5 Things Your Restaurant Website Must Have (and 3 to Skip)
77% of diners check a restaurant’s website before deciding where to eat. If they land on yours and can’t find the menu, can’t make a reservation, or can’t tell if you’re open right now, they leave. And they don’t come back. Getting the essentials right is the foundation of any effective.
Most restaurant websites get the basics wrong not because owners don’t care, but because nobody told them which features actually drive guests through the door and which ones just add noise.
This guide covers the five restaurant website features that directly affect whether a guest books or bounces, and the three things most restaurants include that cost them more than they contribute.
The 5 Restaurant Website Features You Actually Need
1. A Text-Based Menu (Not a PDF)
Your menu is the most-visited page on your restaurant website. , 88% of Gen Z diners check a restaurant’s menu online before deciding to visit. If that menu is a PDF file, you’re losing on two fronts simultaneously.
PDFs can’t be read by Google. Every dish name, every dietary note, every seasonal special is invisible to search engines when it’s locked in a PDF. A guest searching “gluten-free pasta near me” won’t find you even if it’s your signature dish.
PDFs also break on mobile. 60% of restaurant searches happen on mobile devices. A PDF that requires downloading, pinching, and zooming on a phone screen is a friction point that costs you the visit.
Use a text-based menu built directly into your website. Update it in minutes when something changes. Let Google index every item. Let guests find you by what they want to eat.
2. Online Ordering That Keeps Your Revenue
Online ordering is no longer optional. Restaurants that offer it report approximately 34% of revenue coming through digital channels. The question isn’t whether to add online ordering. It’s which system you use.
The wrong answer is embedding a DoorDash or Uber Eats widget on your own website. That sends guests who came directly to you through a platform that charges 30% commission on every order. You’re paying for the privilege of losing a third of your revenue on guests who already found you.
A for your restaurant lets guests order from your website and sends 100% of that revenue to you. No commission. No third-party middleman. The guest stays on your site, the order comes to your kitchen, and you keep what you earned.
3. A Reservation System Guests Can Use in Under 60 Seconds
65% of diners prefer to book directly through a restaurant’s website rather than through a third-party platform. They want to book with you, not through OpenTable or Resy, if the process is simple enough.
The bar for “simple enough” is one screen, one confirmation, and under 60 seconds on a phone. If your reservation process requires an account, redirects to another domain, or takes more than three taps to complete, you’re pushing guests toward a third-party platform that charges you a per-cover fee for the booking.
A reservation system built into your restaurant website keeps that relationship direct. You get the guest’s contact information. You control the confirmation and reminder emails. And you owe nothing per seat to a platform that had nothing to do with bringing that guest in.
4. Mobile Design That Works Before It Looks Good
More than half of all restaurant searches happen on mobile. Guests looking for somewhere to eat right now are almost always on a phone. Your restaurant website needs to work on that phone before it needs to look good on a desktop monitor.
Mobile-first restaurant website design means: a booking button visible immediately without scrolling, a menu that loads fast and doesn’t require zooming, tap-friendly navigation with enough spacing between links, and a page that loads in under 3 seconds. Google’s benchmark is firm, 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
If your restaurant website was designed for desktop and adapted for mobile afterward, the booking flow almost certainly has friction points that are costing you reservations every day.
5. Contact Information and Hours in the Footer, On Every Page
This sounds obvious. It isn’t. A significant number of restaurant websites bury their address, phone number, and hours on a dedicated contact page that guests have to navigate to find.
Your restaurant’s address, phone number, current hours, and a Google Maps link should appear in the footer of every single page on your website. A guest who wants to call should never have to hunt. A guest who wants to navigate should get a maps link in two taps.
This information also needs to match your Google Business Profile exactly. Inconsistent hours between your website and Google create confusion and can hurt your local search ranking. Update both at the same time, every time hours change.
The 3 Things to Skip
Most restaurant website guides stop at the must-haves. This section covers what not to build, because the wrong features waste money and actively hurt the guest experience.
1. A PDF Menu
Already covered above, but worth repeating in explicit terms: a PDF menu is not a feature. It’s a liability. It’s invisible to search engines, breaks on mobile, and requires a design file and usually a developer to update.
If your current restaurant website has a PDF menu, replacing it with a text-based page is the highest-ROI change you can make right now. It costs an hour of work and immediately improves both your SEO and your mobile guest experience.
2. Third-Party Ordering Widgets from Delivery Apps
This is the one most restaurant websites get wrong and nobody talks about directly.
Embedding an Uber Eats or DoorDash ordering widget on your restaurant website is the equivalent of putting a competitor’s cash register on your counter. Guests who came to your property, found your website, and decided to order are now being processed through a platform that takes 30% of that sale.
These platforms are appropriate for capturing guests who are browsing the app and discover you there. They are not appropriate for processing orders from guests who already found you directly. Use a direct ordering system for your website. Keep the commission for yourself.
3. Autoplaying Audio or Background Music
Autoplay audio is the fastest way to make a guest close a browser tab. It triggers an immediate negative reaction, particularly on mobile where guests are often in public spaces.
Some restaurant websites include ambient music or video trailers that play automatically on load. The intention is atmosphere. The result is a bounce. High-quality photography of your food and space does the work that autoplay media is trying to do, without triggering the instinct to immediately close the tab.
If you want video on your restaurant website, place it as an embedded player that guests choose to click. Never autoplay.
Build the Right Foundation First
A restaurant website with these five features and without the three mistakes does more for your revenue than a visually impressive site that leaks guests at every step.
The must-haves are not complicated. A text menu, direct ordering, a direct reservation system, mobile-first design, and visible contact information. These are the foundation that every other feature builds on. Get these right before adding anything else.
If your current restaurant website is missing any of them, or if it’s built on a platform that makes them hard to implement, that’s the conversation worth having. DoHospitality builds specifically for independent properties that need to compete without paying 30% to platforms that own the guest relationship. Part of Designodin’s 200+ projects delivered since 2014, with 50+ hospitality websites built for exactly this kind of operation.
Once the website is right, sends the right guests to it. But the site has to convert first.
DoHospitality is part of Designodin, a web agency with 200+ hospitality projects delivered since 2014. We build websites, booking systems, and online ordering setups for restaurants across the United States. Fixed pricing. No discovery calls required.