What people check on a cafe website before walking in

For your trade 6 min read

Three questions get settled on a phone before anyone reaches your door. Answer them plainly and the rest of the website barely matters.

Two people are stood on a corner four minutes from your door, one of them holding a phone. They are not reading about your beans or your journey into hospitality. They are settling three things, quickly, and then walking either towards you or away. Everything else on your website is competing with those three questions for the same screen.

The three questions, and everything else is decoration

The three are: are you open right now, is there something here I can eat, and what is the room like.

That is the whole decision. Your story, the roastery you buy from, the gallery of latte art: all of that can sit further down, read by people who already like you. The three questions are read by everybody, including the ones who are hungry now.

So the top of the page belongs to them. If a stranger has to scroll to find out whether you are open, the page has been arranged for you rather than for them.

Are you open right now, and is the kitchen

A cafe has two sets of hours and most websites only publish one. There are the hours the door is open and the hours the kitchen is actually cooking, and the gap between them ruins somebody's lunch.

Write both. Open from seven, kitchen until half past two, coffee and cake until four. Last orders at 3:30. That is four facts and it prevents almost every disappointed arrival you get.

Add the exceptions where somebody will see them. The Monday you close, the public holiday, the two weeks in January. A line at the very top of the page is fine and it can come down afterwards. Being wrongly shown as open costs you a bad first visit; being wrongly shown as closed costs you a customer who never knew they nearly came in.

Your Google listing carries the same hours and is what most people see on a phone. If the two disagree, the listing wins, so change both at once.

Is there something here I can eat

The second check is a filter, and it runs faster than people admit. A vegan, somebody avoiding gluten, a parent working out whether a five year old will eat anything, a person who wants a proper breakfast rather than a pastry. Each of them is scanning for one word, and if the word is not there they walk on.

So publish the whole current menu, with prices. Then mark the things that answer the filters, plainly: which dishes are vegetarian, vegan or without gluten, and what you can adapt on request. If your kitchen cannot promise anything about cross-contamination, say that too. Honesty about a small kitchen is not a weakness, and the alternative is somebody finding out at the table.

If the menu changes weekly, publish the fixed part and say the specials board changes. A menu that is mostly right and dated this month beats an empty page or a promise that you serve "seasonal, locally sourced dishes", which tells a hungry person nothing.

This is a common fault on a cafe website, and an easy one to repair. The menu is a PDF, or a photograph of the chalkboard, or an image exported from a design app.

All three fail on a phone. A PDF opens in a separate viewer at the size of a stamp. A photograph of a chalkboard goes soft when enlarged and cannot be read out by a screen reader. And none of them can be found by somebody searching for a dish plus your town, because there is no text in them to find.

Type it out as text on the page. It is an hour of work once, and then a few minutes whenever a price changes. If typing it out again every time a price changes is the thing that will not happen, that is exactly the kind of small ongoing change Website Care at $149 a month exists to absorb.

What is the room actually like

The third check is the one owners underestimate, and it is mostly answered with photographs of the room rather than of the food.

People are trying to picture themselves in there. Is it somewhere to sit for an hour or somewhere to grab and go. Is there a table for four. Is it loud. Are there high chairs, or a bench outside for the dog.

Six photographs, taken on an ordinary busy morning, answer all of that better than any paragraph. The room from the door. A table with real food on it. The counter. The outside seating. Take them in daylight and do not tidy too much, because a slightly lived-in room reads as a place that people go to.

Add the short practical lines underneath: how many seats, whether dogs are welcome, whether there is space for a pushchair, whether there is a plug near a table and whether you mind laptops.

Say plainly what your cafe is not for

If you would rather not have laptops on the weekend, say so on the page. If you have eight seats and it is mostly takeout, say that. If you have no wifi on purpose, say that with a straight face.

Every one of those loses you somebody who would have arrived and been disappointed, and quite possibly written about it. The person who reads it and comes anyway is the person you wanted.

Make it something you can change from behind the counter

Everything above goes stale. Hours change in the summer, prices change when the supplier's do, the kitchen closes early on a quiet Tuesday.

So the test of a cafe website is not how it looks on the day it is built. It is whether you, standing behind a counter with wet hands and four minutes, can change a price or put a closure notice at the top of the page. If you cannot, the site will drift out of date within a season, and a wrong menu does more damage than no menu.

A short checklist

Door hours and kitchen hours written separately, plus last orders
The same hours on the website and the Google listing
Closure and holiday notice as a line at the top of the page
The full current menu as text, with prices, dated this month
Vegetarian, vegan and gluten marked, with an honest line about the kitchen
Six photographs of the room on a normal morning, not just of the coffee
Seats, dogs, pushchairs, plugs and laptops, each said in a few words
Parking, the entrance, steps and where the toilet is
Somebody who can change a price the same day it changes

Questions people ask

Should a cafe menu be on the website as a PDF

No. Type it out as text on the page. A PDF is awkward on a phone and cannot be found by anyone searching for a dish you serve.

How often should I update my cafe's menu online

Whenever a price or a dish changes, and at minimum once a season. Publish the fixed part of the menu and say separately that the specials board changes daily.

Do I need to put prices on the menu online

Yes. A menu without prices makes people assume the worst, and they will find the prices somewhere else or go somewhere else.

What photographs does a cafe website need most

Photographs of the room, taken in daylight on a normal morning. Food photographs are pleasant, but the room is what people are trying to picture themselves in.

Should I say that I do not allow laptops

Yes, if it is true. Saying it loses you somebody who would have been asked to pack up an hour later, which is a worse outcome for both of you.

Is a Google listing enough on its own for a cafe

It covers hours, photographs and the map. It will not hold a full menu as readable text, and the menu is the second of the three checks, so it is not quite enough.