What is a restaurant without food? Practically nothing – without food, a restaurant is just something that occupies space. For this reason, restaurateurs make it a point that everybody can see what they are selling, and they make it a point that their menu is visible, easy to read, and tells every information that the customer needs to make an informed decision when it is time to order. The restaurant menu on a website is a key decision making factor and should be a priority for restaurant owners.

Because more consumers are looking for ways to discover food establishments in the least time possible, restaurant menu on websites should do the heavy task of making consumers want to order. The menu is still the driving point that makes any customer make a decision of whether they want to eat an establishment’s food or not – it’s not the ambience, the restaurant’s team, nor its location. When you strip down to the basics, the hungry are looking for what kind of food is available to them and if they can afford it.

What Makes Restaurant Menu on a Website Good

Your restaurant’s home page may have done a good job of providing potential diners a virtual tour of what’s it like to be in your spot – however, you can still lose customers if you can’t tell them right away what’s available. Also keep in mind that you want those website visitors to want to taste the food once they see your food selection.

How do you do that? Since your potential customers are not yet in your restaurant and they can’t experience the smell of good cooking or look at what the people on the next table is eating, you will have to stretch your creativity and learn how you can translate the dining experience to their devices.

However, being creative on designing the restaurant menu on your website is not enough. Your restaurant menu should be efficient – it should inform your customers what your food is all about. A great restaurant menu on a website has the following assets:

• Easy to access and fast-loading

Making the customer wait for the menu to finally load on their device is bad service – it’s like being ignored by the waiter when you request for the menu. Within the same vein, you need to make sure that your food menu is extremely easy to find. Make it a point to enable people to access it right away from the home page.

• Should be easy to read and works with a person’s scanning patterns

People tend to read from left to right, and that eye scanning pattern tells you how you should organize items in your menu. Also keep in mind that your menu should be easy to read on all types of devices – make sure that you also make your menu page responsive so people on mobile don’t have to pinch their screens.

• It should allow customers to get all the information that they need before placing an order.

Customers do not have the benefit of being able to ask your staff when they are on the go. If your restaurant menu on your website makes use of obscure dish names or if you feel that you need to explain what’s in a dish, then put it in your menu. Packing all the information the customer would need in the menu is extremely handy when you have a takeout or online ordering service.

• It should carry the brand of the restaurant

You would want to make the customers remember that they are looking at food that you serve, and for this reason, you should include your branding in the overall design of your restaurant menu on your website. Let your menu’s typography and color pallet become coherent with the rest of the website while keeping it organized and clean.

14 Restaurant Menus That Inspire

Looking for inspiration on how you can create a beautiful and effective restaurant menu on your website? Check out these inspiring restaurant menus taken from actual from some of the best restaurant websites.

1. Éléphant

2. Col’Cacchio Pizzeria

3. KFC

4. Mugs

5. McDonald’s

6. Rosewater

7. Pho Café

8. Chipotle

9. Toca

10. Gramercy Tavern

11. Craft

12. Smokey Bones

13. Delicatessen

14. Fable

15. Cilantro