Restaurant website design in Dubai, built around your menu

What diners check before they pick you

When Dubai restaurant owners ask us about website design, the first conversation is usually about the look. Diners care about something else. They're sitting in a taxi on Sheikh Zayed Road or standing outside a mall, and they want three answers fast: what's on the menu, roughly what it costs, and how to get to you.

That's the whole job of the site, most nights.

If the menu takes ten seconds to open, they go back to the search results and tap the next place. So we design restaurant and café sites phone first, with the menu one tap from the top of the page and the directions button right next to it. Desktop gets a decent version too. It's just not where your customers are deciding.

Menus as real pages, not PDF downloads

A lot of restaurants upload the printed menu as a PDF. It's quick for the owner. For the customer it means a heavy download on mobile data and a lot of pinching and zooming. Google also struggles to read the dishes inside it, so someone searching for mandi in Al Barsha or a late-night karak spot won't find the page.

We build the menu as an actual web page. Starters, mains, drinks and desserts each get their own section, prices are shown in AED, and short notes like 'contains nuts' or 'vegetarian' sit next to the dish. You can link straight to it from your Instagram bio.

Separate breakfast or business lunch menus can have their own pages. That gives each one a chance to show up in search on its own.

Bookings, delivery links and the map

Most restaurants here don't need a custom booking system. If you already take reservations through a booking platform, we link to it. If you take bookings on WhatsApp, which plenty of cafés do, we put a WhatsApp button on every page with a pre-filled message like 'Hi, I'd like to book a table for 4 on Friday'. Our guide to adding WhatsApp to your website explains how that works.

Delivery works the same way. You're probably listed on one or more delivery apps already, and the site links to each listing, so people who'd rather order through the app they use every day can do that in one tap.

Then the map. An embedded Google Map, your address written out with a landmark ('ground floor, next to the pharmacy'), parking notes and opening hours. Keep those hours matching your Google listing. When the two disagree, customers believe Google, and Google is often the one that's out of date, especially after Ramadan timings change. The Google Business Profile guide covers how to fix it.

Pages a restaurant site usually needs

Most restaurant and café sites we'd plan come out at five to eight pages. A typical set looks like this.

Photos matter more here than in almost any other kind of business. Stock photos of a burger won't convince anyone to drive over. If you don't have decent pictures of your own dishes yet, get them taken before launch, even on a good phone by a window in daylight.

• Home, with menu and directions buttons in the first screen
• Menu, split into sections, or one page per menu if you run several
• About, the short story of the place and who's cooking
• Gallery of real photos of the food and the room
• Private dining or catering, if you take group bookings
• Contact, with the map, hours, phone and WhatsApp

Which package suits a restaurant or café

A single café with one short menu can usually fit into the Special Web Offer at AED 999. That's 3 custom pages, which means home, menu and contact. Tight, but it works, and it comes with a free domain for a year and a month of hosting.

For most restaurants the Premium package at AED 1,999 is the better fit. Up to 8 pages covers separate menus, a gallery and a catering page, and you get a year of domain and hosting, free SSL and 8 business email accounts for addresses like bookings@ and events@.

Groups with several branches tend to need the Business package at AED 2,999, which allows up to 15 pages. That's enough for a page per branch with its own map and hours. Selling gift cards or packaged sauces online is a different build, covered on our e-commerce page. Every tier is listed in the packages section.

The catch if your menu changes every week

Our sites don't come with a do-it-yourself editor. We make the changes for you. For a restaurant that adjusts prices twice a year, that's fine. For one that rotates a specials board every Thursday, it isn't.

If that's you, there are two sensible options. Put only your core menu on the site and post weekly specials on Instagram. Or take Care & support at AED 399 a month, where we make text, photo and price changes and you send them over on WhatsApp. Don't pay for support you won't use, though. Many cafés go a whole year with three or four edits.

Call or WhatsApp us on +971 52 292 3875 with your menu and a few photos, and we'll tell you which package fits.