A website for a restaurant: 7 things it must have

Say someone is hungry and standing on the waterfront or somewhere in the middle of town. They unlock their phone, type “tavern near me” and decide within seconds whether to sit down at yours or at your neighbour's. A restaurant website doesn't have to be complicated. But in those few seconds it does have to answer three questions: what you serve, what it costs and how to book. Everything else is atmosphere. The site is a quiet waiter who never takes a break. If it answers the right questions, the table fills up.

Below we go through all seven in order. There are no design tricks here. These are practical things, and we see every day how they decide whether someone sits down at a table. They matter even more in summer, when a tourist walking past decides on the move and has no patience for a site that loads slowly or hides its prices.

The 7 things it must have

1. A menu that is always current

People open a restaurant website mainly for the menu. If they don't find it straight away, they move on. So the menu should be a click or two from the home page and readable on a phone without zooming. Above all, it has to be correct. Few things leave a worse impression than a dish you no longer make or last year's prices.

That means the menu shouldn't be an image, or a PDF that has you calling a developer every time. A simple interface works much better, one where the owner or the head waiter adds the daily special, drops a seasonal dish and corrects a price, all in a few minutes. If every price change turns into a small project, the menu goes stale faster than you'd think. And do keep the prices visible. Hidden prices put off careful guests, and they're exactly the ones who choose in advance.

2. Booking in one tap (and WhatsApp)

Every extra step in a booking costs you guests. To a guest, a form with ten fields and a compulsory sign-up is just an obstacle. For most taverns and family restaurants, what works best is a single button that opens WhatsApp with the message already written (“Hello, I would like to book a table for 4 on Saturday evening”). The guest just fills in the details and sends it. Next to it, keep a clearly visible phone number for people who'd rather call. And for those who don't use WhatsApp, a short form as a backup comes in handy.

Big systems with a table calendar and online payment only make sense once the volume really calls for them. Say, at a busy place with crowds and a waiting list. For most venues they bring nothing but cost and headaches. At Konoba Toma we cut booking down to a single tap over WhatsApp, and that covers most guests with no monthly subscription at all. If you're curious what a bigger system needs to know about capacity and season, we went through it in a booking system for tours and transfers.

A guest doesn't read a page, they skim it. If they can see the menu, the prices and how to book within 5 seconds, they come.

3. A gallery that sells the atmosphere

On the web, food is eaten with the eyes. A few good photographs of the dishes, the room, the terrace and the view will sell the place better than any description. Ten excellent ones beat fifty average ones. Blurry, dark or stretched photographs do exactly the opposite, because the guest assumes the plate looks the same.

The good news is that you don't need an expensive shoot for every post. For everyday shots, a phone in daylight, a clean table and a steady hand are often enough. A professional pays off for the headline photographs, the ones a guest sees first and the ones that go on your Google profile and social media. Just make sure every photograph is prepared for the web and loads fast, otherwise they work against the speed of the site.

4. Local SEO and the Google profile

In hospitality, local visibility is worth more than anything else. Most guests aren't even searching for the name of your place. They type “tavern Split”, “pizzeria near me” or “where to eat in Trogir”. To show up for searches like that, you need a tidy, verified Google Business Profile and a site that tells Google plainly who you are, where you are and what you serve.

If you remember only one rule, make it consistency. The name, the address and the phone number have to be exactly the same on the site, on the Google profile and in every directory. Add the right categories, opening hours and photographs to the profile. And keep asking happy guests for a review, because reviews weigh heavily in local rankings. If you want to go deeper, we covered the groundwork on our web development page, and local SEO step by step is broken down in SEO for small businesses.

5. Mobile design that starts with the small screen

Nearly everyone looking for somewhere to eat does it on a phone, often one-handed and on the move. If the site was built “for desktop and then somehow for mobile as well”, the guest feels it straight away. The text is tiny, the buttons are hard to hit with a thumb, and the menu runs off the edge of the screen. So the site has to be designed for the small screen first, and only then for the big one.

The text should be large enough to read without zooming. Call and booking buttons belong where the thumb already is, and the most important information goes right at the top. Ideally, the phone number and the opening hours are one tap away from anywhere on the site. Once that works on a phone, the rest is much easier.

6. Opening hours and location, with no hunting

Before setting off, a guest checks two things. Whether you're open, and how to get to you. Both have to be visible without any digging. State the opening hours clearly, with a separate note for the season, public holidays and the day you're closed. If your kitchen stays open late in summer, say so too, because a lot of tourists eat later.

For the location, put a map on the page and a button that opens navigation with one tap. If you're in an old town centre or somewhere that's hard to find, add a short note, something like “entrance from the side street, parking by the church”. A small thing like that often decides whether a guest actually turns up or gives up on the way.

7. Speed that does not chase guests away

The prettiest site in the world is worth nothing if it doesn't open. In summer, in a packed town and on a mobile connection, every second of loading costs you some of your guests. The usual culprits are bloated code and huge photographs nobody prepared for the web. A restaurant site should be light and fast, not a gallery of heavy images.

That means photographs prepared for the web, as few unnecessary scripts as possible and a clean build. Speed helps both Google and the guest. Google ranks you better, and the guest doesn't give up before the page opens. Why a slow site loses both guests and rankings is covered in more detail in why your site is not on Google. For a restaurant, it's enough to remember that the site has to fly.

What to put first if you are starting from zero

You don't need all of it at once. If the budget is modest at the start, begin with whatever brings guests in directly and add the rest over time. This is roughly how we set the priorities for a typical tavern or smaller restaurant.

Go in this order and the budget stays under control, while the site works for you from day one. How we plan a build and what goes into the scope is on the web development page. If it's the cost you're curious about, we broke it down in the guide on how much a website costs.