Menu, hours, reservations —
in that order.
Standalone restaurants, multi-outlet brands, cloud kitchens. Visitors want three pieces of information; if they’re hunting for them on your site, you’ve already lost.
Restaurant site visitors arrive with a decision already mostly made. They’ve heard about the restaurant from a friend, read about it on Zomato, or seen the place driving by. They’re on the site for a specific check: the menu (to confirm price band), the hours (because they’re trying to plan tomorrow night), or to reserve (because they decided already). Most restaurant sites we audit make at least one of these things hard to find. Heading-only navigation that hides the menu link under “Experience” or “Discover” is the classic example. The visitor doesn’t want to discover; they want the menu.
78%
The mobile share of restaurant site traffic in India, across the multi-outlet clients we’ve audited. The site needs to be designed mobile-first not because mobile is “important” but because it’s effectively the only audience — the desktop visit is the tail.
What restaurant sites need above the fold on mobile
- Today’s hours, computed from the current date and time. “Mon–Sat: 12–3, 7–11” is wrong; “Open now until 11 PM” is right.
- A “Reserve” or “Order” button. One large, one secondary. Reserving via WhatsApp click works for non-chain restaurants; OpenTable or SuperMeal for the chains.
- The location — embedded Google Maps, not a static image of a map. People click through to get directions.
- A phone number, click-to-call. Many visitors still want to phone — particularly older demographics.
Should we publish prices on our menu page or not?
Always, almost without exception. The visitor without price information bounces faster than the visitor with a price they decide is too high. The only sector where hiding prices on the menu page is defensible is ultra-premium fine-dining where the price is implicit in the brand positioning and a number on the page would undercut the experience — but even then, the wine list usually has prices. For everyone else: list the prices, include the small disclaimers about taxes and service charge, move on.
Sneha — who handles design for most of our hospitality clients — refuses to ship a restaurant site without at least one photograph that includes a person eating. “Empty restaurants are death,” she says. She’s right twelve times out of fourteen; the two exceptions were properties that genuinely benefited from an architectural-photograph treatment.
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