The #1 Restaurant Website Mistake You Must Avoid

Back in the day, when we were making a quote for a new website, we used to ask potential clients: “Do you want your website to work on mobile phones as well?”

By 2014, we stopped asking, because the answer was always a big, fat YES.

If I asked you that today, I know you’d say yes, too.

Yet, believe it or not, many restaurant owners are still happy to have one of the most important parts of their website not work well on mobile.

I’m talking about your food menu.

It’s so common for a restaurant to upload a PDF menu to their website. Most restaurant owners probably don’t think much of it, but a PDF menu is a major problem on a mobile phone.

After your home page, the food menu is probably the single most important page on your restaurant’s website, looking at data from our clients’ websites:

• Menu pages account for 30% of your website’s views
• A huge 72% of people visiting your website are doing it from their mobile phone.

When a potential customer checks your menu, they’re trying to figure out if you have what they want. If they can read your menu easily, they’re much more likely to choose your restaurant. If they can’t, they’ll just click away and find one of your competitors.

Think about it: have you ever tried to read a PDF menu on your phone? It’s frustrating.

• A phone screen simply isn’t big enough to show a printed menu properly.
• Your customer is forced to zoom in and scroll in every direction just to see what you offer.

Basically, using a PDF menu on your website has been a bad practice for over a decade. You’re frustrating your clients and turning away business.

The solution is really straightforward: make sure your food menus are mobile-friendly.

There are a few ways to achieve this, we’ve built a widget for that, or use a plugin, or get your web designer to make a mobile friendly version for your website.

The important thing is to bin those outdated PDF menus and start giving your potential customers an easy, pleasant experience from the moment they visit your website. Your clients will thank you for it!