What a café website actually needs

Someone is standing at a bus stop in Burnaby deciding between you and the place two doors down. What they find in the next thirty seconds decides where they sit. Written for independent cafés and bakeries in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.

The short answer: 77 percent of diners check a restaurant’s website before visiting, and 93 percent read the menu online. A café website needs the menu as a readable page rather than a PDF, honest hours, the address with a parking or transit note, and real photos of the food and the room. It should cost you once, not monthly.

Your menu is the decision

The single biggest factor in whether someone visits after finding a restaurant online is what is on the menu. 93 percent of people check menus online. And this is where most café websites quietly fail: the menu is a PDF, shot from the print file, that takes three pinches to zoom on a phone. Around 30 percent of diners say hard to read menus have put them off visiting somewhere.

The fix is boring and it works: the menu goes on the page as text. It loads instantly, it is readable on any phone, Google can read every item on it, and when your croissant price changes it is a one line edit, not a reprint.

The four page café website

  1. The menu, as a page. With prices. If the menu changes seasonally, say so; nobody minds a menu marked “spring”.
  2. Hours that are actually true. Including the long weekend exceptions. A café that says open and is not loses that customer twice.
  3. Where you are, and how to arrive. Map, parking reality, nearest stop. In Vancouver and Burnaby the transit note earns its space.
  4. Photos of the food and the room. What the flat white looks like, where people sit, whether laptops feel welcome. This is the page doing what Instagram does, for the people who are not on yours.

What discourages people

The same research has a warning in it: about a third of diners have been discouraged by a website that was hard to navigate, and about 30 percent by one that simply looked old. A dated website is not neutral. It quietly tells people the café might be dated too, which is exactly wrong for owners who have poured everything into the room itself.

Ordering and delivery

If you are on DoorDash, Uber Eats or Skip, the website links out and they do the ordering; that is their monthly fee to charge and their kitchen screen to run. Building ordering into your own website means payment and order software with fees of its own, and for most independent cafés it is not worth it. The website’s job is the decision. The apps can have the checkout.

What it costs

With us: $499 one time for the website. $699 and we come and shoot the food and the room properly, usually before you open so nobody is in the way. $999 adds video. No monthly fees, you own all of it, and most sites are live within one week. Websites for cafés anywhere in Canada; shoots across Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, Coquitlam, Langley and Abbotsford. Full numbers in the price guide.

Common questions from café owners

What should a café website include?

The menu as a readable page, honest hours, the address with a parking or transit note, and real photos. Four pages does it.

Should the menu be a PDF?

No. PDFs are what make menus hard to read on phones, and hard to read menus demonstrably cost visits. Menu as text, on the page.

Do people really check before visiting?

77 percent check the website, 93 percent check the menu. The menu is the deciding factor.

Do I need online ordering on my own site?

Usually not. Link to your delivery apps and let them run checkout. Building your own means monthly payment software.

What does it cost?

$499 one time, $699 with a photoshoot, $999 with video. No monthly fees, live in about a week.

Sources

Keep reading: what food and room photos cost · what a website costs in Vancouver

Menu still a PDF?

Book a 15 minute call. Website and food photos together from $699, live in about a week.

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