Guide
What a restaurant website is for.
It has one job. Somebody hungry should be able to order in three taps, or find your hours in one.
In short
A restaurant website needs the menu, an order button, hours, address and phone visible without scrolling on a phone. Everything else is secondary. The most common conversion killers are a PDF menu, a large hero image delaying the content, an autoplaying video, and an order button that sends people to a marketplace.
Updated 28 August 2026
The order things should appear in
On a phone, above the fold: who you are, an order button, and either the menu or a link straight to it. Then hours and address. Then everything else. Most restaurant sites invert this, opening with a full-screen photograph and a welcome message, which pushes the only two things anybody came for below the fold.
- Order button, visible immediately
- Menu, as a real page
- Hours and address as text
- Phone number as a tap-to-call link
The PDF menu, again
It appears in every list of restaurant website problems because it is the most common and the most damaging. It loads slowly, it cannot be read comfortably on a phone, it cannot be ordered from, and search engines struggle with it. If you change one thing on your site, change this.
Your order button should point at you
A surprising number of restaurant sites send their own visitors to a marketplace. Somebody typed your name, arrived at your site, and you handed them to a channel that charges you commission. If you take direct orders, the button goes to your own ordering. If you also want to list marketplaces, put them lower down as an alternative.
Design choices that cost orders
Autoplaying video, animated page transitions, cookie banners that cover the screen, chat widgets that open on their own, and text over busy photography. Each adds friction or delay at the exact moment somebody is deciding. None of them make a hungry person more likely to order.
The honest limitation
A good website converts the traffic you already have. It does not generate traffic. If nobody is arriving, the fix is your Google profile and your reviews, not a redesign. Owners often rebuild a site when the problem was never the site.
Questions, answered straight.
Not covered here? Just ask us.
Do I need an About page?
It is worth having and it is not where the orders come from. Write it once, keep it short, and do not put it ahead of the menu.
Should the site show delivery times?
Yes, ideally live from your ordering system. A quoted range sets expectations and reduces the calls asking where the food is.
Is a one-page site enough?
For a small takeaway, often yes, provided the menu is a real page and the ordering works. Extra pages help SEO only when they say something distinct.
How much should a restaurant website cost?
Less than most quotes, if what you need is menu, ordering and hours. Be wary of paying for a bespoke build when the thing generating orders is the ordering system behind it.
See it run your restaurant.
Twenty minutes on your menu and your numbers. We'll show you what actually changes in the first month and exactly what it costs. If it's not right for your restaurant, we'll tell you that instead.
- Live in days, not months
- We build your menu and train your staff
- No contract, and thirty days to change your mind
Rather just ring us? +353 87 438 8032
Tell us about your restaurant
We reply the same day, usually inside a couple of hours.