What Is a Restaurant Website? The Evergreen Guide

A website is often a customer’s first impression of your restaurant. Today, more than 70% of customers explore a restaurant or bar’s website before deciding to visit in person. Not only does the site capture your restaurant’s basic information, it also provides visitors with a sense of its dining experience.  

Whether you’re crafting a website for a fine dining restaurant or trendy new bar, your website plays a critical role in enticing customers to visit. We wrote this guide to help you kickstart building an eye-catching and informative restaurant site.  

Defining a Restaurant and/or Bar Website 

A restaurant website is the online resource that captures all your restaurant’s important information. It includes the basics like a telephone number, hours, and location.  

Your website is also an opportunity to showcase the personality behind your brand. What does dining at your restaurant feel like? What do you offer customers? It’s the ideal place to showcase what makes your restaurant or bar unique, such as a compelling loyalty program. Intentional design decisions pertaining to font, colors, and layout give your customers a sense of what to expect from your establishment.  

Consider these elements to ensure your restaurant website is informative: 

• Clear and up-to-date menus: Including prices and descriptions to help visitors understand your offerings. 
• High-quality visuals: Professional photos of dishes, the dining environment, and staff. 
• Online reservation and ordering systems: Seamless integration to book tables or order food with minimal hassle. 
• Contact information: Easily accessible location, phone number, and operating hours—which is also important for local restaurant SEO. It’s especially critical to have this information up to date if you have multiple locations.  
• Social proof: Prominently display customer testimonials and links to review sites. 
• Valuable loyalty programs: Whether it’s a subscription service or tailor-made loyalty program, it’s a good call to reward your customers for their repeat business.  

Covering the basic information and ensuring it’s accurate is the first step in building your website. Next, it’s time to add some personality and focus on functionality.  

4 Features of Top Restaurant Sites 

A restaurant website with long load times or a confusing interface will quickly deter visitors from exploring the site further. Once you’ve made sure all the basic information is clear and correct, focus your efforts on the user experience (UX). Keep in mind these four essential UX elements: 

1. Ease of Navigation: Users should find what they need (menu, contact info, booking) within seconds. 
2. Responsive Design: Ensures the website complies with ADA requirements and is attractive across all devices. 
3. Fast Load Times: Essential to keep potential customers engaged and reduce bounce rates. 
4. Security Features: Especially for websites that handle transactions or personal information. 

It helps to place yourself in the shoes of your customer. Did you easily find the information you were looking for? Is the website nice to look at without being distracting?  

Your brand is another critical component here. It goes beyond fonts, logos, and color schemes—it’s the personality behind your business. It’s ultimately what sets your restaurant apart from all its competitors. The aesthetics of your website should align with the style of your restaurant. 

Say you operate a farm-to-table restaurant that emphasizes communal dining. Maybe your establishment is bright and airy with large windows and light tones. You may capture the community message of your brand by placing large tables throughout your restaurant where strangers can share a meal together. Now, translate this feeling onto your website by using characteristics like bright colors and playful fonts. 

Here’s a tip to stand out: Consider inviting website visitors to sign up using their email. You can offer updates on hours, events, menu changes, and loyalty programs. It’s a reliable strategy to keep your customers in the know and rewarded for repeat visits.  

Now, let’s examine a few examples of restaurant and bar sites that stand out from their competitors. 

Benchmarking the 4 Best Restaurant Websites 

When benchmarking restaurant or bar websites, we considered three main categories: design, functionality, and user experience. We’ve identified four sites that stand out. Each covers a different industry, service, and tone, but they all successfully employ the following: 

1. Aesthetics that are aligned with the brand image: The best sites reflect the restaurant’s theme, whether it's rustic, modern, or luxurious, creating a cohesive brand image online and offline. 
2. Simple and intuitive functionality: Includes ease of reservations, menu updates, and even integration with third-party delivery platforms. 
3. An enjoyable user experience: These sites are not just beautiful—they are intuitive and make visitors want to book a reservation immediately. 
4. Accurate, accessible information: Not only is the information correct, it’s also easy to find. 

Look closely at how these restaurant website examples create a unique and memorable experience for their visitors: 

Baker’s Crust Artisan Kitchen 

We love the dynamic and informative home landing page for Baker’s Crust. Without navigating away from the home page, visitors gain a glimpse into the menu, restaurant, food, special services, and more. All this information is rolled up within a pleasant on-brand color scheme.  

Mei Mei Dumplings 

If you had to describe this restaurant website in three words, they would be welcoming, bright, and playful. Mei Mei Dumplings offers classes alongside their cafe. By creating a fun and inviting website, they can help encourage individuals to sign up for classes and learn a new skill.  

Susie’s Cakes 

The color pallet of Susie’s Cakes alone is mouthwatering. The top navigation bar is clear and simple. Website visitors know exactly how to find everything from the menu to the online ordering system. Scrolling down the home page more reveals the bakery’s core offerings, current special deals, and a little backstory on the business owner.  

The Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co.  

At the top of the home page, visitors first see new offerings and promotions from The Great Lake Coffee Roasting Co. There are images of employees roasting the coffee beans and steaming cups of coffee backdropped by a dark color pallet. Brought together, it creates a cozy ambiance that makes visitors want to curl up with a warm, delicious cup of joe. 

The Bottom Line 

Getting your restaurant or bar site up and running is a huge accomplishment. You now have a way—the ideal way—to connect with customers before they ever set foot in your business. However, the work isn’t over. Restaurant and bar websites require maintenance.  

You should regularly check in on the performance, accessibility, and accuracy of your website. Consider getting feedback from your customers or employees. It’s wise to get an outsider’s perspective to spot errors or gaps that you and your staff might overlook.  

Here are some tips for maintaining an effective restaurant website: 

• Verify the basic information is correct: If your hours, location, phone number, or menu change, make sure your website reflects that adjustment.  
• Refresh your photos: Make sure there are plenty of menu item photos that look delicious and enticing across your site.  
• Update your home page: Add new menu items, exciting information, awards, or other small pieces of information to keep visitors updated. 
• Check in on site speed and SEO regularly: Periodic browser updates can change your website’s load time and SEO performance. Check in on these factors once or twice per quarter.  
• Add or update employee bios and pro headshots: Invite customers to get to know the individuals working behind the scenes. 

Design a website that stands out from the rest! Repeat customers make up about 80% of your revenue. They can prove a treasure trove to boosting revenue and building a solid reputation within your community. 

Paytronix helps restaurants create the right loyalty program for those dedicated customers. Consider Alltown Fresh as an example. With the help of Paytronix, they launched a successful mobile app and loyalty program. Doing so allowed them to better serve their customers, building their business into a foodie haven! 

If you’re curious to learn more about how Paytronix can help you unlock your restaurant’s potential, schedule a demo today.