How to Create an Eye-catching Food Website
Increase site visits with these design tips
The consumer journey towards finding food is rapidly shifting online. Over 5 million searches for food are made monthly on Google alone, with more than 50,000 searches for food delivery*. Capturing even a small 0.1% of these impressions would boost exposure and result in eventual sales for your restaurant.
An online presence is thus no longer a luxury, but a critical aspect of any successful F&B business. That said, not all websites are created equal. To help your business standout online, we’ve put together a list of tips for creating a website that will show off the best of your brand.
Features to Include in Your Food Website Design
1. Striking and distinct branding
Customers love a good story behind delicious food. Clear information about your restaurant, cuisine, and dishes create lasting impressions that linger in their top-of-mind.
2. Easily accessible menu and location information
The best food website designs are intuitive, uncluttered, visually-appealing and mobile-first (80% of searches today happen on mobile!). Customers must be able to see what they are getting. Large photos of the storefront, interior and appetising food engage customers with your business and increase your call-to-action. Having your menu on your website also gives the customer a great idea of what to look forward to in your restaurant experience.
3. Options for directing enquiries, deliveries, takeaways and reservations
The more ways for the customer to interact and transact, the better. Start with providing basic contact information like phone numbers and email addresses. Then, list your restaurant menu. You should make online booking and order forms available to minimise drop-offs on your website. Finally, to maximise conversions, offer online instant reservations, delivery & takeaway options.
In summary: 5 main must-haves to include on your food website design
- Information about your restaurant
- Your location and restaurant space (in the form of images and videos)
- Your menu (as well-taken photos, and/or prices)
- Booking & reservations option
- Delivery & Takeaway ordering options
The Brainstorm Process Behind Building a Food Website
There are myriad options available for creating a food website design in Hong Kong. Navigating the search for an affordable yet efficient solution for your F&B business can be a daunting experience, particularly when you want to allocate resources towards other pressing elements of running your restaurant.
To get started, ask yourselves these questions: what are your goals for your online restaurant presence, beyond reaching out to your audience? Are you a fast-food or mass market brand, where the priority would be a frictionless conversion journey to fast check-outs? Or is your business a premium dine-in service, focused on building an immersive brand experience?
Your intended outcomes would shape your approach to building your channel. For the majority of restaurants, a simple website with About Us, Location and Menu sections would suffice as online touchpoints. Drag-and-drop website builder services like Wix offer an uncomplicated solution that circumvents costly developer fees for an easy-to-maintain page that only requires a designer to set up. The only trade-off is a monthly subscription fee that works out to be less than $10.
For restaurants looking to drive additional channels of revenue, building a booking & reservations system, or implementing a delivery & takeaway commerce system are viable ways to cash in and grow exponentially online. That being said, the territory often involves exorbitant food delivery website development and maintenance costs.
We’ve covered these previously in detail. Read more about Everything You Need for an Effective Reservations Platform here, or browse the Best Websites to Start a Food Delivery Business in Hong Kong.
In Summary
In today’s market, an online presence in the food and beverage sector is not just a convenience, but a vital component of a comprehensive business plan. While at first glance it may seem like an overwhelming task to build and maintain, there exists many options available that are suitable for F&B brands of any size and type.
*Source: Google Trends
