The Restaurant Website Checklist

Score your restaurant website out of 40, find where it loses the people already visiting, and fix those leaks before you pay for more traffic.

  • Free checklist
  • 9-minute read
  • PDF, 10 pages
  • Restaurants, lounges and bars

Your restaurant might not need more traffic. Your website might just be losing the people already coming to it. Say 1,000 people visit your website this month. If 2% book or order, that is 20 customers. Improve that to 6% and it is 60. Same traffic, same restaurant, three times the conversions.

This is the checklist we use at Dinesurf to evaluate restaurant websites. Take your phone, switch off the Wi-Fi, and go through your own site the way a hungry guest would. Score it, then fix the lowest scores first.

Martins Udotai, co-founder and CEO of Dinesurf

What's inside

  1. More traffic into a bad funnel just means more people to loseRead it below
  2. Step 1: Take the five-minute guest testRead it below
  3. Step 2: Score your website out of 40 In the PDF
  4. Step 3: Fix the biggest leaks first In the PDF
  5. Step 4: Get the basics of Google right In the PDF
  6. Words you can copy onto your website In the PDF
  7. Step 5: Know your numbers every month In the PDF

More traffic into a bad funnel just means more people to lose

This is where restaurants often get the strategy backwards. They spend money on Instagram ads, influencers and content to send more people to the website. Then the customer lands on a slow page, cannot find the menu, gets sent somewhere else to book, and eventually gives up.

So before you spend more getting people to your website, make sure it does the job. A restaurant website has one job: to turn a visitor into a booking, an order or a ticket. That means the menu, booking, ordering and events on the site itself, a clear call to action on every page, and a fast checkout. Get that right, and every naira you spend on traffic works harder.

Step 1: Take the five-minute guest test

Before you score anything, use your website the way your guests do: on your phone, on mobile data rather than Wi-Fi, in a private browser tab. Time each task.

  1. Search for yourself

    Type your restaurant’s name and area into Google. Is your own website the first result, or a directory, a delivery app or an old listing?

  2. Count the seconds

    Open your site and count until you can see what you serve and a button to book or order. Past three seconds, many visitors on mobile data have already gone.

  3. Book a table for four on Saturday

    Count the taps, and note every time you are sent off the site, to WhatsApp, a form or another website. Every detour loses guests.

  4. Order one dish for delivery

    Count the taps from the home page to payment, and note anything that makes you stop, such as a forced sign-up or a missing price.

  5. Find the address, hours and phone number

    They should be one tap away on every page. If you had to hunt for them, so do your guests.

  6. Watch someone else try

    Ask a friend who has never been to book a table while you watch and say nothing. Where they hesitate is where your guests leave.

The rest of the checklist is in the PDF

5 more parts, ready to print or keep on your phone:

  • Step 2: Score your website out of 40
  • Step 3: Fix the biggest leaks first
  • Step 4: Get the basics of Google right
  • Words you can copy onto your website
  • Step 5: Know your numbers every month

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Dinesurf

Fix your website with Dinesurf

  • Dinesurf builds and hosts your restaurant’s own website on your own domain, with your menu, reservations, online ordering, events and tickets, built to be found on Google. See how
  • Guests book on your site itself through the booking widget, and can pay a deposit as they book, which comes off their final bill. See how
  • Customers order directly on your website, with no commission on those orders. See how
  • Every event gets its own page with ticket sales. See how
  • Every booking, order and ticket lands in Guestbook, so the visitors your site wins become guests you can bring back. See how
  • The booking widget fires your own Meta Pixel when the form opens, a booking starts, a booking is confirmed and a deposit is paid, so you can judge your ads on bookings rather than clicks.
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