Website builder
Website builder for cafes
Coffee, food, hours and where you are — the four things anyone looks up about a cafe, on one page.
Most people do not read a cafe's website. They check three facts on a phone, standing outside or ten minutes away: are you open, where are you, what do you have.
So that is what gets built first. Describe the cafe and Sitemo puts the menu, the hours day by day, the address and a map on the home page — then leaves you a visual editor for everything else.
What they came for
What people want from a cafe website
Four questions a visitor arrives with. Everything below is what the generated page does about them.
Are you open?
The single most-checked fact about a cafe, and on most cafe websites it is two clicks away. Hours day by day, with the map, sit on the home page.
What's the coffee, what's the food?
The menu is real items grouped into courses with prices, so somebody can decide on the pavement instead of guessing from one photograph of a flat white.
Can I sit here for two hours?
Wifi, plug sockets, dogs, outside tables — the small facts that decide a visit get their own section instead of being buried in a paragraph about passion.
Where exactly is it?
Address, map and phone number in one section, because "find us" on a phone means opening a map app and nothing else.
Common problems
What tends to go wrong on cafe websites
Three patterns that come up often. None of them is a design problem, and each is a sentence or two of work to fix.
The menu is a PDF
A PDF opens in a new tab and has to be zoomed to read on a phone. The same menu as text can be read at any size, indexed by a search engine, and edited in a few seconds.
"Find us" leads to a contact page
The address, the hours and the map are among the most looked-up facts about a cafe. On the home page they cost no clicks; on a contact page they cost one.
The copy is about the journey
A paragraph about the founding story above the practical details pushes the hours and the address below the first screen, where fewer visitors reach them.
What gets built
What a cafe website needs
The sections Sitemo plans for cafes, in the order it puts them on the page.
The opening screen
The first screen: a photograph of the real place, the name, and the one thing you want a visitor to do next.
Menu
Dishes grouped into courses, each with its price, a line of description and a photo — not a PDF someone has to pinch to read.
Services
What you sell, with prices. A list when there are many, cards with photographs when there are a few.
How the work goes
How the work actually goes, step by step — the part that turns a quote into a booking.
The numbers
The two or three numbers worth stating plainly: years open, jobs done, hours in the smoker.
The facts people decide on
The handful of facts a visitor decides on — walk-ins welcome, open Sundays, free parking, fully insured.
Gallery
The work, the room, the finished job. Laid out as a set, so one good photograph isn't carrying the whole page.
Your story
The short version of why the place exists, in your voice rather than a company profile.
Testimonials
Room for the reviews you already have. Your words from your customers — nothing invented to fill the space.
FAQ
The questions you answer on the phone all day, answered once on the page.
Hours & location
Address, opening hours day by day, phone number and a map. For most local businesses this is the most-visited part of the site.
Contact form
An enquiry that reaches you as an email and is kept as a record you can open later.
The ask
The line that asks for the call, the booking or the visit.
Not a fixed list. Sitemo decides which of these your site actually needs from what you describe — a cafe with four things to sell gets a different page from one with forty.
Underneath the page
And the parts that aren't pages
Most cafes need somewhere to keep this. It comes with the site rather than being a plugin you go and find.
Each one is a table you edit in your dashboard — change a price, add a service, take something off the list — and the published site follows. Enquiries arrive as an email and are kept as records you can search later, so nothing is lost because an inbox was busy.
The words
The same line, written twice
A general version of a line and a specific one, both about the same length. The difference is how much a visitor can do with it.
General
“A passion for great coffee in the heart of the community.”
Specific
“Espresso from a local roaster, brunch until three, and eight seats outside for the dog.”
Three checkable facts answer more questions than one sentiment does.
General
“Open seven days.”
Specific
“Open seven days, 7am–4pm. Kitchen stops at 2.30 on Sundays.”
The exception is the part that gets remembered wrongly, so it is the part worth writing down.
The prices and areas above are made-up examples; what is being shown is the shape of the sentence. Yours go in the box below, and the site is written from them.
Try it
Describe your cafe
This is the same box that's on the home page, filled in with the example above. Change it to yours.
Free to try · No credit card · Your site stays exportable
Questions
Websites for cafes
- Can the menu be grouped into sections?
- Yes — the menu section is built around courses rather than being one flat list, so coffee, brunch and pastries each get their own group with prices and descriptions, and a photo per item where you have one.
- How do I change the opening hours at Christmas?
- Open the editor, retype the hours on the page, and publish. Publishing recompiles the site and takes effect in seconds; there is no waiting on anyone.
- Will it work on a phone?
- Yes, and that is the case being designed for — most people checking whether a cafe is open are on a phone. Every section is laid out for a small screen first.
- Can I put a photo on every menu item?
- You can, where you have one. The menu carries an optional photo per item and items without one still lay out properly, so a half-photographed menu doesn't leave grey boxes down the page.
- Does the whole site rebuild when I change something?
- Publishing recompiles the site to static files behind a CDN. It takes seconds, and nobody is served a half-built page while it happens.
- Do I need someone to keep it running?
- No. There is no server, no plugins and no updates to install — the published site is files on a CDN, and the only thing that ever changes it is you editing and publishing again.
Where this isn't the right tool
If you need online ordering with payment, a loyalty scheme or table management, keep the system you use for that and link to it. Sitemo builds the page people check before they walk over — it is not a point-of-sale.