Guide: Create an appetising website for your restaurant

If you’re wondering whether your restaurant needs a website, the short answer is a resounding yes! The restaurant industry is one of the world’s largest industries. According to Statista, in 2022 alone the industry accounted for a turnover of 1.5 trillion US dollars worldwide, or approximately 1.2 trillion GBP. And the industry continues to grow, meaning the battle for hungry customers is greater than ever before. Therefore, it is crucial that your restaurant has a strong online presence. 

See your website as your restaurant’s showroom. You can tempt customers with a delicious online restaurant menu, keep them updated with exciting news, ensure that they can easily reserve a table, and much more. 

In this article, we review the importance of having an inviting restaurant website. We also dive into the actual process of starting a restaurant website and look at 5 essential website ingredients that will increase your chances of success. 

Does my restaurant need a website?

While our answer is definitely ‘yes’, let’s dive a little deeper and look at all the advantages of creating a website for your restaurant. 

The benefits of a restaurant website

• Increased visibility: With a website, you quickly reach a wider audience. Your chances of being discovered by customers who don’t live just around the corner become much greater when your potential customers can sit at home in the living room and find your restaurant online. If you also SEO-optimise your website, the chances increase further, but more on that later in the article. 

• A better customer experience: Most of us appreciate the opportunity to get an impression of a product, experience, or service before we reach for the credit card. The same applies to your potential guests, both those who have not yet discovered you and those who have passed by your restaurant many times but would like to know more about what you can offer before they sit down at one of your tables. A restaurant website opens that possibility, and thus contributes to a better customer experience. 

• Availability: We are guessing that your restaurant is not open 24 hours a day. But it’s your website! Your guests have different circadian rhythms, routines, schedules, and preferences. When you have a website with an inviting online menu, potential guests can be tempted by your delicious dishes and reserve a table, even when your chefs and waiters are snoring at home. This increases your chances of getting even more reservations and full tables.

• Effective marketing: Your restaurant’s website also serves as an effective marketing tool. It gives you a platform to link to from social media, share news and special events and showcase your latest culinary creations. Using data from the website, you can also gain valuable insight into the traffic to your site, into your customers’ demographics, preferences and preferred devices.

• Competitive advantage: Competition in the restaurant industry is fierce. New eateries with exciting concepts are opening all the time. With a professional website, you stand much stronger in the battle for diners, both because your restaurant is more visible and because on the page you can display everything that guests can look forward to experiencing and tasting at your place.  

What does a restaurant website cost?

How much a restaurant website costs for you depends, of course, on your specific goals and wishes as well as on how you choose to create your website, however it doesn’t really need to cost you more per month than a good cup of coffee. We look at this in more detail in the sections below. 

Build your restaurant website in a few clicks

The thought of having to build a website from scratch can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, there are a lot of user-friendly solutions that make it entirely possible to create a nice restaurant website, even if you have no coding or web design experience at all. Below we guide you on the right path: 

Step 1— Select a domain name

Your first step on the road to an inviting website is choosing a domain name. Your domain name is the part of your website’s URL that comes after the ‘www’. Google’s domain name is google.com, while our domain name is one.com. A domain name must be unique and contain a domain extension, also called a top-level domain. A top-level domain is, in short, what comes after the last period of the domain name, for example .com, .uk, .org, etc. If you want to know more about top-level domains, we can recommend this article.  

Your entire domain is your restaurant’s digital address. Here at one.com, you can quickly find out if your desired domain is available by entering it in the search field right here. 

Step 2 — Find a hosting provider

The next step is to find a good and reliable web host. A hosting service is necessary because you need a server where you can place your website and make it available to users online. 

You also have the option of hosting your own website, but if you choose a good web host, such as one.com or another hosting provider, you don’t have to worry about hardware updates, server uptime, or ensuring your website’s security. 

When you host your website with us, we perform the technically heavy tasks, so that you can instead focus on creating an appetising website for your restaurant. We have a selection of hosting packages in different price ranges – you can find them here. 

Step 3 — Select a user-friendly website builder

Before you can dive into breathing life into all your ideas, you need a website builder. You should consider a few factors when choosing the solution that best matches your needs, including your technical knowledge, your budget, and the amount of time you have to create and maintain the page manually. 

All our hosting plans include a free Website Builder that gives you a toolbox packed with easy-to-use tools. With our Website Builder you can: 

• Create a professional restaurant website in a few clicks 
• Create tasty content with AI 
• Use images from a free media library 
• Make your website mobile friendly 
• Adapt ready-made templates to your restaurant’s concept 
• Use our AI writing assistant 

Build your restaurant website with WordPress 

Would you rather create your website with WordPress? You can of course also do that here with us. 

In this article, we compare the advantages of the Website program and WordPress. If you are not quite sure which solution suits you best, we recommend that you read the article. 

5 essential elements for your restaurant’s website

Now that we’ve reviewed the technical aspects, it’s time to focus on the 5 most important ingredients for an inviting and professional restaurant website. 

1. Booking system:  
    
   Your guests should be able to reserve a table on your website. Most guests prefer to book online rather than having to call you. In addition, a booking system is the most budget-friendly and time-saving solution, because your staff does not have to look after the phone while they perform other and more important tasks. 
    
   When you host your website at one.com, you can easily integrate your preferred booking system on your restaurant’s website. If you use WordPress, you can consider a booking plugin. You can read more about them here.

2. Attractive web design: 
    
   A delicious dish just tastes better if the plating is also on point. The same applies to your website. The appearance of your website must be visually appealing, clear, and give your visitors a sense of your restaurant’s concept.
   
   Nice food pictures, mood pictures from your restaurant, stylish pictures from the kitchen, attractive fonts and harmonious colour palettes are just a few examples of how you can arrange your website before you serve it to your potential guests
    
   If you need inspiration, you can read more about web design in this article and look at HubSpot’s list of well-designed restaurant websites. 

3. Good content:  
    
   Storytelling is an important part of your restaurant’s brand. With good content, you can strengthen your restaurant’s brand, and give both new visitors and loyal regulars an insight into your culinary vision, your restaurant’s unique history, a glimpse of the work in the kitchen and much more. Good content, both in the form of text and images, can also give your restaurant an SEO boost and increase your chances of a higher ranking in Google’s search results. You can read more about SEO here. 

4. Contact information:  
    
   Even if you have made it possible for your guests to book a table online, it is still crucial that they can get in touch with you and your team. Therefore, you should ensure that contact information such as address, email and telephone number appear clearly on your website. You can also create a contact form where your customers can write questions and wishes to you. You can read how to do it with our website program here.

5. Social proof:  
    
   Social proof entails that you highlight positive reviews and testimonials from happy customers on your website. You can also enable your guests to write a review directly on your website. If you choose our Business + E-commerce plan, you can also display Google Reviews directly on your restaurant’s website. 
   
   There are many other examples of social proof, but what they all have in common is that they are extremely effective as marketing for your restaurant. This is because potential guests perceive the positive reviews from other guests as a kind of approval of your hard work, your good service and your delicious dishes.

Your restaurant’s menu is of course also on the list of essential elements you should have on your website, but we will look at it in more detail in the section below. 

Tempt guests with an online restaurant menu

Imagine that your potential guest Alexandra is looking for a good Italian restaurant for a cozy evening with her friends. She knows her friends well enough to know exactly which pasta dishes they love. Therefore, she visits both your website and your competitor’s website. On your website, you have an appetising online menu, while your competitor still only has a heavy, leather-bound menu lying somewhere on the bar counter. 

Here, there is a high probability that Alexandra will book a table at your restaurant because she could study your menu in advance. 

Choosing the right format for your menu card can also help you rank better in search engine search results, but more on that below. 

A menu that appeals to search engines and guests 

Designing the perfect online menu card is an art that can be written many articles about. In fact, there are even several scientific studies where researchers examine the effect of different designs and the psychology behind the perfect restaurant menu. That’s why we won’t dive into the subject here, but you will still get three bite-sized tips:  

Text-based is best

It can be tempting to create a PDF menu card. It’s a popular format that many restaurants use, but it has several drawbacks. One of the disadvantages is that you need to upload a new PDF file every time you change something on your menu. Another disadvantage is that Google and other search engines have a harder time indexing PDF menus. 

A text-based or HTML-based menu card is a much better choice, both because it is better for SEO and because you can edit the menu card more easily. Also, a PDF menu card can be cumbersome for your visitors to download and read the PDF on mobile devices. A good example is this text-based menu from London’s Mallow restaurant.  

Readability

Your menu should be easy to decipher on all devices and screens. Choose fonts and sizes that are easy for all visitors to read, and make sure that the background colour does not make the text less visible. It is also a good idea to test your online menu card on different devices to ensure that everything looks as planned regardless of which device or browser your visitors are using. 

Simplicity is chef’s kiss 

Most of us are easily overwhelmed if we are presented with an infinite number of choices. Therefore, you should avoid a long online menu where your guests need to scroll through many pages to get an overview of your dishes. Keep your menu as simple as possible. If you change your menu daily, you can instead have a page where you briefly describe what kinds of dishes and menus your guests can look forward to. A good example is this simple menu from the restaurant Italo Disco in Copenhagen.

Get started with your restaurant’s website!

We hope that this guide has given you an appetite for creating a website for your restaurant. With us, you can quickly and easily create your website today — in just a few clicks. A nice and professional restaurant website is the way to your guests’ hearts and growling stomachs. If you need advice along the way, the experts in our help centre are of course ready to assist you. We look forward to visiting your new website!