It’s time to bring your restaurant into the 21st century. In 2025, neglecting your restaurant website is not an option. As food ordering, reservations, and even restaurant menus move into a digital domain, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve as a restaurant owner.
A restaurant website matters to your customers. With more than 77 percent of diners claiming that they will now visit a restaurant’s website first before stepping into the establishment, it’s up to you to make a standout digital impression.
Your restaurant website serves as a hub for customers to review your menu ahead of time, make reservations with ease, and in some cases, order their food straight to their door.
In order to compete against other local eateries, your website should follow the same rules as any other small-business domain. This includes optimizing your site for SEO success, investing in high-quality content, and, most importantly, making your restaurant findable through online searches and map listing.
With this in mind, we’ve put together a guide to improving your own restaurant website in 2025. Here are eight essential elements to add to your website design in order to attract more visitors both online and in person.
Add Contact Info and Hours
Your restaurant website is often a customer’s first port of call when it comes to sourcing your establishment’s contact information and opening hours.
All restaurant sites should prioritize the inclusion of clear and easily accessible contact information. This includes your restaurant’s phone number, email, address, and opening hours so that customers can easily get in touch.
If you are operating with a small team, consider a chatbot or contact form addition that can take the pressure off of the phone line. Chatbots and contact forms are available for use 24/7 and are often preferred by customers.
With the ability to answer simple questions and even take bookings after hours, these digital-savvy additions are a game changer.
Highlight Your Location and Provide Directions
Your website should make it easy for customers to see where your restaurant is located.
In order to enhance their customer experience, ensure that your location landing page is easily navigated from your homepage and includes an embedded map with clear instructions to reach your establishment.
Take this example from The Works for instance:
(Image Source: The Works)
With multiple locations to list, they have embedded a map that pinpoints their establishments all over the city so that the customer can quickly identify which location they’re searching for.
You should also ensure that your restaurant location page is linked to your Google My Business profile with an accompanying verified address, description, and tagging. This makes your location and your website more searchable in your local area.
Prioritize Consistent Branding
If your restaurant has well-established branding, your website should follow suit. Clear and consistent branding builds trust with the customer, and familiarity improves your visibility online.
This is why it’s important to match your fonts, colors, and logos to your established in-store branding.
Shake Shack’s website is a brilliant example of this:
(Image Source: Shake Shack)
Following the same muted green color scheme as the restaurant, the website mimics the interior of the fast-food eatery customers know and love. This makes the website extremely familiar to online visitors and unifies the online and in-person experience with the brand.
Don’t Sleep on Mobile Optimisation
Approximately 63 percent of all local Google searches occur on mobile devices. In order to appeal to your younger, more digitally savvy audience, don’t sleep on your mobile website optimization.
Gen Z and Millenials now use mobile devices to order food, make online bookings on the go, and even browse your restaurant menu on the way to the establishment.
This means that your website design must be fully responsive on all devices and provide a seamless user experience at all scales.
Ensure that your online booking system allows for touchscreen entry and that your phone-friendly site features elements such as a click-to-call button for mobile browsers.
Include a Digital Menu
Including a digital menu on your restaurant website is also a game changer. After a 2024 TouchBistro report found that 88 percent of Gen Z diners always check a restaurant’s menu online before giving it a try, adding one to your restaurant’s website has become a crucial feature for online success.
(Image Source: Tablein)
If you already have a menu feature on your website, there are also plenty of ways to upgrade it.
Online visitors are looking for a seamless experience and a fast-loading menu to get a quick taste of what is on offer.
Say goodbye to slow-loading PDF attachments and switch to a seamless, text-based menu for the best results.
(Image Source: ilili)
This example from Ilili, showcases just how effective a text-based menu can be. By removing slow-loading imagery and unresponsive PDFs, they give their customers a seamless navigational experience with no pinching and zooming needed while still incorporating important branding elements such as font and color.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
A good restaurant website ranks highly in local search results. To compete with other restaurants in your area, ensure that you use targeted search keywords, optimize your website content, and build high-quality backlinks to your website.
For SEO best practices, create a website for your restaurant using a professional web builder. Using ready-made templates and designs that are SEO-friendly is a great way to ensure your site is visible as a new business.
For ongoing search success, also ensure that your Google Business Profile is regularly updated and utilizes local and niche keywords, as well as maintaining consistency in NAP (Name, Address, Phone) across all platforms.
Invest in High-Quality Photography
Another way to spice up your web design is to invest in high-quality photography. Offering customers tantalizing images of dishes up close helps bring your menu to life and encourages online visitors to make a booking.
Take a look at Delbar’s restaurant website for inspiration:
(Image Source: Delbar)
Here you can see appetizing, high-quality images of the food on offer as soon as you land on the homepage.
Reservations and Online Ordering
Last but not least, another key element to add to your restaurant website is a reservation system.
In 2025, nearly half of restaurant reservations are made online, so it’s critical that you offer your customers the option to book a table from the comfort of their computer or smart device.
For example, take a look at this online reservation system on the Benoit Paris website:
(Image Source: Benoit Paris)
Here, the restaurant allows customers to choose a party size, time, and date of their choice before showing them the best results for their search. This takes the pressure off of the phone lines and allows for a seamless experience.
For local customers, you could also implement an online ordering system that rivals key delivery platforms like Deliveroo and UberEats. Your ordering system should be mobile-responsive and accept leading payment methods, especially if you want locals to purchase from you rather than a chain restaurant.
Why not offer your customers an online ordering incentive, such as 25 percent off their first order or free delivery? These perks can drive long-term traffic to your website.
Wrapping Up
There’s no doubt that investing in your restaurant website is a game-changer for your online presence.
Restaurants that pour focus into their site visibility, content quality, and mobile responsiveness will reap the benefits in a local search and drive more hungry customers to their reservation page.
If you’re yet to invest in your online presence, a powerful website is a great place to start.
Rebecca Barnatt-Smith talks about all things technology. Writing for popular publications like Real Business and Maddyness, she writes on the power of growing your business using the latest tech innovations and how the digital world continues to change hospitality strategies across the globe.
