If you want to build an effective restaurant website that will generate good profits for you, you have to ensure you have the appropriate restaurant menu theme. More than 80% of smartphone users look for restaurants online. Let them find you and allow them to order food delivery or takeout online.
Effective restaurant menu themes mean bigger profits for you. If you make it easy for customers to place orders, they will order more frequently. This way, you will sell more food deliveries and takeouts. Use a restaurant menu template with an online ordering system to improve the quality of customer service in your restaurant.
In this complete guide, we’ll show you the biggest mistakes and the best practices for building a restaurant website with an online food ordering system and a prominent menu templates. You’ll see examples of designs that allow restaurants to earn more on food delivery and you’ll find that implementing a restaurant menu system with the digital ordering is easy.
There are many restaurant menu builders and WordPress menu plugins available on the market. They have various functions and optimization possibilities. However, if you are looking for the most suitable restaurant theme, use the restaurant menu plugin available with the UpMenu system.
How do the restaurant menu themes work with an online ordering?
Your customers want to order food on the internet and an online ordering system will allow them to do so. Use it to increase your profits.
Thanks to an ordering system built into a template, your customers will be able to order from your restaurant through website, both on desktop and mobile devices.
An order placed by a customer via the online menu will go straight to your restaurant, you will easily receive it and quickly provide the customer with the time for delivery or takeout collection. Unlike platforms like WooCommerce, the UpMenu system processes orders in a matter of seconds.
The customer receives the information about their order in real-time – estimated delivery time, and, in the case of canceled orders, the reason for the cancellation.
The most suitable restaurant menu themes are fully adjustable to your establishment’s website and you can easily edit their appearance. Without any special technical knowledge, you will be able to change colors and layouts or add photos. Such changes and adjustments will improve conversions in online orders and allow you to earn more.
You can also easily add new dishes to the menu card, change or delete existing menu items, and edit prices. All changes will be immediately visible to your customers.
At the same time, an online food ordering system will give you plenty of new marketing tools. From now on, your restaurant will automatically build a newsletter database, towards which you will be able to direct email and text-message campaigns.
You will also be able to easily run a loyalty program, working both online and in your brick-and-mortar restaurant. Loyal customers mean more orders.
Marketing tools for restaurant website themes
UpMenu restaurant menu templates also contain an advanced promotion engine, which will allow you to create special offers and coupons for your clients, just like in the real restaurant. They will be calculated automatically when customers place their orders.
You will also be able to automate some tasks using marketing automation. If you choose to do this, your online food ordering system on the restaurant website theme will automatically send text messages or emails to your customers, e.g. when they haven’t placed an order for some time. This is a great way to encourage customer activity and increase the number of food deliveries and takeouts.
How to implement a menu system on the restaurant website.
If you want a restaurant website made with the best restaurant theme, featured with the online ordering option, all you have to do is launch the UpMenu system – try it first on Free Trial.
Choose one of the restaurant menu themes that best fits your brand, provide contact details for your restaurant, easily configure your delivery areas by literally drawing them on the map, and input the menu.
Then, easily implement the restaurant menu template on your restaurant website – all you need to do is copy the special code from the UpMenu system and paste it into the source code of your restaurant website, before the end of the body element.
If you do not have a restaurant website yet, you can use UpMenu website-creation tool to build it. Thanks to this, your customers will be able to find you online and you will be able to sell them your food online.
The entire implementation process for WordPress themes on restaurant websites is simple and does not require complex technical knowledge or IT support. So, you can quickly start selling online without waiting for a project to be completed and incurring additional costs.
Marketing tips for the restaurant menu themes
The best WordPress menu solutions should earn their keep. If you allow your customers to order food delivery or takeout, you will increase the profits your restaurant makes.
A boring restaurant menu theme, non-intuitive with confusing navigation or the need to perform many steps to place an order, will lower conversion rates for online orders. Use the UpMenu restaurant menu themes to build an effective menu on your restaurant website with an online food ordering system.
1. An online food ordering system integrated with the best restaurant menu themes
The UpMenu system features a great restaurant menu builder. It allows you to easily input all dishes, extras, and promotions from the restaurant into the menu published on the website. You can use multiple templates to create a menu that will attract customers on your restaurant website.
At the same time, you will open a completely new sales channel. From now on, you will earn from online food delivery and takeout orders. Your customers expect you to let them order online, do not let them leave you for competition.
2. Intuitive food delivery ordering
The restaurant website design must be transparent. Only intuitive navigation on your restaurant website will let your customers easily order food delivery and takeout’s, allowing you to earn more. If your online food ordering system is hard to work out and inconvenient to use, the conversion of online orders will below expectations.
3. Photos in the restaurant menu system
The UpMenu system allows you to use the online menu with the option of displaying food photos. That’s how your customers will be able to see individual menu items and … get hungry! Placing photos in the restaurant menu template increases online order conversions.
Adding photos to your online food ordering system is very simple and will only take you a moment. Appropriate menu design will show off your photos and ensure more profits for you from food delivery.
4. Recommended products and extras
Your restaurant website should allow the use of marketing features such as recommending additional products and extras/sides. The UpMenu online food ordering system in a restaurant website template will let you recommend products to your customers using special pop-ups.
In this way, you can promote the sale of more expensive products, or ones that your customers choose less often. Recommend the products you have on offer as a deal of the day using the UpMenu restaurant menu theme functionalities.
At the same time, you can engage in up-selling by recommending extras for each of the menu items in your UpMenu restaurant website theme. For example, fries for burgers, pizza sauces, rice for chicken, etc. This way, you will increase the value of individual orders.
The worst mistakes in restaurant menu themes
In order for a restaurant menu system on a website to work properly, it must be convenient for both customers and restaurant employees. Otherwise, it will not increase profits, rather, it will only generate problems and costs.
Use the best restaurant menu themes to avoid mistakes on your restaurant website. UpMenu system will help you build a great, functional menu that will allow your customers to place online orders easily. Otherwise, you may, even unknowingly, end up in a never-ending saga of optimization of your restaurant website to eliminate the errors described below.
1. Unnatural colors in the restaurant menu theme
Have you ever seen blue food? The human brain reacts badly to images of blue food because it immediately seems unnatural. It must contain artificial colors. That’s why your WordPress restaurant menu theme should only use natural colors associated with food.
Too garish colors, often badly combined, are tiring for human eyes and distract the customer’s attention. Your goal in building the best WordPress menu themes is to encourage the customer to order food delivery or takeout.
The UpMenu restaurant menu templates come to your aid thanks to their design, developed to increase online order conversions. On top of that, you can change and adapt the menu theme to your restaurant’s brand.
If you want to make sure that the combination of colors you want to use in your WordPress menu theme is harmonious, use the Adobe Color CC tool, or Coolors.co free color scheme generator tool. It will let you easily choose the shades that best suit your brand and the chosen template.
2. Restaurant menu themes not adapted to mobile devices
Over 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and 83% of customers search for restaurants using smartphones. If your restaurant menu template does not display properly on a small screen, the customer will find another restaurant.
All the UpMenu restaurant menu themes, including those created for WordPress, are fully responsive and allow customers to easily get acquainted with the offer of the restaurant and place an order using an online food ordering system.
3. Publishing the menu as PDF
Just forget about it. Do not add a PDF file to your restaurant website instead of the interactive restaurant menu on the website. Your customers want to quickly see what you are offering. No one will want to download the file, and even less so if they use a mobile device.
4. Lack of visual presentation in the menu theme
Good quality photos of food in your restaurant menu will help you sell more online. Use the UpMenu ordering system integrated with the most attractive restaurant menu themes, which will allow you to add photos of your fantastic dishes.
It’s best to use the services of a professional photographer. They will know exactly how to photograph your food so that it looks good in the restaurant menu card. Customers are more likely to order food delivery or takeout when they see what your food really looks like.
Check how to create good food photos yourself. Read this article:
Professional photos of your dishes without a photographer – is it possible?
5. The restaurant menu theme does not match the brand image
Your logo should not just be hanging over the door. Every place where the customer comes into contact with your restaurant should contribute to building your brand image. Your restaurant website and your WordPress restaurant menu template must also be consistent and build your brand online.
This helps the customers to develop an attachment to your restaurant. When they look at your restaurant menu template, they will immediately know where they are ordering their food delivery or takeout from. Build your brand online identification with the use of WordPress templates adapted for the food retail industry.
Advantages of the restaurant menu themes with an online food ordering system
Simply put, you will earn more. Additional features in the ordering system will help you to increase profits in your restaurant. Use the UpMenu system to utilize the benefits of responsive and intuitive website design and thorough marketing tools.
1. Your customers want to order food online
Ordering food online simply is convenient. Customers expect this convenience from you. Use the best restaurant menu template for you, on the website, and let them order easily and quickly online.
2. You will sell more food deliveries and takeout’s
34% of customers state that they would order food delivery more often if the restaurant had technologies that facilitate this, for example, a restaurant menu system. Choose one of the UpMenu best restaurant menu themes and start selling food online.
3. You can forget about errors made while taking orders
It has surely happened that an employee made a mistake when writing down a customer’s order? Maybe the noise in the restaurant disrupted the call? Maybe the customer had a bad phone signal? An online food ordering system in the restaurant menu theme solves this problem. You will see all the information about an order on the screen of a tablet or iPad.
Thanks to the restaurant menu plugin, your customers will also stop being annoyed by always-busy phones in your restaurant. They certainly would have ordered food delivery elsewhere if they had not been able to get through to you on the line. Now, they can easily and conveniently place an order online at any time.
4. Lesser costs than 3rd party ordering portal
You will only pay a small and stable monthly subscription for the online food ordering system. It’s a great online food ordering portal alternative because instead of the ever-growing commission, you pay very little and remain independent.
5. You will build your own newsletter database
When your customers place orders using the WordPress menu plugin, the UpMenu online food ordering system will automatically ask them for consent to send marketing communications. Thanks to this, you will build newsletter address base.
The additional restaurant marketing functions available in the UpMenu restaurant menu themes will let you send text messages and email campaigns to your customers as well as automatically communicate with your customers in specific situations. This will allow you to increase the number of food deliveries and takeouts.
6. Your customers will be able to pay online
The UpMenu online food ordering system is integrated with the most popular online payment methods – PayPal, Stripe and Adyen . These platforms lets your customers conveniently pay online for their orders. This payment method is gaining popularity – more than half of transactions on the Internet are fast online transfers. Thanks to this, you will no longer lose customers who do not have cash with them.
7. You will automatically collect reviews from your customers
The best restaurant menu themes automatically collect customer reviews for you. Instead of posting comments via social media, each customer will simply be asked for feedback after they place their order. In this way, you can quickly react and deal with any problems.
8. Statistics help you make better decisions
Making business decisions without hard sales results can be difficult. Instead of guessing, use the WordPress menu theme connected with UpMenu system which will automatically generate all necessary statistics for your online sales. These will help you make data-driven decisions and positively affect your business.
FAQ
UpRestaurant Menu
Autumn Cafe Menu
Express Pizza Italy Menu
Cookie Store Menu
La Bella Ristorante Menu
Sushi Bar Menu
Befeed Menu
Comprehensive website template for restaurant industry should include:
The intuitive interface will help your customers with placing orders conveniently.
Customizable menus are necessary for the presentation of your menu items. Implement food pictures and principles of menu engineering to boost sales with your online menu.
Upselling tools lets you advertise additional products to customers that are placing orders through your site.
Immediate order forwarding is essential to improve response time to placed orders.
Summary
The best restaurant menu themes support sales in your restaurant. Thanks to an online food ordering system, they help you to sell more food deliveries and takeouts.
The implementation of the restaurant menu template is very simple. For instance, all you need to do is sign up for a free UpMenu system trial then input your restaurant and your menu items. The integration with your restaurant website will only take you a few minutes.
Use best practices such as adding good food photos and creating an intuitive layout within the best WordPress restaurant themes to increase the number of food deliveries and takeout’s from your restaurant.
A restaurant menu system allows your customers to order food online from your website. The order will go straight to your restaurant and you will easily pick it up. The customer will receive a confirmation and delivery time.
Thanks to the many additional functions included with the presented templates with an online food ordering system, you will be able to boost your profits from food delivery even faster. Take advantage of these new opportunities for restaurant marketing and earn more.
Start a free trial and let your customers order online thanks to the best restaurant menu themes.
Learn more
Read about the best online food ordering system functions and features in 9 advantages of online food ordering for restaurants.
Or learn even more from our Ultimate guide to online ordering systems.
If you want to get more information about our selection of restaurant menu themes – check article: The 23 best restaurant website templates.