Quick answer: Good restaurant website design puts the menu, booking button, opening hours, address and phone number within one tap on a phone. Publish menus as real web pages, not PDFs, connect your reservation system (OpenTable, Resy or similar), keep photos fast and honest, and make sure Google My Business matches your site. Everything else is decoration.
People visit a restaurant website with a narrow purpose. They want to know whether the food suits them, whether they can get a table tonight, and how to get there. Most of them are on a phone, often standing outside or sitting in a taxi. A site that plays a video, asks them to download a PDF menu, and hides the phone number in the footer loses them to the place down the road.
This guide covers what a restaurant site needs, in the order guests need it.
What guests look for first
Listen to what staff are asked on the phone and you have your homepage priorities:
- The menu (and prices)
- Opening hours, including holidays
- How to book, or whether walk-ins are welcome
- Address, parking and directions
- Phone number
- Dietary options (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, allergens)
- Delivery or takeaway options
Put those within the first screen on mobile, or one tap away from it. A sticky bar with “Menu”, “Book” and “Call” works well for most restaurants.
Menus: HTML, not PDF
PDF menus are the most common mistake on restaurant sites. They are slow to download on mobile data, hard to read on a small screen, impossible to update without redesigning the file, and less useful to search engines.
A menu built as a normal web page:
- Loads quickly and reads well on any screen
- Can be updated by staff in the CMS when a dish changes
- Lets Google read dish names, which helps people searching for “best ramen near me” or a specific dish
- Can mark dietary tags clearly (V, VG, GF) with a key
Keep prices visible. Guests use prices to decide if a place fits the evening. Hiding them makes people assume the worst.
If you run several menus (lunch, dinner, drinks, set menus, kids), give each its own section or page with clear headings. Add the date or season when the menu changes often, and remove old menus so people do not arrive expecting a dish that left in autumn.
Bookings that actually work
Use your reservation system’s widget or link
OpenTable, Resy, Yelp Reservations and similar systems provide booking widgets or direct links. Embed the widget on a Book page and link to it from every page. Reserve with Google is also starting to appear for some restaurants in search results and Maps, so keep your reservation provider connected to your Google listing where that option exists.
Make the booking path short
- One “Book a table” button, the same label everywhere
- Party size, date and time first; details after
- Clear confirmation and a reminder email or text from the booking system
- A phone number nearby for large groups or special requests
Say what you do not take
If you do not take bookings, say so plainly and explain how walk-ins work. If you require deposits for large groups, state it before the guest starts the form.
Mobile first, because guests are on phones
Design and test for a phone before a desktop. Practical points:
- Tap-to-call phone link at the top
- Address linked to Google Maps or Apple Maps
- Readable menu text without zooming
- Buttons large enough for thumbs
- No auto-playing video or heavy sliders on the homepage
- No pop-ups that cover the menu as soon as the page loads
Run the site through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and PageSpeed Insights. Google has announced that page speed will become a ranking factor for mobile searches later this year, and hungry visitors are impatient anyway. Our article on mobile conversion rate covers more of the common blockers.
Photos that sell without slowing the site
Food photography matters more for restaurants than for almost any other business. Use real photos of your dishes, dining room and team. Stock images of generic plates look fake and guests notice.
Keep them light:
- Resize to the size actually displayed
- Compress before upload
- Use a handful of strong images rather than a gallery of eighty
- Lazy load images further down the page
A good image optimisation plugin or build step can cut file sizes a long way without visible loss of quality.
Online ordering and delivery
If you offer takeaway or delivery, make it obvious. Options include:
- Links to your pages on delivery platforms (GrubHub, Uber Eats, Deliveroo or Just Eat, depending on your market)
- Your own online ordering system, which avoids commission but needs more setup
- Phone orders for collection
Be clear about delivery areas, minimum orders and hours. If delivery menus differ from the dine-in menu, say so.
Local search: be found by hungry people nearby
Restaurants live and die by local search. Make sure:
- Your Google My Business listing is claimed and complete, with hours, menu link, booking link, photos and attributes
- Your name, address and phone number match exactly across the site, Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and directories (see NAP consistency)
- You add Restaurant schema markup with cuisine, price range, hours and address
- You reply to reviews, especially the critical ones, calmly and quickly
Our local SEO checklist goes deeper on ranking in the map pack.
Pages most restaurant sites need
- Home: who you are, what you serve, book and menu buttons, hours, location
- Menus: HTML menus with prices and dietary tags
- Book: reservation widget plus phone and group booking info
- Private dining and events: capacity, sample menus, enquiry form
- About: chef, story, sourcing (short and specific)
- Contact and directions: map, parking, public transport, accessibility
- Gift vouchers: if you sell them, a simple purchase path
Private dining enquiries can be valuable. Give them a proper form with date, party size and budget fields, and route the leads to someone who replies the same day.
What to avoid
- PDF menus as the only menu
- Splash pages and intro animations
- Music that plays on load
- Out-of-date hours or menus
- Instagram feeds that slow the page and replace real content
- Booking buttons that lead to a generic contact form
FAQ
Should a small restaurant build on WordPress?
WordPress works well when staff need to update menus and hours themselves. Choose a lightweight theme and keep plugins to a minimum.
Is an Instagram feed enough instead of a website?
No. Guests need hours, menus and booking in one reliable place, and search engines need a site to rank.
Do I need online ordering on my own site?
Not always. Delivery platforms bring reach at a commission. Your own ordering keeps margin but takes setup. Many restaurants use both.
How often should the site be updated?
Whenever the menu, hours or prices change. Holiday hours are the most commonly forgotten.
Make the next booking easy
A restaurant website succeeds when a hungry person on a phone can see the menu, check the hours and book a table in under a minute. Build menus as web pages, connect bookings, keep the site fast, and match your Google listing. If you want a site that turns browsing into bookings, see how we help businesses turn visitors into customers.
