How To Design A Restaurant Website: Easy Guide

The need to marry design and culinary cuisine can be frustrating, but it is also essential for many businesses. Yet, how do you begin to go about deciding how food should ‘look,’ in terms of color, theme, and palette? What does it mean to visualize the small of ingredients in digital form? The bottom line is that designing a restaurant website is not always as simple as it appears.

Image source: Sofi Smith

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to simplify it, particularly when it comes to putting together responsive and user-friendly platforms that encourage appetite and prepare prospective diners for a treat.

These handy tips and tricks will teach you how to get the most out of your restaurant website. Let’s check out how to design a restaurant website.

Find Your Audience

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The first step is to identify your target audience.

For example, if you own a restaurant or snack bar near a college, you will likely get many younger people visiting.

If there are many corporate offices close to your business, your food might be most popular with those who work there and look for tasty treats during their lunch break.

To get to know your audience, take a close look at the people who are around you. You should pay close attention to their age, level of expenditure, preferences, and dining styles.

Once you know a little about this target audience, you can start creating your website based on this information—for instance, younger people are drawn to bright colors and clean lines.

Check out this blog for an in-depth look at web design basics.

Stick to the Basics of Designing A Restaurant Website

Image source: Tomas Gajar

The instinct is often to go overboard and fill a restaurant website with unnecessary information. However, this is usually a surefire way to put visitors off.

Most aim to enjoy an uncomplicated dining experience – with excellent customer service but over-the-top details. Just let your website design reflect this.

The essential components are a top-quality homepage or landing page, an easy-to-understand About Us page, a comprehensive Menu page, and a Contact Us page.

Once you have been operating for some time, adding a simple Review page could be a good idea.

Also read: Responsive Web Design: Tips and Best Practices

Use High-Quality Images

Image source: Vitali Zakharoff

In many ways, this is one of the most essential pieces of advice to give and still one of the hardest to follow.

Taking professional-looking shots of food is difficult. Very few amateurs can do it right, so the best recommendation is to hire the expert services of a professional food photographer.

If you do not have the cash to hire outside help, always remember to use pale-colored crockery and plenty of light.

The best method is to photograph small amounts of food rather than heaps of a meal and to pick recipes that contain a lot of bright colors. Look for vegetables like red peppers, carrots, tomatoes, etc.

Also, check out 10 Interesting & Creative Website Designs For Your Inspiration.

Incorporate the Menu

Image source: Michał Roszyk

Whilst it might not have been such a big deal to leave a restaurant’s menu on its website ten years ago, these days, many potential diners are put off if they cannot skim-read a menu before they arrive at an eatery.

Several reasons exist, including a more significant concern about allergies and intolerances.

If you want to impress when designing a restaurant website, avoid the temptation to throw together a scrappy PDF version of the menu. Design a fully optimized web-based menu showcasing the best of what you offer.

Remember to keep it up to date, too, because the last thing you want is to disappoint excited diners.

Also read: What Is Accessible Web Design?

Represent Your Unique Vibe

Image source: Elliot

It is not just the culinary treats that make a great restaurant, so think about the best ways to inject a little bit of your unique vibe into designing a restaurant website.

The truth is that diners can find a great steak almost anywhere, but they come to you because you offer more than that. They want to chow down somewhere with a super atmosphere.

To ensure that prospective diners know what you are all about, add lots of high-quality photographs of the restaurant’s interior —when it is filled with happy diners, of course!

You would be surprised how much information a person can get from a great restaurant website design with high-quality images – how to dress and what kind of food to expect. And all this from just a few interior snaps!

Give a Clear Location in Your Restaurant Website Design

Image source: Jamie McElwain

Nowadays, it is standard for restaurant websites to incorporate mapping resources into their design.

These resources are primarily designed for those with smartphones—so almost everybody. They allow users to simply click on a mapped location and instantly draw up an address or a step-by-step route guide.

In other words, you want to be the restaurant that gives its diners not too much information but the correct information. If they know how to reach you and how long it will take, they are much more likely to select your restaurant as a dining prospect.

Also read: How To Increase Your Visibility As A Web Designer?

Use Online Resources For Good Restaurant Site Design

Image source: Akhil

As with the mapping facilities mentioned above, there are many different online resources that can help your diners enjoy a streamlined experience.

For example, it is now trendy for restaurant websites to incorporate online booking forms so diners can book a table in seconds without needing to pick up the phone.

If relevant, direct those looking for package deals for parties and other events to a special page or area of the website that handles unique or large-scale bookings.

It does not matter which online resources you choose to use so long as you ensure they are easily accessible and simple to use.

Also read: Follow These Tips To Become A Better Web Designer

Make the Most of Color

Image source: Ash Schweitzer

The most influential tools you can use as a food designer are texture and color. The best culinary designers always utilize many rich and textured heavy themes, designs, and backgrounds throughout their online platforms.

Incorporate different colors and textures into your photographs and website themes if possible.

Add Simple Contact Forms

Image source: Onur Kiyak

A good restaurant design features a simple and easy-to-navigate contact or feedback form.

Fortunately, this is very easy to achieve. All you need to do is make sure there is a space to write personal comments rather than just a box for a phone number and a name.

Always Be Friendly!

The best way to get people to talk about your restaurant is to start sharing details on social media platforms. You need to set up profile pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest so that you can interact with the people who might want to try your food. If you express a genuine interest in your customers, they will reward you with loyal customers.

Never Forget the Essentials Of Good Restaurant Website Design

Image source: Frankie Kao

With so much to consider when designing a restaurant website, it is easy to let some more apparent things slip. The following essentials must be covered within the bounds of your website design, or diners will be discouraged from visiting.

• What dishes do you offer? Menu and photos
• How much do your dishes cost? Menu
• What is your restaurant like? Photos
• Where is your restaurant? Map
• Is it possible to book online? Booking form

The Bottom Line

While it is certainly true that designing a restaurant website can be challenging, it does not have to be a nightmare chore if the right planning and development are in place.

The key to success is to know which aspects of the design you cannot afford to miss out on and then prioritize them accordingly.

These days, there is a tendency to create restaurant websites that are far too complicated. This is because the essential characteristics have not been identified first.

You should always consider usability and user-friendly aspects, with a secondary focus on geo-location tools and online booking forms, as these innovations are changing the industry.

Credit for featured image: Sebastian Faurholdt

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