Cafe website design
Café websites built for the people Googling you from the pavement.
Hours, menu, location, a number they can tap and a table they can book - answered in the four seconds someone nearby decides where to get coffee.
A café website has one job.
And it is not telling your story.
Most café websites are designed for the wrong audience. They open with a sweeping hero shot, an "our story" paragraph, and a navigation bar with seven items. That works for a magazine. It does not work for the actual visitor, who is almost always on a phone, often standing within a kilometre of you, deciding in roughly four seconds whether to walk in.
A café site has to answer six things fast: are you open right now, where are you, what is on the menu, how do I call you, can I book a table, and does the room look like somewhere I want to spend an hour. Everything else is decoration.
Answer those six in under two seconds on a flaky 4G connection and the visitor walks through your door. Miss them and they tap back to Google Maps and pick the next pin.
Six things every café build ships with.
No premium add-ons. These are baked in as standard.
Mobile-first hero
Today's opening hours, address with one-tap directions, and a tap-to-call number, all above the fold on a phone.
Live menu editor
One password-protected page where your manager updates dishes, drinks and prices from a phone. Mark something out of stock with a tap.
Table booking widget
Lightweight booking straight to your inbox. No commission, no per-cover fee. For walk-in cafés, swap it for a quiet-or-busy indicator.
Live Google Reviews
Your latest reviews pulled in automatically, with the schema markup that lets Google show your star rating in search results.
Instagram embed
Your latest posts on the homepage, lazy-loaded so they never slow the page down. One source of truth, surfaced where new visitors land.
Local SEO from day one
Opening hours marked up so Google can show them in the snippet, and your Google Business Profile set up properly.
Case study · Kasto
Three days to retire a £33-a-month Wix site.
Chef Giuseppe wanted the site to feel like the restaurant: warm, cinematic and easy to keep fresh. He got a booking system his front-of-house team likes, a menu his kitchen updates itself, and reservations up 400%.
“Our old Wix site was expensive and hard to manage. James delivered something beautiful - professional animations, a booking system, and a simple menu editor.”
The right tier for cafés.
All tiers →£800
One-off build fee. No subscription, no lock-in, and you own the code.
- 5 to 15 pages, custom built
- Integrated CMS, update content without touching code
- RSVP, event and enquiry forms
- Dynamic menus and service lists
- Advanced SEO, plus 2 hrs Google Business Profile setup
- £0/mo hosting, and you own the code
Donate monthly to one of my giving partners and the Supporter Credit comes off any tier.
Café website design questions.
Anything not covered here, email me and I'll answer the same day.
Six things visible within two seconds of landing: today's opening hours, the address with a maps link, the current menu, a tap-to-call number, a booking widget if it's relevant, and one strong photo of the room. Everything else - the story, gallery, blog, press - is secondary.
From a freelance hand-coded developer, £480 to £800, and the Supporter Credit takes 20% off that. A small agency is £2,000 to £6,000. A builder like Wix or Squarespace is £15 to £30 a month, which is £900 to £1,800 over five years and you still do not own the site.
Yes. Instagram is good for discovery - people scrolling for somewhere new. It loses badly to Google for intent, where someone already knows you exist and wants hours, address, menu and a booking right now. That second group is the one that walks in.
Yes. Every café build includes a menu editor. Change prices, add specials or mark something out of stock from a phone, and it is live in about 30 seconds.
No. Most café builds deploy on a free tier, which is £0 a month. There are no platform fees and nothing owed to me after launch.
Three to five days for most café builds, from the point your content is with me.
Tell me about your café.
No tech-speak, just straight answers. I'll tell you what the site should do, what it costs, and how long it takes.
Reply within one working day · Free first call · Fixed quote · No obligation