix.

To go faster

Our restaurant website templates already contain these pages: HTML menu, accessible booking form, hours and map, in HTML, React and as a WordPress theme. All that is left is your dishes and photos.