Most restaurant websites are absolute garbage and owners have no idea. After years reviewing sites for restaurants across the Pacific Northwest, I can spot the problems in five seconds—and so can your customers, except they just leave instead of telling you why.
The menu situation is where everyone fails. I'm looking at your site right now, and your menu is a PDF from 2022 that doesn't work on mobile. Or it's a blurry photo of a printed menu that requires zooming to read. Or worse, it just says "Coming Soon" and links to your Instagram. Customers who are hungry right now aren't going to do detective work. They'll order from the place where they can see the menu and prices immediately.
Here's what actually happens when someone visits your site at 7 PM trying to decide where to eat—they land on your homepage, they can't immediately find the menu, they click around twice, then they hit back and try the next restaurant. You lost that order in fifteen seconds. Multiply that by a hundred times a week, and you're bleeding thousands in revenue because your website makes people work too hard.
The phone number thing drives me insane. Your number should be visible and clickable from every single page, positioned where thumbs naturally land on a phone screen. Instead, it's in 8-point font in the footer, or hidden behind a "Contact" page, or worse—it's just an email form. When someone's hungry and wants to call in an order, they're not filling out a contact form. They're calling your competitor whose number is right there at the top.
Loading speed kills restaurants more than bad food reviews. If your site takes more than two seconds to load, 40% of visitors abandon it before they even see your menu. I tested a steakhouse site last month that took eleven seconds to load because they had forty uncompressed images on the homepage. Eleven seconds. Nobody waits that long. They assume you're closed or terrible and move on.
Online ordering integration is where restaurants really blow it. You either don't have it, or you're using a third-party system that charges you 30% commission and owns your customer data. Customers order through DoorDash from your website, you pay the fee, and DoorDash keeps the relationship. Next time they're hungry, DoorDash suggests your competitor because that's who pays them more.
Your hours need to be accurate, visible, and updated immediately when things change. I watched a breakfast place lose $12,000 during a kitchen renovation because their website still said they were open. Customers drove over, found them closed, and left one-star reviews on Google. The website hadn't been updated in three years. Nobody was checking it. That cost them ranking position for months.
Managing a restaurant website that actually converts visitors to customers requires constant updates, mobile optimization, fast hosting, clear navigation, and integration with ordering systems. The directories at RestaurantDestinations.com solve this by providing optimized, mobile-first listings that load instantly, display accurate information, and connect customers directly to your ordering system without the platform fees killing your margins.