Restaurants & pubs
Websites for restaurants and pubs in the Thames Valley
Diners decide on a phone, often in the car park or on the towpath. The menu, the hours and the booking button have a few seconds to be right.
How diners search
A decision made with one thumb
Between Henley and Windsor, a lot of eating out is decided at short notice. Someone on the towpath at Cookham wonders where lunch is. A family driving back from Marlow wants a pub that does a Sunday roast and doesn't mind dogs. A couple on their way to Bray want to check the menu in the car. They search on a phone, with a name or a need, and open the first result that looks right.
Three things get checked, in this order. Is it open? What is on the menu, and roughly what does it cost? Can I book? If any of the three takes more than a moment, there is another restaurant one tab away. Most of that answer is on the Google listing before the person reaches your website at all, which is why the listing and the site have to say the same thing.
Visitors who know a name search by name; locals search by need. A place with a famous kitchen sends name searches towards everyone near it, and the restaurant down the road has to be the one that turns up when someone is hungry and undecided.
What the site has to do
Five jobs, done before Saturday service
The menu as a page
Real text, grouped sensibly, with prices, dietary notes and a line on how to get allergen information. A PDF is slow on a phone, awkward to read and invisible to search. A page loads quickly, ranks for the dishes you are known for, and can be changed the afternoon the menu changes.
Booking one tap away
A booking button that stays in view on every page, linked to the reservations provider you already use. Replacing a system that works rarely earns its keep, so we make it easy to reach instead.
The practical answers
Opening hours and when the kitchen stops, parking, step-free access, dogs and children, and for riverside places, whether anyone can tie up nearby. People ask these on the way, not at the table.
A separate door for big bookings
Private dining, christenings and Christmas parties are different business from a table for two. They get an enquiry form that asks for the date and numbers first. Party enquiries tend to arrive long before December, so the page needs to be live and ranking by early autumn.
A listing that is true this week
Hours, bank holiday hours, photographs and replies to reviews on the Google Business Profile. For most restaurants this is the first page a customer sees, so it matters more than the homepage.
Hattie Clarke goes through the full list, with the reasoning, in What a riverside restaurant's website needs before Saturday service, and the Business Profile in Google Business Profile for pubs, restaurants and venues.
What it costs
Published prices, before VAT
This is the work our flagship track, venue and hospitality websites, was built for. Every project is quoted properly after a conversation, but these are the ranges most places land in.
Towpath
£2,400–£3,800
Most single restaurants and pubs. A sharp site for one location with the menu, booking, private dining and the Business Profile set up properly.
Reach
£4,500–£8,500
A group with several sites, a hotel attached or a large events business. More pages, a content plan and town pages across the valley.
The Form
from £95 a month
Hosting, care and small changes. Menu edits are exactly the kind of job it covers.
SEO retainers
from £650 a month
Worth it where several nearby places chase the same searches. A pub whose regulars find it anyway may not need one, and we will say so.
In practice
What the work looks like
A riverside restaurant near Bray
The menu loads before the table's sat down
A PDF menu that took ages to open on a phone, a booking widget buried three taps deep, and a Google listing still showing winter opening hours in June.
An anonymised composite, with details changed. See the work page.
Along the river
Where this work happens
- BrayA village whose dining reputation reaches well beyond Berkshire. Restaurants nearby are searched by people who already know the neighbourhood's name and still need somewhere to eat, stay or get a cab.
- CookhamGastropubs, moorings and walkers on the towpath. A handful of places share a great deal of weekend search, so the Saturday-morning state of the Google listing decides a lot.
- MarlowA small town with a restaurant scene out of proportion to its size. Visitors search by name and locals search by need, and a good site has to answer both.
Questions
What restaurants and pubs ask us
- Can we update the menu ourselves?
- Menu changes are the sort of small edit The Form covers, so you can send the new menu and we put it live. If you would rather edit it yourself, say so at the start and we will plan the build around that.
- Should the menu still be a PDF?
- Keep a PDF for printing if you like, but the menu people read should be a web page. It loads faster on a phone, search can read it, and screen readers can too. The PDF can link from the page.
- Do we have to change our booking system?
- No. If your reservations provider works, we keep it and make it easy to reach from every page. We will only suggest changing it if it is costing you bookings or letting customers down.
- Will you look after our Google listing?
- Towpath includes setting the Business Profile up properly. Keeping it right through the year, including seasonal hours and review replies, is part of an SEO retainer or something we can agree as a small monthly routine.
- What does a restaurant or pub website cost?
- Most single sites sit in Towpath, £2,400–£3,800, and a group or hotel is nearer Reach at £4,500–£8,500. Hosting and care from The Form start at from £95 a month. All before VAT, and quoted properly after a conversation.
Not sure where to start?
Send us your menu link and your Google listing and we will tell you what we would fix first. Start a project.
Start a project
Tell us what the website needs to do
A short note is plenty. Tell us what you sell, where, and what isn't working, and you'll get a straight answer within a working day, even when the answer is that you don't need us.