What should a restaurant website include?

At minimum: your menu, hours, address with a Google Maps link, a reservations option, and real photos of your food and space. Missing any of these causes potential diners to leave and go somewhere else.

Does my restaurant website need to work on mobile?

Absolutely — over 70% of restaurant searches happen on phones, often right before a meal decision. Your menu must be readable without pinching, and your phone number should be tappable with one touch.

How do I get more reservations through my restaurant website?

Add a direct booking button (OpenTable, Resy, or a simple form) above the fold on your homepage. The fewer clicks between 'I want to go' and 'I have a table,' the more bookings you will get.

Why is my restaurant website so slow?

The most common culprit is uncompressed, oversized food photos. Compress all images before uploading and use a caching plugin or a fast host — a slow site loses customers and ranks lower on Google.

Restaurant Websites

7 Things Every Restaurant Website Needs

Name: The Site Baker
Price range: $$
Rating: 5

By The Site Baker September 22, 2025 6 min read

A restaurant website has one job: turn someone who's never been in your door into someone who walks through it. That means it needs to answer a few specific questions fast, on any device, without friction.

Here's what that actually requires.

1. A Mobile-First Menu

Over 70% of restaurant searches happen on a phone. If your menu is a PDF that requires pinching and zooming, you're losing people. Your menu needs to be readable text on mobile — not a scanned image, not a download link.

Bonus: HTML menus are indexable by Google. PDF menus aren't. That's a free SEO win.

2. Your Address and Hours — Everywhere

This sounds obvious, but you'd be amazed how many restaurant sites bury this or only put it on the Contact page. Your address, hours, and phone number should be in the footer of every page and prominently on the homepage.

Someone deciding where to eat Sunday brunch at 10am doesn't have time to hunt for your hours.

3. A Reservation System (or a Clear Alternative)

If you take reservations, let people make them online. OpenTable, Resy, or even a simple booking form — pick one and make it easy to find. If you're walk-in only, say that clearly so people don't leave thinking they need to call.

4. Google Maps Embed

Not just a text address — an actual embedded map. People want to tap it and get directions without copying an address into a separate app. Takes 5 minutes to add. Do it.

5. Real Photos of Your Food and Space

This is the single biggest differentiator between a restaurant website that converts and one that doesn't. Stock photos don't work here. Phone photos taken under bad lighting don't work either.

Hire a food photographer for half a day. It costs a few hundred dollars and the photos will serve you for years — on your website, on Google, on social. It's the best money you can spend on marketing.

6. Reviews or Social Proof

A handful of real customer quotes or a Google/Yelp rating embed builds trust fast. People want to see that other people liked it before they commit to showing up.

You don't need a dedicated testimonials page. Two or three quotes on the homepage is enough.

7. Page Speed

A slow website kills conversions. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load on mobile, a significant chunk of visitors leave before they even see it. This usually comes down to unoptimized images and cheap hosting.

Run your site through Google's PageSpeed tool to see where you stand.

The Common Thread

Every item on this list is about removing friction. The fewer steps between "I'm hungry" and "I'm making a reservation" — the more customers you get.

If your restaurant website is missing any of these, let's talk. We build restaurant sites that actually do their job. See examples here.

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