5 Must-Have Restaurant Web Design Features To Book More Guests

Late last year, we worked with a local Rochester, MN Restaurant to design their first ever website before their grand opening.

Our partner Modern Vision Graphics and us wanted to create a website to show off how just creatively unique their restaurant was and at the same time want to make it easy for their guests to make a booking. We didn’t want visitors to focus too much on the design, we wanted to let the food do the talking.

Today, we are going to be going through what makes the clients website work so well and why a simple restaurant web design style has lead to an easy to view, navigate, engage, and convert website visitors into booked tables at their restaurant.

Dynamic Menu

Depending on the variety of menus your restaurant may have, it is very likely a good majority of your website content is going to be focused around your menu.

One of the difficult things we find is restaurant owners do not have the time to spend hours updating their menu on a consistent basis. That is why having a menu plugin that is can easily be updated in a matter of seconds is important.

We don’t need to stress how importance of an up-to-date menu on your website but it is important to make the process as simple as possible for your restaurant staff.

In-Line Booking Engine

The problem isn’t getting visitors to your site – It is about getting them to stick around. If content or the information they are shown on a particular page isn’t up to par, you are in danger of losing them as a visitor.

Your last chance, ditch effort is to grab their attention one last time. That is why we recommend an exit intent pop-up.

These pop-ups are able to detect when users are moving their cursor and moving towards that dreaded “x” on your tab and serve your users one last promotional offer.

This could be a discount, a special offer if they provide their email, or just a notification leading them to a more conversion friendly page. There are a thousand ways you can do it!

But out of the hundreds of different options online we discovered that Poptin was our favorite tool. Their editor was simple and we had no problem placing our pop-up on any page we liked. With premade templates and layouts, there is no reason you could have this setup by the end of your work day!

Hours Indicator

While there is a variety of resources online to discover the hours of operation of your restaurant, having these live, available, and easy to see, will allow any website visitor to know within a few seconds if you are open.

While it seems so simple, this feature helps create an incredibly user friendly website experience and helps our guests decide if we are their right choice or if they would need to find another local restaurant.

Instagram Social Feed

Harness the power of social content with a live Instagram feed! WIth an Instagram feed live on your website you don’t even need to update your website photography. It’s simple, every time you post on Instagram your post will be pulled directly into your feed. Share food shots, staff pics, hotel guests, and more!

Local Event Calendar

Their restaurant is a very unique restaurant with something not every other restaurant in the world has – A live event center! While many restaurants do not have this type of space, many have private dining, local events, small, live shows, and more. An events calendar makes it easy for your website visitors to know what is going on and what they can participate in.

Final Thoughts

While these 3 features are almost universally true across all restaurant websites, not every website is that simple. In our opinion, no two sites are truly the same and should be treated as such. There are dozens of different combinations and styles of restaurants and we believe each website design should be unique and custom fit to that particular style which means different properties and features.