What are the parts of a restaurant website? How should you design it?
When I talk to many restaurant owners about making their website, the first thing I observe is that the founders have a craving to create something really different, something unique. Although their vision is absolutely correct, the one thing that they seem to miss out on is the understanding of the conversion funnel. To explain that better, let’s get our fundamental understanding right.
“Website of a business exists to generate revenue, leads, or users.”
The primary objective of a restaurant’s website is to generate as much revenue as possible from online orders. And to do so, the website should channel its customers to the ordering page as soon as possible. Or If your restaurant’s website able tote doesn’t have online ordering, the sole purpose of the website should be to nudge your customers to call you to place an order. The maximum revenue can be generated when the website is designed in such a way that the hurdles to placing orders are minimized.
Parts of a restaurant website
Here are the essential parts of a restaurant website.
1. Title and Header
This attracts your customers the most. Ideally, this section should have a background image or video that highlights the core theme of the restaurant, with the name and tag line of the restaurant. For example, if you own a pizza shop, the background image of a delicious pizza would instantly make your website visitors hungry and improve the chances of them ordering. If you are a meal subscription service, your background image should highlight the “subscription” part of your service, say a calendar booking example with a meal box image.
2. About Section
Here, you have a chance to briefly say who you are and what your vision behind the restaurant was. You may also add some unique details that make your restaurant or food business better and different from incumbents. Depending on the design of your website, you should choose the length of the section. If your landing page is a single page, with all the parts together, then make sure the section does not exceed more than a paragraph of 80–100 words.
3. Services
The Services section should highlight all the major services you as a brand can provide to your customers. If you accept bulk orders, mention it here. If you lease out your space for group events, mention it here. If you have any flexibility of the menu, staff, or service pattern, mention here. Make sure you have mentioned the major service patterns that you can fulfill, and also not over-promise. For example: if your company has 20 employees, don’t post that you can service events of any size. Misleading customers will result in an instant loss of trust and maybe even negative reviews online, which further hurts the business going forward.
4. Menu (special dishes)
Mention the special dishes in this section. Don’t mention every dish in this section because other than you as a restaurant owner, no one wants to read through all the dishes that you can make, especially your customer is not interested in. They have no time and are interested in the best dishes only.
This gives you a perfect opportunity to lead your customers to the ordering page. You can mention markers such as “view full menu here…” or “show more…” and lead them to the ordering page where they can place orders directly.
5. Team
In this section, you can boast about the knowledge you have about the field and share your experience as a founder. You can showcase your personal brand and how your journey leads you to create your awesome restaurant brand. If any of your customers are reading this section, they must be interested in knowing more about you, probably to get inspired or looking forward to becoming your loyal customer. Don’t shy away from sharing your journey and including them to be a part of it.
6. Testimonials
Share testimonials from some of the known customers that you have. Any semi-famous or a slightly more known person who is your customer can share with you a good testimonial. If you are a relatively new brand, share some good feedbacks you received from your friends. Ensure you have proofs, just in case some obnoxious customer or online troll asks. :)
7. Contact Us
Share your contact details in this section (both email and phone number). This will eventually become your main phone number over the course of your restaurant’s lifecycle. It’s OK. It’s a good practice to keep a separate number for work generally.
8. Gallery
This section should display the latest images of your restaurant brand. To keep this section dynamic, you can integrate with Facebook Album, and keep on adding images in that album to keep this dynamic. You can also integrate with Google Photos to create an image slider, integrate with Instagram to display your live feed to the website audience. Keep this section to drive more subscriptions on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. To know more, read my previous post about integrations here.
9. Online ordering page
This page is the focus of your entire website. All the efforts made previously are directed towards more people landing on this page and placing an order.
This is where we, as Rockstar Chef, come in. We can help you provide an order management system and delivery system, to help you manage online deliveries from your own website. The easiest way is that we will add “ORDER NOW” buttons at various places on your website, and redirect customers to the ordering page. You, as a restaurant manager, will have an admin panel to keep track of orders received and fulfilled. We will integrate the order management system with the delivery partner of your choice, or can suggest our verified delivery providers in your city. To know more, visit our website here or contact us here.
Focus is the key!
Your objective as a restaurant creator should be to convey the core message behind your brand. You may take 1 page, or you may take 7 pages. Regardless of the size of the website, ensure that your message is accurately and concisely conveyed to your customers. Customers will order from you only when they understand what you do and what you believe in.
All the best for designing your website!
Rockstar Chef helps food entrepreneurs build e-commerce websites and apps, and provides the entire operating system to entrepreneurs to succeed. To know more about us, please visit our website: www.rockstarchef.in. My name is Shreyash, I’m the co-founder of Rockstar Chef. I’ve personally built a profitable food business in the past, so I know a thing or two about operating a restaurant and building a website for a restaurant.
