Restaurant website checklist: 9 fixes for more orders

Most people choose where to eat on their phone. If your website makes them zoom into a PDF, hunt for your opening hours or call to ask whether you deliver, plenty of them will order from the next restaurant in the results.

The good news: almost every problem I see on restaurant websites is one of the same nine. Each takes about 30 seconds to check on your own phone, and most are cheap to fix.

I build restaurant websites with online ordering and bookings, including Akbar, an Indian restaurant in Yokohama that takes delivery and takeout orders on its own site, and Taj, a group with branches in Nikko, Kawaguchiko and Okinawa. This is what I check first when an owner asks me to review their site.

How do you check a restaurant website in five minutes?

Use your phone with Wi-Fi off, open a private tab and search for your restaurant like a new customer would. Give each point below a yes or a no, then tick them off in the table at the end.

The 9-point restaurant website checklist

1. Put the menu on the page, not in a PDF

Why it matters: a PDF menu needs zooming on a phone and is often out of date, because changing it means editing the whole file. A photo of a printed menu is worse: to search engines and screen readers, it is just a picture.

Check in 30 seconds: open your menu on your phone. If it downloads a file or you have to zoom to read a price, it fails. If you can't select a dish name with your finger, it is an image.

What good looks like: a normal web page in sections, readable without zooming, that staff can change themselves. On Akbar, staff edit dishes, prices, photos, add-ons and sold-out items from their dashboard.

2. Show a price and a photo for every dish

Why it matters: a missing price makes people guess, and guessing feels like a risk. Photos answer "what is that?" for dishes people don't know by name.

Check in 30 seconds: scroll through ten dishes. Any without a price, and any dark or blurry photo, goes on the fix list.

What good looks like: every dish has a name, a short description, a price and a well-lit photo, sorted into tabs or sections. On Taj, all three restaurants' menus have photos and prices for everything, with search and categories. The menu comes from the restaurant's own menu data, so the site and the kitchen never disagree.

3. Get people to ordering, delivery or takeout in one or two taps

Why it matters: a hungry person wants to order now. Every extra screen before the "add" button is a chance to give up and open a delivery app.

Check in 30 seconds: from your homepage, count the taps until you can choose delivery or takeout and add a dish. More than two, or a link to a third-party site with a different name, needs work.

What good looks like: an "Order online" button at the top of every page. On Akbar, customers choose delivery or takeout in one tap, browse the full menu and pick a time at checkout. Orders on your own site also skip the delivery app's commission, which I work through in how restaurant online ordering pays for itself.

4. Make your opening hours and address match Google exactly

Why it matters: customers often see your Google Business Profile before your website. If the two disagree, someone turns up to a closed door. Google's help pages warn that inaccurate info can stop your profile showing up for relevant searches.

Check in 30 seconds: open your restaurant on Google Maps and your website side by side. Compare the address, phone number, each day's hours and holiday hours.

What good looks like: hours, address and phone as text in the footer and on a location page, identical to Google. On Taj, each branch has its own page with address, phone, directions and a booking button. On Akbar, lunch sets appear only while lunch is served, and the site checks Japanese national holidays so the menu follows the real schedule.

5. Make the phone number tap-to-call

Why it matters: some people will always want to call, about a large group or an allergy. A number in plain text has to be copied. A number that is a link dials with one tap.

Check in 30 seconds: tap the number on your website. If nothing happens, it isn't a link.

What good looks like: a tel: link in the header or footer of every page, big enough for a thumb. WCAG 2.2, the web accessibility standard, sets a minimum target size of 24 by 24 CSS pixels. Just don't make the phone the only way to order: before its own ordering site, Akbar needed someone by the phone to take orders.

6. Make the site load fast on mobile data

Why it matters: people look up restaurants on the move, and a slow menu is one they leave. Huge photos are the usual cause.

Check in 30 seconds: paste your menu page into Google's PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile results.

What good looks like: Google's Core Web Vitals set the targets: main content visible within 2.5 seconds (Largest Contentful Paint), a response to taps within 200 milliseconds (Interaction to Next Paint) and nothing jumping around as it loads (Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less). Dish photos are resized for phones and saved as WebP, not uploaded straight from the camera.

7. Show allergen and dietary information next to each dish

Why it matters: for someone with an allergy, this decides whether they order at all. Rules differ by country. In the UK, the Food Standards Agency says businesses must tell customers if they use any of the 14 mandated allergens, and that for online orders, written allergen information should be available before ordering and on delivery.

Check in 30 seconds: pick a dish with nuts or milk. Can you find that out in one click? Can you list every vegan dish?

What good looks like: labels like halal, vegan and vegetarian on each dish, a filter for them, and allergen information on the menu or no more than "one click away", in the FSA's words. On Taj, everything is halal, one tap narrows the menu to vegetarian or vegan, and every dish shows its spice level from 1 to 5.

8. Let people book or order without downloading an app

Why it matters: asking a first-time customer to install an app for one dinner is a big ask, and many won't.

Check in 30 seconds: in a private tab, try to book a table and place an order. Note every download, account or other site you are pushed to.

What good looks like: both work in the browser, with a short sign-up at most. On Akbar, new customers confirm their phone number with an SMS code once, then log in with phone and password. Taj takes bookings for up to 50 people online, with a separate form for tour groups. Your own ordering app can help keep regulars, but it should be an extra, not the only door.

9. Add Restaurant structured data, and test it

Why it matters: structured data (usually JSON-LD) tells search engines, in a fixed format, what your page already says: name, address, hours, cuisine, menu. Google's local business documentation asks for the most specific business type and gives Restaurant as its example.

Check in 30 seconds: paste your homepage into Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org. No Restaurant or LocalBusiness item means you don't have one.

What good looks like: Google requires name and address and recommends telephone, url, openingHoursSpecification, servesCuisine, priceRange, geo and menu (a link to your menu page). Schema.org also has a fuller Menu type, linked with hasMenu, which supersedes menu. Google doesn't document a menu rich result, so treat that as completeness, not a ranking trick. The data must match your page and your Google profile.

Which fixes should you do first?

With only an afternoon, do three: menu as text (1), hours that match Google (4) and tap-to-call (5). They are quick, and they stop people giving up before they reach the menu.

Ordering and booking (3 and 8) take longer, but they change where your orders come from. Structured data (9) comes last: it only describes what is already there. For a wider check, my free website teardown scorecard scores design, navigation, SEO basics and mobile performance in a few minutes.

The restaurant website checklist to print

Print this page or copy the table. The unticked rows are your to-do list.

Questions people ask

Is a PDF menu bad for SEO?

Google can read text in a PDF, but the menu then sits in a separate file instead of on your page, a scanned menu is only an image, and both are awkward on a phone. A menu written as a web page works better for people and search engines.

Do I need my own online ordering if I'm on Uber Eats?

You don't have to leave the apps. Many restaurants keep them for new customers and give regulars a reason to order direct: Urban Tadka gives 15% off for ordering on its own site.

How much does a restaurant website cost?

It depends on the features you need: a menu-and-hours site is far smaller than one with ordering and payments. My free website cost estimator gives a rough range, and every project gets a fixed quote in writing before work starts.

If you want your menu, ordering and bookings on your own site, here is how I approach restaurant website design.