Every restaurant decision starts the same way: someone in a group pulls out a phone and asks "what about this place?" You have roughly eight seconds of scrolling to answer three questions — what kind of food, how much, can we get in tonight — before they swipe to the next option.
Bury the PDF menu. Seriously.
The single most common restaurant-website mistake is a scanned or PDF menu. On a phone it means pinch-zooming through a blurry A4 — and for Google it is a near-invisible blob. An HTML menu directly on the page:
- Reads perfectly on any phone, no zooming.
- Lets Google index every dish — people genuinely search "best cevapi near me" and "vegan brunch Graz".
- Takes you two minutes to update when prices change — no designer, no re-upload.
Photos sell tables
Food is bought with the eyes, twice: once on the website, once at the table. Five to eight genuinely good photos — signature dishes, the room with people in it, one detail shot — outperform fifty mediocre ones. Skip the stock pasta; guests notice when the photos do not match the plates.
Reservations: remove every step you can
A reservation is an impulse — every extra step kills a percentage of them. Whether you use a booking widget or a simple form with instant confirmation, the rule is the same: the "reserve a table" button lives in the header, works on the phone, and never opens a mailto link. If you take walk-ins only, say exactly that — clarity beats silence.
The details that quietly decide
- Opening hours synced with your Google profile — a mismatch reads as "probably closed".
- Address with a working map link — one tap into navigation.
- Dietary labels — vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free markers directly in the menu widen your audience for free.
- Delivery links — if you deliver through platforms, link them; that traffic is yours to keep either way.
Guests do not read restaurant websites. They glance at them — and the glance decides where the table is booked.
What it costs
A restaurant website with an HTML menu, gallery and reservations typically lands between €700 and €1,600. Considering an average table's lifetime value, it usually pays for itself faster than any other marketing you can buy. Configure your estimate or tell me about your place — I reply within 24 hours.