Catering & Restaurant Website Design

Your company logo will be the driving factor of the design and colors of your food service website design. Other items a website design company will request is your domain name or URL website address. Also if you have or need website hosting – and logins for both of these. You will need some photos or at least stock photos and text content for the basics around your company, menus and services offered. Also any third party links, social media or other information you want included. Lastly you should provide any marketing efforts that will link to the website or sales tools such as online booking / ordering systems for your restaurant. We can help with your website logo design if needed.

If you are just starting out and have no real budget many of the template based WYSIWYG editor systems on the market today are a great, affordable way to get started. If you are looking to make a statement and have your website work for your business then a custom designed restaurant website is the way to go. A custom designed WordPress website will give you full control over the logo / branding of the website, colors, fonts, also the targeting of the website, marketing and message. Plus you’ll have more flexibility of adding special features down the road that might be vital to growing your small catering or restaurant business.

Some of the same things you would need to know before hiring a chef or wait staff person. Have they done a food service industry website before and review their samples. Do they have referrals from these clients that you could contact and learn more about their experience with the web design company? Also you want to be sure of the web designer’s fee structure, how long it will take them and how much input you will have on the final design and function of your new website. What will the final product consist of? Do you own all design elements created, do you have full login access to any of the functions of the website. Lastly, does the website come with all the search engine information and basic marketing tools like analytics included or are those things extra.

We recommend your website at least have 6-8 pages to start at a minimum. One page websites can look slick and have some advantages but content and page names with proper topic headers will greatly increase your website’s targeting ability. Start with Home, Contact, About, Service, etc. for the basics then build on that to around 10-15 pages over time. You can add in more descriptive content pages and topics, like separate menu pages, company history, and our local farms and food partners.

Beyond your basic contact, location information and a Google maps listing / embedded code everyone will be looking for your menu. You can usually get away with a PDF downloadable menu. But having it listed out in text on your website is best for search engines and for your mobile users. Even separate pages, like drinks, desserts, and happy hour menus could be very useful to your visitor. Next most important element will be great food photos. Enticing photos of your best dishes will really draw them in. Other items could be social media links, online ordering, gift cards, restaurant history, staff and more.