Restaurant website: what guests look for first
Guests check your restaurant website on their phone to decide where to eat. What has to be on the first screen, and the mistakes that send them to the place next door.
Updated October 2, 2026
A restaurant website has one job: help a hungry person decide to come and eat with you. Most people check it on a phone, often on the way or just before booking. They want to know a few things fast: what kind of food, what it costs, whether you're open and how to book. Everything else comes second.
What guests look for first
- What kind of place it is. Cuisine, atmosphere and price level, in one line and one photo.
- Opening hours, including today. Closed days and holiday hours are where guests get disappointed.
- The menu, with prices.
- How to book, or whether you take walk-ins.
- Where you are, with an address that opens in a map app.
If all five are within one tap from the first screen on a phone, you're ahead of many restaurant sites.
The menu: readable on a phone
A menu as a PDF or as a photo of the paper menu is hard to read on a phone: guests have to zoom and scroll sideways, and it often loads slowly. A menu as normal text on a web page reads easily, can be found by search engines and is easy to update. Show prices: a menu without prices makes people assume it's expensive.
Photos: your food, your room
Guests want to see what they'll eat and where they'll sit. Real photos of your dishes and your dining room do far more than generic images of food. A few good phone photos in daylight are enough to start. See stock photos or real photos.
Booking: one clear button
Put one booking button on the first screen, with a text that says what happens: "Book a table" rather than "Reservations". If you take bookings by phone, make the number tappable. For more on button text, see button text that gets clicked.
Mistakes that send guests elsewhere
- Out-of-date information. Last season's menu or old opening hours make guests doubt everything else.
- A full-screen video or slider that hides the basics on a phone.
- A cookie banner or newsletter pop-up before guests can see the menu.
- Music that starts playing when the page opens.
- No reviews in sight. Guests often check reviews elsewhere anyway; showing a good score yourself saves them the search. See trust signals.
Test it like a guest
You know your restaurant, so your website always makes sense to you. A stranger seeing it for the first time on a phone screen is the real test. On StayOrBounce, reviewers see your first screen on a phone and a laptop, and say whether they'd stay. See also website feedback for local businesses.