Restaurant website design: six things guests look for
Your website does not have to be beautiful. It has to do one thing: take a hungry guest from your name to a placed order inside a minute. Most of what owners tinker with has nothing to do with that.
What guests actually come to your site to do
Most owners treat their website like a brochure. Something that should look tidy, and that a business is simply meant to have. Your guest uses it completely differently. They arrive with a question and they want an answer quickly.
That question is almost always the same one. What do you serve, what does it look like, and can I order it now. Everything on your site that does not help with that is decoration.
There is very little Dutch research into what guests do on restaurant websites. What does exist comes from the United States: an American ordering platform surveyed 1,300 guests about how they use restaurant sites. Those numbers do not transfer one to one, and the company that gathered them sells ordering software. The direction is recognisable all the same, so here they are in one place, clearly labelled.
| From a US survey of 1,300 guests | Share |
|---|---|
| Prefer to find new restaurants through Google search | 66% |
| Check the website before ordering takeaway or delivery | 91% |
| Check the website before dining in as well | 72% |
| Want a browsable menu on the site | 75% |
| Want to be able to order online | 64% |
| Look at photos of dishes before ordering | 84% |
| Have abandoned an order because the process was poor | 75% |
| Are more likely to reorder after a smooth experience | 87% |
| Look for reviews or a special offer on the site | 74% |
Read them as a direction rather than as a Dutch benchmark. What sits underneath them is not cultural. People choose food with their eyes, and they stop the moment something does not work.
Being found starts at Google and ends on your own domain
Somebody who is hungry and does not know you yet will not type a brand name. They type what they want to eat and where they are. Pizza delivery Zwolle. Surinamese takeaway Rotterdam Zuid. Best ramen in Utrecht.
That is exactly why your own site exists. In the Thuisbezorgd or Uber Eats app you sit among your competitors, sorted in whatever order suits the platform, with commission coming off every receipt. In Google your own page can answer that same search, and the guest arrives with you directly.
Let the ordering happen on your own domain
Plenty of restaurant sites have an Order button that throws the guest onto a completely different web address. That is where the visit breaks in two. The guest starts again in surroundings they do not recognise, your own statistics only show that somebody left, and to Google your page is a stopover rather than the place where things happen.
When the checkout runs on your own address, the whole route from search to receipt stays yours. It is also the only place where you sell without paying commission.
It also changes what you get to learn. On your own page you can see where people arrive, which dish they tap and at which moment they stop. Send them off to another address and your view ends at that button, leaving you to guess the rest.
- Put what you make and where you are into your homepage title, in plain language.
- Give the dishes people search for their own place on your menu page, not just a line inside a PDF.
- Point your Google Business Profile at your own ordering page rather than at a platform.
Your Business Profile, the pins in Google Maps and keeping your details identical across the web are a subject in their own right, and there is a separate piece about that. For the design of your site, this is the part that matters: make sure the order ends where it started.
What belongs at the top of your homepage
Your guest is standing outside with a phone in their hand, or sitting on the sofa with the television on. They decide within a few seconds whether to keep scrolling or go back to the search results. About two things fit on that first screen. Choose them well.
One sentence that says what you make and where
No Welcome to our website. No line about passion and quality that would sit just as comfortably on the site of the place three streets away. Write down what you make and where you are: wood-fired pizza in the centre of Deventer, or Javanese takeaway in Amsterdam Zuidoost. The guest has to recognise themselves in that sentence.
A photo of the dish you are known for
Underneath it belongs food, not an atmospheric shot of an empty terrace. The dish that crosses the counter most often, shot from above or up close, made in your own kitchen. Stock photography works against you here, because by definition it shows the one dish you cannot serve.
Do this on Monday. Open your own site on your phone, off the restaurant wifi, and look at what is there before you scroll even once. If there is no food and no order button, you know what your first job is.
Checkout should not feel like a form
The homepage is not where you lose most orders. That happens at the checkout, with a guest who had already chosen and already filled a basket.
- Payment through iDEAL, and on a phone through Apple Pay or Google Pay. For most people in the Netherlands that is the shortest route.
- No forced account. A guest who has to invent a password first is a guest you are about to lose.
- Ask only for what you need in order to deliver. A date of birth is not on that list.
- Run the postcode check at the start, not once the basket is full.
- Show the delivery fee and the delivery time before anybody fills in their details.
Nobody ever misses what you leave out here. No restaurant has ever been marked down for asking too few questions. If you do need something extra, say why you need it: a flat number, or a phone number the driver can ring when they are standing at the wrong door.
Every step you remove is a step where nobody can drop out any more. And an order paid for on your own page costs you no commission, so what you win here you also keep.
Where guests quietly give up
A bad site rarely feels dramatic. Nothing happens, that is all. The guest clicks back to Google, orders from the next place in the list, and you see none of it except a quiet evening.
- Opening hours that are not immediately visible, or that stop being true around public holidays.
- A phone number you cannot tap to call.
- A cookie banner that covers half the screen and refuses to go away.
- Five megabyte photos that leave the page hanging on a mobile connection.
- An order button that jumps to another domain and asks for the same details again.
- No address, no directions, and not a word about parking or the nearest stop.
None of these takes long to repair. They survive because almost nobody uses their own site the way a guest does. That is why the test in the section above earns more than a redesign: it shows you where your guest gets stuck, rather than where you would prefer things to look nicer.
The second order is where you make your money
A first order often earns you very little. An advert paid for it, or an introductory discount, or a platform’s commission. The profit sits in the second and third order, and those only arrive if the first time went smoothly.
A new guest will still push through a messy ordering flow, because they are curious about your food. Returning guests will not. They know exactly how long it takes with you, and how long it takes down the road.
On a delivery platform that second order is not yours to organise. The guest ordered from the platform, and next time they will be shown whichever kitchen pays most to sit at the top. On your own site it is something you can actually work on.
- Keep the address and the order history, so a second order is two taps.
- Give guests a button that repeats their previous order.
- Ask properly for permission to email, and then use it sparingly.
- Hold your own customer data. On a platform the guest belongs to the platform, not to you.
This is the difference your own site makes over a year. Not tonight’s order, but the guest who now knows that ordering from you is painless and therefore stops searching.
Reviews and an offer belong on your own page too
Guests trust the judgement of other guests more than anything you write about yourself. That is fine. It only becomes a problem when they have to leave your site to find those judgements, because then they are back in Google, and so is your competitor.
- Put your rating and a few real comments next to the dishes they are about.
- Use only reviews you have genuinely received, with the source named, whether that is Google or TripAdvisor.
- Mention how many years you have been open or how many orders sit behind the rating, where that is true. It is context a score alone does not carry.
An offer with a floor under it
The second reason guests check your site before ordering is a special offer. A flat discount only costs you margin. An offer with a floor under it changes behaviour instead: free delivery above an amount that sits slightly higher than your average order, or a dessert thrown in from an order for two upwards.
Put that offer where it can be seen, at the top of the menu or in the bar across the top of the page. Not in a pop-up that covers the screen at the exact moment somebody was choosing.
There is no perfect site, but there are these six things
Owners usually sit at one of two extremes. One has spent months nudging buttons from left to right and wondering about the typeface. The other has forgotten they own a site at all and can no longer remember who looks after it. Both cost orders, and the first one costs time as well.
That is the whole list. It is short, and yet hardly any restaurant site manages all of it. Pick one item this week. If you have to choose, start with the photos on your menu: that is the part your guest looks at longest and the part that usually gets the least attention.
Common questions
- What does a good restaurant website look like?
- Like something you can order from inside a minute. The top of the homepage says in plain language what you make and where you are, with a photo of your best-known dish. Below it the menu sits as readable text with photos and prices, and an order button that stays on your own domain. Good design helps, but it always comes after those three things.
- What do guests look at first on a restaurant website?
- Food. First the screen they land on without scrolling, and then the menu. Only once they know what you make and what it costs do they go looking for opening hours, the address and ratings. So build your site in that order, rather than in the order you would use to describe your restaurant.
- Why do guests abandon an order halfway through?
- Usually over something small that surfaces late. A delivery fee that only appears at the checkout, a compulsory account, a postcode that turns out to sit outside your delivery area, or a button that jumps to another web address and asks for the same details again. Put that information up front and nobody has to back out later.
- How do I test whether my restaurant website works?
- Order something from it yourself, on your own phone, off the restaurant wifi and using one hand. Count the screens between the menu and the confirmation. Then hand it to somebody who has never ordered from you and say nothing while they hunt. Finally do it once on a Friday evening, because that is when it really has to work.
- How often should I refresh my menu and its design?
- Prices, opening hours and sold-out dishes get changed immediately, because guests are rightly annoyed by those. For the design of the menu itself, every twelve to eighteen months is a workable rule of thumb: purchase prices shift, dishes come and go, and a round like that is a natural moment to cut the items that are not selling.
- What should go at the top of my homepage?
- One sentence saying what you make and where you are, a photo of food you genuinely serve, and a button to order or to book. No welcome message, no slideshow of atmospheric shots and no video that has to load first. Everything sitting there is sitting in the place of something else.
