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A good restaurant website takes bookings while you are in the kitchen. So what separates a site that converts from one that quietly loses people? After dozens of restaurant builds, we know which parts are non-negotiable.
Key takeaways
Your restaurant can serve the best food in the city — if the website does not convince people, they go somewhere that does. These are the ten elements every serious restaurant site needs, ordered by impact.
Restaurants that take reservations online receive 32% more bookings on average than those taking them only by phone (OpenTable, 2024). A good system — OpenTable, ResDiary or SEVENROOMS — sends confirmations and reminders automatically, so you stop losing tables to calls that come in after closing.
See how we integrate reservations →80% of diners read the menu online before they book or walk in (Google Consumer Insights, 2024). A dated PDF that pinch-zooms on a phone is a lost booking. Keep the menu current, present it properly, and make sure it loads cleanly on any device.
No stock images. Real, professional shots of your dishes, your interior and your service are the highest-return investment you can make in the site. Restaurants with professional photography receive 42% more booking enquiries (Harvard Business Review, 2023). A shoot pays for itself in weeks.
More than 70% of restaurant searches happen on a phone (Google, 2024). If your site loads slowly, navigates badly or mangles the menu on mobile, you lose half your prospective guests before they read a word. Mobile-first is the baseline, not an upgrade.
NAP means Name, Address and Phone — and it has to match exactly across your website, your Google Business Profile and every directory you appear in. Embed a Google Map so guests can start navigation in one tap. Inconsistent NAP data actively damages your local ranking.
Obvious, and still commonly buried at the bottom of a contact page. Put them in the header, the footer, and keep them synced with your Google Business Profile. A guest who is unsure whether you are open picks the place that told them.
85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation (BrightLocal, 2024). Put your Google rating or TripAdvisor score somewhere visible on the homepage. Even a single hand-picked quote from a happy guest works. It is the most powerful conversion tool you already have for free.
Every second of delay costs roughly 7% in conversion (Google, 2023). Unoptimised images, slow hosting or bloated code lose visitors before the menu finishes rendering. Aim for under 2.5 seconds on mobile and check it regularly with Google PageSpeed Insights.
A tappable phone number, a WhatsApp button and a reservation link — visible, not three pages deep. Mobile visitors want a single tap to call. If they cannot reach you immediately, they will reach someone else.
You can have the best-looking site in the city and still be invisible. Local SEO is what puts you in front of searches for your actual area — 'restaurant Canggu', 'rooftop Thong Lo', 'brunch Dubai Marina'. Nobody searches an entire island or emirate when they are deciding where to eat tonight. It takes on-page work, local content and consistent directory listings.
More on local SEO for restaurants →Print it, save it, send it on. Check which of these your current site already has — and which it does not.
Missing three or more? Then the site needs real work — not as a cost line, as an investment. A restaurant website that works pays for itself in the bookings it stops losing.
Every restaurant site we build includes all ten of these as standard. Integrated booking, a menu that works on a phone, and local SEO that makes you findable in your own neighbourhood — whether that is Canggu, Thong Lo or Dubai Marina. No generic templates: each build is made for the room and the guests it serves.
See how we did it for Revasi — our own reservation platform for restaurants, with online booking, card authorisation at the point of reservation and targeted upsells in the guest flow. Or read more about our approach to restaurant websites.
We will review your current site for free and tell you honestly what could be better. No obligation, no pitch.
Request a free reviewFrequently asked questions
Our builds run €1,800 to €4,500 for a restaurant, depending on what it needs to do — booking engine, interactive menu, motion design. Rates vary a lot by market, so we publish a breakdown per market: Bali, Bangkok and Dubai.
Yes. We build on a content management system you can actually use, so you change text, prices and photos yourself. No technical knowledge needed, and you get a walkthrough at handover.
It depends on your size. Smaller restaurants do well on something simple like Formitable or Bookatable. Larger operations with real capacity management get more out of ResDiary or SEVENROOMS. We advise on the fit and handle the integration.
Five to eight weeks from briefing to launch, including the menu, reservation system and local SEO. You get fixed check-in points and interim previews throughout.
Yes — the profile and the website reinforce each other. A site with local content, fast load times and consistent NAP data ranks you higher in Google Maps and in regular search results. The profile alone does not get you there.
It depends on your guest mix, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. Venues serving mostly visitors get most of their volume from English. Venues with real domestic trade — Thai in Bangkok, Bahasa Indonesia in Bali, Arabic in Dubai — are usually leaving an uncontested market on the table, because almost every competitor publishes in English only.
