The 7 Things Every Restaurant Website Needs (And 5 It Doesn't)

Almost every restaurant website I look at fails in the same few places. Not because the owner did anything wrong — because whoever built it was thinking about how it looked, not about the person holding a phone in a car deciding where to eat in the next four minutes.

That person has three questions: what do you have, are you open, and how do I get it. Everything else is secondary.

Here's the list that actually matters.

1. Hours, correct, visible immediately

The most-checked piece of information on any restaurant website, and the most commonly wrong.

It needs to be on the homepage without scrolling and without tapping. Not on a contact page. Not in an image. Real text, so phones and search engines can both read it.

If your hours differ by day, show the whole week. If the kitchen closes before the bar does, say so — "kitchen closes at 9, bar open till 11" prevents a specific kind of disappointment that turns into a bad review.

And keep the holiday hours current. Nobody drives out on Thanksgiving twice.

2. A menu that's real text on the page

Not a photo of a printed menu. Not a PDF. Actual text.

A text menu is readable on a phone without zooming, updatable in a minute, accessible to anyone using a screen reader, and searchable — which means you can rank for the dishes you're actually known for. A photo or a PDF gives you none of that.

Prices should be on it. Restaurants sometimes hide prices thinking it'll get more people in the door. It does the opposite — people assume expensive and go elsewhere.

3. One obvious primary action

Every restaurant has one thing it most wants a visitor to do. Order online. Call. Book a table. Get directions.

Pick the one. Make it a button, put it in the header, keep it visible while people scroll, and make it big enough to hit with a thumb.

The mistake is presenting five equal options. Given five choices, people pick none.

4. Tap-to-text and tap-for-directions

Your phone number should be a link that dials when tapped. Your address should be a link that opens Maps.

This sounds trivial. It isn't. It's the difference between a hungry person arriving and a hungry person giving up. If somebody has to select your number, copy it, and paste it into the dialer, a meaningful percentage just won't.

5. Photos of your actual food

Real photos of what you actually serve beat stock photography by a distance that's hard to overstate. Stock food images are recognizable and they read as dishonest — which makes people wonder what else is being oversold.

You don't need a professional shoot to start. A recent phone, natural light from a window, shoot from slightly above, clean the plate rim before you shoot. Ten good photos beats forty mediocre ones.

If you do have the budget for a photographer, this is the single best place in your marketing to spend it.

6. Built for the phone first

The majority of restaurant website traffic is mobile, and it skews harder mobile than almost any other industry, because people look you up while they're already out.

Which means: it has to load fast on cell service, not office wifi. Buttons have to be thumb-sized. Text has to be readable without zooming. Nothing important should sit behind a hover, because there's no hover on a phone.

If your site was designed on a desktop and never seriously tested on a phone, it's failing most of your visitors.

7. Local SEO fundamentals

The unglamorous part that determines whether anyone finds you at all:

• LocalBusiness structured data so search engines understand you're a restaurant, where, and when you're open
• Name, address, and phone identical across your site, Google Business Profile, and every listing — inconsistency actively hurts rankings
• A claimed and filled-out Google Business Profile linked to the site
• Page titles that include your city, because "Fairbanks" in the title tag is doing real work

None of this is visible to your customers. All of it determines whether they see you.

And five things you can skip

• Autoplay video or music. It slows the page down, it burns mobile data, and someone checking your hours during a meeting will close the tab instantly.
• A splash page. An intro screen you have to click through before reaching the site is a door with an extra door in front of it.
• A reservation system you don't need. If you don't take reservations, don't add booking software. It's a monthly fee and a support burden for a feature nobody uses.
• A long "our story" as the homepage. Your story is good and it belongs on the site — just not in front of the menu. Give it its own page and link to it.
• An app. Unless you're at serious scale, nobody is installing an app for one restaurant. A fast website does the same job with no download and no app store to maintain.

The five-minute self-audit

Open your site on your phone, on cell data, not wifi. Then:

• Time how long until you can read something. Over three seconds is a problem.
• Find your hours without scrolling or tapping. Can you?
• Read the menu without pinching to zoom. Can you?
• Tap the phone number. Does it dial?
• Tap the address. Does Maps open?
• Find the ordering button in under two seconds. Can you?

Most sites fail two or three of these. Every one of them is fixable.

What we build

Every site we do covers all seven of the above as a baseline — not as add-ons, not as an upgrade tier. Real text menus, hours front and center, tap-to-text, mobile-first, LocalBusiness schema, and ordering wired into whatever POS you already run.

You can look at live examples. One flat fee from $600, you own it outright, and no required monthly anything — here's the pricing. Run a food truck or coffee shop instead? Same list applies.

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