Website Design Process for Restaurants

So, you want to design a website for your restaurant, cafe, or bar. Kudos to you! You will be surprised at how many businesses don't see the importance of a business website. If you want to find out why having a good website is still very important today, you can check out this article.

Now, where should you start to design your website?

In this article, I will go through the step-by-step process and what to look out for.

Design Your Brand Identity

What is brand identity? It is basically a way to identify your business. It includes the impression your business leaves on your customers, your business icon and logo, the ambience and decor of your restaurant or bar, the fonts and colours you use on all your business touch points, and so on. Your brand identity will give your brand a certain style and personality and make sure that your brand is consistent when communicating with your customers.

Tip: Familiarity grows your brand equity

I help you with designing your brand identity in this article.

So, before you design anything, you have to understand the importance of your brand identity and get that done first. Otherwise, your logo, restaurant interior, your website, etc. will evoke different feelings in your customers and they will not have a good impression of your business and may not want to (re)visit.

Determine How Your Website Will Fit Into Your Business Strategy

Before you can design a website, you need to know what it will be used for and for who.

For example, you may want to use your website to showcase the atmosphere in your pub. Or is it to showcase the accolades and exclusively-sourced ingredients at your fine-dining restaurant? Or to share how your establishment works with farmers and producers in developing countries to create jobs for them? And is the main purpose of your website for people to make reservations or to buy something?

Next, you need to figure out where the main bulk of website visitors will come from. Do you plan to host periodic media tasting events and invite food bloggers, so they will write about you and your site visitors will be their blog readers? Or do you plan to invest your resources on social media, and your site visitors will mainly be coming from your social accounts? Or are you going to invest in SEO to get your website ranked #1 on Google search? In this case, your site visitors will mainly be Google searchers.

If you know where your site visitors will come from, you are then able to predict what they want, what they expect, and what appeals most to them and design your website strategically.

Tip: As with every business expense, your website should be an investment which works for your business 24/7. It is not an expense that you can scrimp on.

Design The Content And Layout Of Your Website

Now that you know what your website will be used for and for who, you can start thinking about what content should go where. At this stage, the design does not consider the UI yet, but only UX.

Here's an example:

Imagine you are running a pub and you want your website to showcase your prized possession - the exclusive in-house brewed beer that is so light, smooth, and (of course) delicious. And your main website traffic will come from your social media accounts, where you focus on the art of brewing the best beer in the world.

At this point, you are able to deduce the age range of your site visitors, their genders, and other demographics by analysing your social accounts. For the purpose of this example, let's say they are between 24 and 45 years old, 78% are males, and they often post pictures of themselves at a pub with friends and family.

Based on the findings, you can conclude that your website has to appeal to men that have an interest in beer and love hanging out and having fun in a group setting at pubs. So, content-wise, you want your headers, text content, and imagery to be beer-connoisseur-esque and use neutral or dark coloured imagery. You can even consider adding a high-definition video of your beer brewing process. You might also want to include group photos of your customers on your website.

For the layout, you can decide between showcasing your special in-house brewed beer or the amazing atmosphere, right on the above-the-fold section of the home page. Because these are your site visitors' interests and would appeal to them. Then decide what the rest of the storyline should be as your visitors scroll down. Lastly, explore ways to communicate in a short-and sweet manner by having as little words as possible. This will finalise your exact layout and content.

Tip: To design a website that works for your business, you need to go into the mind of your site visitors. This is the superpower of a UX designer.

Finalise The Content

This is probably the most straightforward part of the process. Have all your text content ready. Run them through text checking software like Grammarly to make sure there are no typos and that the sentence structure is error-free.

Make sure that all your images and videos are high-definition as desktop screens can go up to 2140 pixels wide while mobile devices can be as small as 240 pixels wide.

Last but not least, go through the content again to make sure that they will work according to your business strategy, and also check that they are consistent with your brand identity.

Tip: Compress your images and videos to minimise the load on your website. Otherwise, it will take awhile to load and your visitors might exit even before seeing your site.

Finalise The Remaining UI And Interactions

Now that the layout and content is all done, all that's left is to design the interface. This includes typography, colours, styling of buttons and links, etc.

In my opinion, the trickiest part will be typography; font sizes in particular. For example, font size 16 pixels will look very differently on a large screen than on a mobile device. Plus, there are many units for font sizes - pixels, percentage-based, viewport-based, to name a few. They each work differently and serve different purposes. That's why testing on multiple devices after development is so crucial.

Tip: Your choice of typography and colours need to be consistent with your brand identity, so don't spend to much time on that. Instead, spend more time to find out what sizes your text content should be.

Interactions are not necessary but they certainly do add a little something extra. They help to cut through the flatness and monotony of the website and can even help to show the brand personality if done well.

Tip: Interactions can be pretty advanced especially if you are not a website designer or developer. Keep it to a minimum and keep the website simple.

Conclusion

This is my website design process. It's not easy and I have simplified it for the purpose of this article. If you follow my process, you will end up with a website 10 times better than any website a non-designer can ever do.

I have been practicing my craft for years, so I have certain ways of thinking and skills that I am unable to dictate through this article. So, if you'd like to save time and have a well-designed website, I would suggest you invest in a website designer and reap the benefits in the long run.