Restaurant websites in the UK fall into two camps: built on Squarespace by the owner in 2019 and never touched, or built by a generic agency that doesn't understand hospitality. Neither gets you bookings.
What gets bookings
- Menu visible, parseable, and current -- Not a PDF download. Not "menu coming soon". Actual readable menu pages on your site, with allergen information, dietary tags (V, VG, GF), and prices. Customers won't book if they can't pre-decide what they'll eat.
- Booking system embedded -- ResDiary, OpenTable, SevenRooms, Bookatable — pick one and integrate it. "Email us to book" loses you 60-80% of mobile bookers. The button should be one tap from the homepage.
- Real photos of real food -- Not stock photos. Not images from your supplier. Actual photos of dishes you currently serve, taken in your restaurant. This matters more than any design flourish.
- Opening hours that update -- Friday lunch closed, Sunday roasts only — your hours need to reflect reality, ideally pulled from Google Business so they sync.
- Mobile-first everything -- 80%+ of restaurant traffic in the UK is mobile. Mobile is not "an afterthought" — it's the primary experience.
What loses bookings
- A homepage video that auto-plays with sound
- Stock photos of generic Italian/French/Asian food
- A "Reservations" CTA that goes to an enquiry form ("we'll get back to you within 24 hours" — by which time the customer's eating somewhere else)
- A menu that hasn't been updated since the last MD
- Hidden pricing ("market price" on every dish is a 2010s pattern)
- Massive hero images that take 8 seconds to load on mobile
What about delivery and takeaway?
If you do delivery, you need three things on your site:
- Direct online ordering (through your own website, with Stripe or your point-of-sale's integration)
- Links to your Deliveroo / Uber Eats / Just Eat listings where applicable
- Clear delivery area or postcode checker
Pure-takeaway businesses lose money every month they rely solely on the aggregator platforms. The aggregators take 15-30%. Your own ordering page takes Stripe fees only — about 1.5-2%. Even a modest split toward direct ordering pays for the website in a quarter.
Local SEO
Restaurants live and die by local search. Three musts:
- Google Business Profile fully completed with photos, menu link, accurate hours, accurate location
- On-page SEO targeting "[cuisine] [town]" and "[neighbourhood] restaurant" phrases naturally
- Schema markup for restaurant, menu and opening hours (a good agency does this without you having to ask)
What you can skip
- "About our chef" pages longer than three paragraphs
- "Sustainability" mission statements that don't connect to anything specific
- Newsletter signups before the customer has even seen the menu
- Six-image carousels that nobody clicks past slide one
Common mistakes
- Treating the website as a brochure when it should be a booking funnel
- Letting the menu go stale because nobody owns updating it
- Spending the website budget on visuals and skimping on booking integration
Cost and timeline
A restaurant website that does the above with ResDiary/OpenTable integration is typically £999-£2,500 from us, with 5-10 working day turnaround. If you need a direct ordering system with kitchen receipt integration, that's a bespoke build at £4,500+ depending on complexity.
A note from the Bloomorbit studio
We build restaurant and takeaway websites for UK hospitality businesses from our Cardiff studio. Start with our pricing page for headline numbers, or get a free audit of your current site — we'll tell you exactly where bookings are leaking.