How to make a café website: pages, menu, ordering and cost

People look up a café for one reason: to decide whether to walk in. They want to know if you are open, what you sell, what it costs and where you are. A café website answers those four questions faster than Instagram does, and it is yours, not an algorithm's. This guide is about building one. If you want a tick-list instead, see our café and restaurant website checklist.

One page is usually enough

Most independent cafés do well with a single scrolling page. Guides aimed at coffee shops make the same point: keep it to the information visitors come for and add pages only when you have something real to put on them, such as catering, events or beans for sale (We.inc, Pagedrop). One page also loads faster on a phone, which is where most visitors are.

The sections, in the order a customer reads them

1. Top of the page: name, one line, hours and a button. "Harbour Café, coffee and bakes" and today's opening hours in plain text. One main button: Order ahead, Book a table, or Call.
2. The menu. Real text, with prices. Mark vegetarian, vegan and common allergens, and say how to ask about anything not listed.
3. Photos. Your counter, your drinks, the room and the front door, so people recognise you from the street. Compress them before uploading.
4. A short story. Two or three sentences: who you are and what you care about. Not a biography.
5. Find us. Full address as text, a map link that opens the visitor's map app, parking or transport tips, and an accessibility note.
6. Contact. Phone that dials in one tap, email, and a WhatsApp button if customers already message you there.
7. Optional: events, catering, merchandise, loyalty. Only if you do them.

How to show your menu

• Write it as text on the page. A photo of a chalkboard or a PDF is hard to read on a phone, cannot be translated by the visitor's browser and gives search engines nothing to read.
• Keep names plain. "Flat white" is clearer than a house name no one has heard of. Put the house name second.
• Show seasonal items with a date, and remove them when they end.
• Offer an Arabic or other second menu if many guests read it. In the UAE and KSA this is often worth more than another page. Have a native speaker check it.

Orders, booking and "order ahead"

You do not need a second ordering system. If you already take orders through a point-of-sale tool, a delivery app or a booking service, the website should connect to it: an order button that opens it, a menu link, or the ordering page embedded in your site (Toast, Square, Deliveroo, Talabat and similar). At Dexryn that connection is part of the service, while the ordering system itself stays yours. A second system would mean two sets of orders to keep in step. In the US, point-of-sale tools such as Square Online include a free tier with a fee on online card payments (Khanwork). Dedicated restaurant platforms such as Owner.com charge $249 or $499 a month (Owner.com). Ask yourself whether you take enough direct orders to justify that.

Connect the page to Google

Your Google Business Profile can hold a menu link and up to ten links each for booking, reservations and food ordering, according to Google's help page on business links. Point them at the right page of your website, and keep your hours, address and phone number identical on both. We cover the steps in Google Business Profile and your website.

For search engines, Google documents Local Business structured data, which can describe your address, opening hours and a menu URL. It helps Google read your page correctly; it does not guarantee any special display.

What a café website costs

Figures were read on 30 October 2026. For the full four-market comparison, see what a restaurant website costs, and for the Gulf in detail, website prices in Dubai and Riyadh.

Where Dexryn fits

A one-page café site is our Launch package: $179 in the US, £149 in the UK and AED or SAR 599 in the UAE and KSA, one-off, with the first year of your domain included. It has up to four sections, click-to-call and WhatsApp, a map and your opening hours. We build a free demo from your café's name first, and you pay only if you want it live. We are new and have no testimonials yet, so judge the demo, not our word for it.