How to Create a Restaurant Website: A Complete Guide

Did you know 84% of diners look at online menus before deciding where to eat? If you want them to visit you in real life, it’s important to have a well-designed restaurant website that makes it easy to access the information they need quickly – food-related or otherwise. If you want to learn how to create a restaurant website, but don’t have the budget to hire a professional designer or web developer, this guide is for you. 

With step-by-step instructions and real restaurant website design examples, we’ll walk you through the basics of setting up an effective site that brings in both virtual and on-premises traffic. We’ve even included easy-to-use restaurant website design templates so you can get up and running in no time.

Preview: How to Build a Restaurant Website

Here’s what you can expect to learn in this guide to building a restaurant website. 

Chapter 1: Prepare

Before you dive head first into becoming a website whiz, you’ll need to take some time to get your ideas and materials together. We’ll take you through five first steps that will make the next ones much easier:

• Get organized: Learn organizational strategies and get recommendations for tools that will help you set off on the right foot.
• Seek out inspiration: We share tips for how to find inspiration from competitors’ websites while minimizing burnout.
• Gather your materials: You’ll learn the six most critical pieces of information you’ll need to collect to display on your restaurant’s website.
• Collect your design elements: Discover which visuals you’ll need to create an effective web presence.
• Map out your sections: Gain tips for laying out your website in a way that’s intuitive for your customers.

Chapter 2: Create

After gathering the building blocks of your restaurant’s website, you’re ready to start building a restaurant website of your very own. In our guide for how to create a website for a restaurant, you’ll learn how to: 

• Choose a website builder: We’ll share tips for how to decide where to build your website, providing recommendations for platforms, and explain how domains and hosting work.
• Choose a template: You’ll learn how to select a website template for your restaurant and understand why you need a responsive website.
• Input your information: There are lots of places to add text and visual information on a website, including navigation, pages, and your footer. We explain what information should go where for the best user experience.
• Design: Our design cheat sheet will help you approach this intimidating process with confidence.

Chapter 3: Publish

Finally, you’ll get tips for choosing a domain name, what to do if the one you want isn’t available, and how to get your website to show up at the top of search engine results pages.

With the right website management tool and some customizable templates, you can have a site up in as little as six hours. That means with just a small investment of time, you can give your restaurant a virtual home – a place where customers can go to place online orders, as well as see your location, your operating hours, and, of course, your menu.

Download our free Ultimate Guide to Restaurant Website Design to learn how to create a restaurant website and get online today.