It is ten past six on a Friday. Someone standing on a pavement in Manchester types the name of a restaurant into their phone, taps the first result and waits. The page loads a full-screen video, then a pop-up, then a menu that is a 12 MB PDF scanned at an angle. They close it and walk into the place next door.
A restaurant website does not need to be elaborate. It needs to be quick to open, easy to read on a small screen and honest about hours and availability. The sections below go through the pieces in the order a hungry visitor looks for them.
The menu: text people can read and Google can read
Put the menu on a page of its own, as ordinary text with sections, dish names, short descriptions and prices. Text works on every screen, can be zoomed, searched and translated by the browser, and is easy to update when a dish changes. A photo or PDF of a printed menu fails at least one of those tests on most phones.
Google’s Business Profile has a menu editor where food and drink businesses list sections, items, descriptions and prices, shown under “Menu” on Search and Maps. You can also upload menu photos or a PDF, and add a menu link in the contact details. Google may also transcribe menu data from your website, which you can edit or opt out of. Keeping the website and the profile consistent saves you from two versions of your prices. Changes in the menu editor can take 24 to 48 hours to appear.
For markup, Google documents LocalBusiness structured data and recommends the most specific type available, which for you is Restaurant. Useful optional properties include menu, servesCuisine, openingHoursSpecification, priceRange and telephone. Use the Rich Results Test to check it.
Booking and ordering: one clear route
Decide what the main action is for each visitor. A dining room that takes bookings wants “Book a table” in the header. A takeaway wants “Order now”. If you do both, give each a distinct button and avoid a dozen competing links.
- Reservations: on your Business Profile you can manage bookings and waitlists directly on Google or connect a supported scheduling provider, and local links can include up to 10 booking links.
- Online orders: you can add up to 10 food order links and choose a preferred provider for pickup, delivery or both. Outside the US, Google also lets you add your own “Place an order” links that lead to your website or a provider’s site.
- Control: some third-party links appear automatically from partners, and you can remove a provider from the profile. Turning off “Accept orders on your profile” hides all ordering options and links.
Whatever you pick, make sure the website and the profile point to the same booking or ordering page, and that the page works well on a phone.
Hours, address and the details people check
Opening hours are the most-checked and most-outdated information on restaurant sites. Google’s restaurant checklist suggests regular hours, separate hours for services such as delivery, takeaway or drive-through, and special hours for holidays and events. Put the same information on the site, in text near the top of the home page and again in the footer.
- Full address with a map link, and a line on parking or nearest station if it helps.
- Phone number as a tap-to-call link.
- Notes on dietary options in plain words on the menu itself, only where they are accurate.
- A short note on accessibility, if you can describe it truthfully.
- A holiday notice you remember to remove.
Photos that earn their weight
Google suggests images of your interior, exterior and the dining experience on the profile, in JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB, in focus, well lit and not heavily filtered. The same photos work on the website, but resize them for the page. A 6 MB photo straight from a camera is a common reason for slow loading.
Choose real pictures of your food, room and team over stock images, put the key photo near the top and give each image width and height values so the layout does not jump as it loads. Our guide to website redesign covers how to review an existing site’s images and pages before changing them.
Local visibility: profile first, website second
For most restaurants, the Google Business Profile is what people see first in a map search, and the website is where they go for detail. Google’s local ranking factors are relevance, distance and prominence, so complete the profile, keep hours and menu current, add photos regularly and reply to reviews. Google says reviews and ratings can support local ranking, and it prohibits offering incentives in exchange for them.
On the website side, give the home page a title that names the restaurant, the cuisine and the town, and keep it accurate. If you have several locations, give each its own page with its own address, hours and menu. For the wider checklist of what a small firm’s site should cover, see our notes on a small business website.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help: Get started with a Business Profile for your restaurant
- Google Business Profile Help: About the menu editor
- Google Business Profile Help: Manage your local business links
- Google Business Profile Help: Manage online ordering options
- Google Search Central: LocalBusiness structured data
- Google Business Profile Help: Photo and video guidelines