A restaurant website has two jobs. It removes friction between interest and a booking, and it shows the food, the room and the people well enough that someone wants to come. Everything below serves one of those two jobs.

Answer the four big questions on every page

Menu, booking, location and opening hours should be reachable from the top of every page. On mobile, that usually means a sticky header with a Book button and a Menu link, with the address and today's hours near the top of the homepage.

Test it with a friend who has never seen the site: ask them to find tonight's closing time and book a table for two on their phone. Every extra tap or scroll is a chance for them to give up. Our guide to what makes a good business homepage covers the wider principles.

Publish the menu as real text

A menu built as web text, rather than a PDF or a photo, is easier to read on a small screen, quicker to update and easier for search engines and screen readers to understand. Keep a PDF download for people who want to print it, but do not make it the only version.

Text menus also help your Google listing. Google's menu editor help explains that you can add a menu link to your Business Profile, that Google may transcribe menu data from your website, and that you can choose a preferred source when several menus exist. A clear, current menu page on your own site gives Google the right version to use.

Show allergen information online

Allergen rules do not stop at the dining room. The Food Standards Agency's allergen guidance for food businesses says you must tell customers if food contains any of 14 listed allergens. If you take orders online or by phone, that information must be available before the order is completed and again when the food is delivered.

For dine-in menus, the FSA allows allergen information to be given verbally as long as a clearly visible written notice explains how to get it, but it says written information supported by a conversation works best. On a website, an allergen key beside each dish or a linked allergen matrix that you keep up to date does the job.

Food that is prepacked for direct sale, such as sandwiches packed on site before customers order, has its own labelling rules, often called Natasha's Law. Dishes cooked to order from a menu are not covered by those labels, but the general allergen rules above still apply.

Make booking one tap, wherever guests find you

Embed your booking system on the site or link straight to it, and use the same booking link everywhere: the website header, your Google profile and your social bios. If you only take walk-ins, say so clearly on the homepage.

Google's guide to setting up bookings through a provider explains how to connect a booking provider to your Business Profile or add your own booking link. It notes that some providers may charge for bookings made through Google, and that restaurants can offer a waitlist through a Reserve with Google provider, so check what your system supports before you choose.

Give each occasion its own page

One homepage cannot answer every question or rank for every search. Separate pages for the things people plan and search for, such as private dining, set menus, Sunday lunch or group bookings, give each one room to sell itself. A typical small restaurant site might look like this.

Use structured data so search engines read you correctly

Structured data is code that labels your key facts for search engines. Schema.org has a specific Restaurant type with properties for cuisine, menu and whether you accept reservations, and a Menu type that can describe sections, dishes and prices.

Google's local business structured data guide lists name and address as required and recommends properties such as servesCuisine, menu, priceRange and opening hours, using the most specific business type available. Keep the markup matching what is on the page and on your Google profile, or it does more harm than good.

Photography, speed and accessibility

Good photos of real dishes, the room and the team do more selling than paragraphs of copy. They also need to load quickly, so export them at sensible sizes and let your platform serve modern image formats.

Accessibility matters for every guest. Use readable text sizes, strong colour contrast, descriptive alt text on dish photos and booking forms that work with a keyboard. Our guide to Core Web Vitals explains how Google measures loading speed and page experience.

Worked example: fixing a PDF-only site

Picture a hypothetical neighbourhood restaurant whose site has a single PDF menu, a phone number for bookings and opening hours that no longer match its Google listing. Here is a sensible order of fixes.

• Rebuild the menus as text pages by service, with prices, dietary labels and an allergen key

• Add a Book button to the header, linked to the same booking system used on the Google profile

• Correct the hours on the website and Business Profile on the same day, including bank holidays

• Add a private dining page with capacity, sample menus and an enquiry form

• Add Restaurant structured data with the menu URL, cuisine and opening hours

• Agree that one person updates menus, hours and allergen information whenever anything changes

None of these steps needs a full redesign, but together they remove most of the reasons a visitor would leave without booking.

How The Think helps restaurants

We design and build websites in Framer, which lets your team edit menus, hours and events visually without a developer. Websites start from £7,500 on a fixed quote, and we can cover copywriting and SEO alongside the build. See our restaurant website design page for how we approach restaurant projects.