Published on 25 August 2026
This article was created with the support of artificial intelligence and reviewed editorially by us before publication.
This page was translated from German with AI support. The German version is the authoritative one.
Anyone opening a restaurant's website almost always has one of three questions in mind: are they open? What is there to eat? How do I get there? Everything else is secondary. Even so, many sites open with a photo gallery, a welcome text about the family tradition, and a menu that only appears after the third click.
1. Opening hours — visible without scrolling
The single most common question. It belongs at the top, not in the footer. More importantly: it has to be right. A wrong entry on a public holiday annoys more guests than an ugly page.
2. The menu as a readable page
A menu uploaded as an image file or PDF is barely readable on a phone, cannot be searched and practically never shows up on Google. A menu as an ordinary web page, on the other hand, gets found — including by guests searching for a particular dish.
3. Booking that also works at night
Many people decide at half past ten in the evening about next Saturday. At that hour nobody answers the phone. Online booking, or a digital assistant that takes enquiries automatically, catches exactly these guests. Without it, enquiries are lost quietly — you simply never notice.
4. An address that opens navigation in one tap
Not just the address as text, but a link that opens navigation directly. The same goes for the phone number: on a phone, one tap has to be enough to call.
5. Real photos of your own place
Everyone recognises bought stock imagery, and it creates exactly the wrong expectation. Ten honest shots of your dishes and your room work harder than a hundred perfect foreign pictures — because the guest wants to know what it looks like at your place.
6. Loading time under three seconds
Almost all visitors arrive on a phone, often over mobile data. Large, uncompressed images are the most common cause of long loading times. Win two seconds here and you lose considerably fewer visitors before anything was even visible.
7. A note about what is special
Terrace, parking, step-free access, dogs welcome, large groups possible — these are the points that actually tip a decision. They are rarely on the site, although they are asked about almost every time.
What you can leave out
- A splash page you have to click away first.
- Music that starts by itself.
- An image carousel that pushes the actual information further down.
- Long texts about the company history on the home page — those belong on a page of their own.
The test is simple: open your site on a phone and time how long it takes to find opening hours, menu and phone number. If it takes longer than ten seconds, the problem is not the design but the order.
Would you like to put this into practice in your business?
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