How to Build a Website for a Restaurant

Key Considerations of a Successful Restaurant Website

Food and Drink Menus

A trend we’ve noticed with many restaurant websites is the exclusive use of PDFs for their food and drink menus. While PDFs have their place, they can’t be easily updated through a Content Management System, and they often come with large file sizes. This means that visitors, especially those using mobile devices (as most do), have to download these hefty files, using up their mobile data. We understand that sometimes this might be the most straightforward option, but we also believe in creating the best possible first impression for your guests. So, it might be worth considering other, more user-friendly ways to showcase your delicious offerings online.

Considerations

• Text-based menus for food 
• Text-based menus for drinks
• Include prices and allergen information

Location

It might sound straightforward, yet it's astonishing how many businesses overlook the importance of displaying their address on their website. Particularly for restaurants, cafes, and bars, it’s not just about providing a basic address; embedding a Google map and offering a link for directions are essential touches. After all, if your potential customers can't easily locate you, sustaining your business for the long term could become a challenge. We believe in making the journey to your doorstep as smooth as possible to ensure a great start to their experience with you.

Considerations

• Address
• Embed Google Map or Apple Maps
• Include a link to the directions

Online Booking 

In our digital age, ensuring ease of access to bookings is absolutely essential. Whether it’s a cosy seat for two or a table for a group, customers should be able to secure their spot effortlessly and at any time they wish. Thanks to the advent of third-party booking platforms such as OpenTable and ResDiary, integrating a booking system into your website is a breeze. Given this, it’s hard to imagine any restaurant, café, or bar not offering this indispensable feature to their patrons. You should be all about making things smoother and simpler for your customers.

Considerations

• Adopt a third-party booking system
• Embed a third-party booking system on your website
• Use clear calls to action to direct users to the booking form

Contact Information

Making contact with your business should be an absolute breeze for everyone, whether they’re potential first-timers or loyal regulars coming back for their fourth visit. If it’s not, you could be missing out on a whole lot of customer engagement. This is crucial not just for those looking to reach out with inquiries, but also for your regulars who might need to get in touch for any number of reasons—perhaps they’re running a tad late, there’s a last-minute adjustment to their booking, or on the off chance, there’s a glitch with your booking platform. Whatever the case, we believe in keeping those lines of communication wide open.

Considerations

• Create a Contact Us page
• Include a contact form
• Include the phone number
• Include the business hours

Images, Images, Images (and Video)

The timeless adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” holds particularly true for websites, and even more so for those in the hospitality sector like restaurants, cafes, or bars. This is your golden opportunity to showcase the unique ambience of your venue, helping potential patrons grasp the essence of what you’re all about, all while tantalising their taste buds with glimpses of your scrumptious offerings. By weaving in captivating images and, in certain instances, video content, you’ll not only engage visitors to your site but also set your establishment apart from the competition. Strive to create a visual feast that leaves a lasting impression.

Considerations

• Interior images or videos of people enjoying your space
• Images or video of food being prepared (everyone loves The Bear!)
• Maybe a cocktail is being prepared
• Consider searching on stock photo sites like Unsplash or Pexels for inspiration

Why Choose uSkinned for Your Restaurant’s Website

uSkinned offers a user-friendly content management system (CMS) that empowers restaurant owners to create an engaging online presence without needing extensive technical skills. By leveraging uSkinned, you can ensure that your website is not only visually appealing but also functional and easy to navigate.

Steps to Create a Successful Restaurant Website with uSkinned

Sign up for a Hosted uSkinned website

This part couldn’t be simpler, we’d recommend signing up for a hosted website or free trial. Just fill out your details and wait for the site details to arrive in your inbox — be sure to check your junk folder just in case.

Alternatively, you can head over to our pricing section and choose the best option for your needs.

Choose a Theme (or Create Your Own)

Now that your site is up and running, it’s time to decide on your look and feel. You can either choose from one of our professionally designed themes or start designing your own from scratch in the Visual Designer. We’ve got a few options available that might be great to get your restaurant website started though or at least offer some inspiration, check out: 

• Cocina
• Cafe
• Dine
• La Maison
• Arran
• Bute
• Fair
• Islay
• Staffa
• Stroma

Don’t worry though, you’re not stuck with the layouts, colours, fonts and spacing choices that we provide, all of this is adjustable.

Add Your Food and Drink Menus

Your brand and colour palette are good to go, it’s now time to think about your content. uSkinned Site Builder offers lots of options to add content, including menus for Food and Drink. One of these options is called “Data List”, which can be added as a component or pod. It lets users display stylised pricing menus, opening hours or any other similarly structured data. 

This is a great way of adding restaurant menus to your website. Create menus that are a part of your website rather than using PDF downloads which are less accessible and often come with huge file sizes.

See text-based menus in action in the Dine, Cocina, Cafe, Fair, or Staffa demos.

Implement Your Booking Platform

Now the menus are in place, your potential customers are going to need a way to place bookings. If you’re not already familiar with or using a booking engine, then you can find one relatively easily with a quick search on Google. Something to consider when choosing the right platform is, “Can it be embedded on a website?”, if the answer is yes, then you’re onto a winner. 

Once you’re signed up to your chosen Booking Platform, follow the provider's instructions to generate the relevant embed code. Using the Embed Code block in uSkinned Site Builder you can now place your Booking Form anywhere on your website — page, footer, modal window, you can really place it anywhere. 

Check out our Booking Platform guides.

Create a Contact Page

With the bookings flying in, your customers need to know how to find you, so a Contact Page is the next logical step. Within your Contact Page you’ll want to display at least;

• Address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Location Map
• Contact Form

The awesome thing is, with uSkinned Site Builder all of this is super simple. Some of the above information might even be useful on a site-wide basis, so perhaps consider adding your Address and Phone number to your header or footer too.

Social Media, Reviews and Integrations

Every restaurant wants a following and there’s no better way to do that than to use Social Media channels, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (X) and Reviews. By integrating these on the website, you’ll encourage your customers to engage with you. Adding Social Media channels via a social wall page or a reusable component at the bottom of each page is an excellent way to add an extra layer of interactivity to your website. 

We all know there’s a variety of ways to submit reviews — Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook to name a few — for businesses, particularly for restaurants, cafés and bars, so we’d recommend pulling all of your reviews into one feed. The great news is that you can do this in an instant by following our guide on implementing reviews with Elfsight. 

Add Image (and Video) Galleries and Banners 

Your content is almost ready, the final piece of the puzzle is your images (and videos). You can add these in a variety of ways with uSkinned, most notably, using the Gallery and Banner components. All you need to do is upload your media to the media section, then add one of these components to any page to add an extra wow factor to your site. Each component comes with a number of settings, including items per row, displaying content in a grid or carousel or even setting that carousel to autoplay.

If you do have video content then Site Builder has a built-in feature to pull content directly from Vimeo and YouTube, so you simply upload your videos to these third-party providers and pull that content into your site with just the video URL. But don’t worry if neither of these providers suits your requirements, we’ve got plenty of quick step guides to add videos from others such as Wistia video.

Setup the Domain and Go-live

Well, it seems like everything is in place, your new restaurant website is ready to be revealed to the public. If you don’t already have a domain purchased, make sure you do that now. 

This next part will depend if you’re using uSkinned Hosting or your own provider but we’ve got easy-to-follow guides for both. Check out the guides on how to launch your uSkinned Site Builder website.

Final Thoughts

In wrapping up, it is clear as day that having a visually appealing and user-friendly website is absolutely vital for restaurants in this digital day and age. We've walked through a comprehensive guide to help you create a digital space that's not just eye-catching but also engages your visitors in the best way possible. From easy-to-navigate menus and straightforward location details, to hassle-free online booking, and all the necessary contact information, we’ve covered all bases to ensure your restaurant stands out from the crowd.

Turning to a platform like uSkinned Site Builder, you'll find creating a top-notch website is a breeze, even for those of us not quite so tech-savvy. So, here's to crafting a digital presence that really shows off the quality of your restaurant, attracting and keeping those all-important customers. By embracing these digital tips and tricks, you're setting your restaurant up for lasting success and a brilliant reputation in the bustling world of culinary delights. Cheers to digital success and happy dining experiences ahead!

#h5yr