In 2024, it’s no longer optional to have your own restaurant website. A strong restaurant website design can attract new customers and help drive sales from your existing customer base. The best restaurant websites facilitate online ordering or reservations and reduce customer confusion. From your homepage to your online menu, a strong website design will present your customers and potential customers with the information they need.
Fortunately, you don’t need to be a tech whiz to design the perfect restaurant website. Restaurant website builders have made it possible for even the least tech-savvy people to create enticing homepages from restaurant website design examples.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the benefits of having an attractive and functional website. You’ll also learn about the key elements that all the best restaurant websites share.
The benefits to having a well-functioning restaurant website are too important to ignore. To start, customers are increasingly finding restaurants through the web. If you’re relying on word of mouth and traditional advertising methods like signs and paper flyers, you could be missing out on a significant number of sales.
Not only can your website turn up on Google searches when potential customers in your area look for new spots to try out, but well-designed websites are highly shareable. Satisfied customers may post links to your restaurant’s website on social media pages leading to even more sales and traffic.
A good website can do more than just bring in new customers, however. It can help you bring in additional sales through online ordering, merchandise sales, or gift cards through your website.
Of course, not every restaurant will benefit from e-commerce capabilities. When designing your restaurant’s website, it’s important to know first and foremost how your website’s design and capability fits into your restaurant’s overall business plan.
You don’t need a degree in web design to create a top-notch website for your restaurant. You can find any number of eye-catching website templates on drag-and-drop platforms like Squarespace and Wix. These website builders come prebuilt with graphic elements that you can easily move around with the click of a mouse.
If you’re on the tech-savvy side of things, you can get started with WordPress, which requires some coding knowledge. However, WordPress has the advantage of being free to use (although you will have to pay for hosting) and offering a greater level of customizability when it comes to design elements like fonts and typography.
Regardless of the template or platform you use, here are six critical elements you should keep in mind when designing your website.
It’s important to follow search engine optimization (SEO) practices when building your website. This means creating enticing content on your website that connects with search terms that your potential customers are using. You should also make sure that your website is well-designed or Google may put you lower on its search results, which could lose you potential customers.
A digital menu will mirror the look and design of a traditional paper restaurant menu to a certain degree. After all, you still need to include the same critical information like menu item names, descriptions, and prices.
However, digital menus give you slightly more freedom when it comes to certain parts of the website design. For example, while you can create a very minimalist menu, digital menus also allow you to easily add more elements than you could with a paper menu, such as high-quality photos of all menu items.
Digital menus also give you the freedom to include extra information about a menu item such as which substitutions are available and which menu items are vegetarian or vegan. You can also include information about dishes that contain common allergies.
Regardless of whether you go for a minimalist or maximalist approach, be sure to include enough information for your potential customers to know what to expect. For example, it’s important to include information about available substitutions as well as which dishes are vegetarian or vegan or are free of common allergens.
If your restaurant takes dine-in reservations or offers takeout, let your website work for you in these areas. Not only are online reservation and online ordering systems a convenience for customers, they can also make the process more efficient for your staff. They’ll have fewer phone calls to answer during their shift, and they won’t have to worry about recording inaccurate information if they mishear someone over the phone.
Almost 90% of online dining research is done through mobile. Creating a website with strong mobile responsiveness is essential when making a good first impression on potential customers.
It’s also important that you have a robust mobile website if customers are going to order takeout or delivery online. You want to make sure it’s user-friendly on the devices your customers are most likely to use to place an order.
While it may seem obvious, don’t forget to include your contact information and hours of operation. It’s also important to think about the types of questions potential customers may have and provide those answers on your website. This provides a better customer experience and can help your front-of-house staff save time.
For example, even if you don’t have online reservations or ordering on your website, make it clear if you accept reservations or takeout orders—even if it’s by phone.
Another common question that diners have is about parking availability, especially when restaurants are located in shopping centers, city centers, or along busy streets. Help customers plan ahead by letting them know what kind of parking is available and perhaps even include a map with parking options.
Depending on the type of restaurant you own and your target customer base, you may even want to include a section on your website to speak more in-depth about how your source ingredients and any preparation steps you take when cooking allergy-friendly meals.
Finally, it’s always a good idea to put a call to action on your website. This could be a simple sentence asking your audience to place an order or make a reservation. Keep your call to action short, direct, and clear.
From coffee shops to delis to eat-in cafes, restaurants of all stripes can benefit from KioskBuddy’s self-serve kiosk app to allow customers to place and pay for their orders on their own. Plus, the app has features that allow you to customize the layout and styling to align with your restaurant’s website design and branding.
You can choose from multiple layout presets, select colors, choose text styles and alignment, and even decide how prices are displayed and if you want your menu items split into categories.
Plus, you can import a menu from your Square Item Library, have multiple menus (such as one for breakfast and one for lunch), support open tabs or food hall concepts, accept promo codes, and integrate with your Square Loyalty program.
Creating a stellar restaurant website design doesn’t have to be difficult. Take advantage of free online templates through drag-and-drop websites like Squarespace or Wix, or embrace a low-code alternative like WordPress for even more features.
The goal is to create a good user experience for your website visitors. Make sure you have online ordering and/or reservation systems set up, consider taking professionally shot photos for your online menu, and use a mobile-first approach to cater to customers on-the-go.
Once you have your website design in place, you can mimic your style and branding on your KioskBuddy self-service kiosk. The app lets you customize the feel and function of the kiosk to match your brand and business processes. It also integrates seamlessly with your Square POS.
Get started with your 30-day free trial of Kioskbuddy today!