Restaurant websites: the five things people actually came to find
Restaurant websites suffer from a specific problem: they are designed to look like the restaurant rather than to answer the questions people arrive with. Full-screen video, a scrolling gallery, a mood — and the menu three clicks away as a PDF.
Almost every visitor to a hospitality site wants one of five things, and usually within thirty seconds.
1. The menu
Not a PDF. A PDF on a phone means pinching, zooming and scrolling sideways, and a meaningful share of people give up. Put the menu on the page as text — it is faster, it works on any screen, and it is the only version search engines can read, which matters when somebody searches for a dish rather than a restaurant.
Keep prices on it. A menu without prices reads as expensive.
2. Whether they can get a table
Booking should be visible on every screen, not only the homepage. If you use a booking system, link it prominently. If you take bookings by phone, say so and make the number tappable. If you do not take bookings at all, say that — it is a genuine answer and it stops people driving over on a Friday and being disappointed.
3. Opening hours — including the ones you are closed
The most common frustration on hospitality sites. Hours should be on the page in text, current, and specific about which days are different. If you close on Mondays, that has to be as easy to find as anything else. Structured opening-hours data also feeds the panel search engines show beside your listing, which is where a lot of people will read it instead.
4. Where you are and where to park
Address, a map, and the local knowledge only you have: the car park round the back, the nearest station, which door to use in the evening. That paragraph saves phone calls and makes you look like somewhere that has thought about its guests.
5. What it is actually like
Real photographs of the real room, the real plates, the real people. Every restaurant website uses the same handful of stock images and diners have learned to distrust them. A slightly imperfect photo of your actual dining room beats a perfect photo of somebody else's.
The things that get in the way
- Autoplaying video with sound. Someone checking your menu at their desk will close the tab.
- A splash screen or an intro animation. A delay in front of the menu is a delay in front of the booking.
- Menus as images. Unreadable to screen readers, unsearchable, and blurry when zoomed.
- A homepage that is only a photograph. Beautiful, and it answers nothing.
The test
Hand your phone to someone who has never seen the site and ask them to find Sunday's opening hours and book a table for four. Watch without helping. Whatever they struggle with is your next piece of work — and it will not be the photography.
Our approach for this sector is on the hospitality page — and if you are not in hospitality, we write the same way about every other sector we work with. If you want a price before talking to anyone, the instant estimate gives you a figure in your own currency.