Website for a restaurant or cafe — what it must have and what kills bookings

A guest searching for a restaurant in Belgrade does not come to your site to admire the design — they are looking for three pieces of information: opening hours, the menu, and a phone number. If they cannot find these within 10 seconds, they close the tab and go to a competitor. For restaurants, a site that 'looks nice' but loads slowly or has a PDF menu loses more bookings than a site that is simple but fast.

Five elements without which a restaurant website does not work: (1) Opening hours visible on the first page, (2) Menu in HTML/text, not PDF, (3) Address with a Google Maps embed, (4) Phone number as a clickable link on mobile, (5) Gallery of food and the space — minimum 8 quality photos. Without these five, everything else is decoration.

A PDF menu is the most common mistake on restaurant websites. PDFs do not load well on mobile, are not searchable, Google does not index them well for 'pasta Belgrade' searches, and users cannot copy a dish name for a reservation. An HTML menu that is nicely formatted converts 3x better than a PDF and helps with local SEO.

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is more important for a restaurant than any page on the website. This is what guests see on Google Maps and in the right-hand panel of search results. Essential: all food categories, opening hours for each day, photos of the interior and food, responses to reviews. 88% of consumers read reviews before choosing a restaurant.

Mobile display and speed: 75% of restaurant website visitors come from mobile. An LCP above 3 seconds means half of your guests leave before seeing the menu. Next.js and WordPress sites with properly optimised images and no unnecessary scripts load in under 1.5 seconds. Feather Studio has built websites for local hospitality businesses — see our references or book a call.