Top 10 Mistakes that Food Brand Websites Make (And How to Fix Them)
Is a strong website essential in hospitality & the food & beverage space, anyway?
In the increasingly fast-paced hospitality landscape, your website is more than a digital business card - it’s often your customer’s first impression. For a startup food brands, local cafés, or upscale restaurants alike, a weak online presence can mean lost customers before they even walk through the door.
We don’t want that of course, so, in this guide I’ve broken down the top 10 food brand website mistakes and shows you exactly how to fix your food website. This will be even more useful if you're building or managing a food website in Squarespace.
Mistake #1. Outdated Design That Doesn’t Reflect the Brand
A stale or generic design sends the wrong message to modern, design-conscious diners and buyers. Don’t be fooled into thinking you have to spend thousands on a full brand guideline, but a simple and cohesive website design that reflects your food business can go a long way.
How to Fix It:
You can either use a pre-made template that you add your branding too. Our Sons&Sons template nails individuality and simplicity, whilst being completely customisable to suit your brand.
Squarespace also offers basic but clean and mobile-responsive templates which are a great starting point for food and beverage brands.
Work with a hospitality-savvy web designer who understands industry specific trends and useful functionalities. Your designer will create a custom design for you that mirror’s your brand personality - it could either be rustic, luxury, bold or playful. Check out our bold and vibrant website for the UK’s 3rd fastest growing burger brand SoBe Burger.
Mistake #2. Poor Mobile Experience
Most people, specifically 60% of website visitors, browse on mobile. A site that isn’t optimised for this is a major red flag.
How to Fix It:
Use Squarespace’s built-in mobile optimisation tools.
Test on multiple devices and browsers. This can either be on physical devices or through Inspector Tool.
Keep all your text legible, buttons easy to tap and centralised, and images lightweight for quick loading. Cafe Cecilia’s website is excellently optimised for mobile: simple and smooth.
Mistake #3. No Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
Great; you’ve got visitors to your site. But now they don’t know what to do next. Should they order? Make a reservation? Call? A key question we always ask our clients is "What is the primary action you want your visitors to take?"
How to Fix It:
Make your main CTA bold and consistent in both text and style: “Book a Table”, “Order Now”, or “Visit Us”. That way, visitors almost subconsciously know that the CTA is a CTA through familiarity.
Position your CTAs above the fold*, in your footer, and at the end of every page or section; be conscious not to overwhelm your user with multiple CTA’s per section though.
*Above the fold refers to the portion of the webpage that is visible without the user having to scroll when it first lands on the site.
Mistake #4. Missing or Hard-to-Find Menu
This one is key. We’ve seen sites where the button to the menu contains a broken link. If you’re in food service and your menu isn’t accessible in two clicks or fewer, you're likely going to lose customers.
How to Fix It:
Add a clear “Menu” link in your primary navigation or header.
Avoid uploading PDF menus (especially on mobile) as this is less accessible and not considered to be user-friendly. Instead, create a dedicated Squarespace menu page with editable text; this contributes to your overall SEO ranking too.
Make sure your menu is up-to-date.
Mistake #5. Slow Page Load Times
Humans are impatient creatures, and this worsens when we are hungry! A slow website equals abandoned visits, as our potential customers will simply go elsewhere.
How to Fix It:
Compress large images before uploading. For SEO purposes, they should really be under 250kb. You can use websites like TinyPNG to compress your images.
Limit the number of plugins or third-party scripts wherever possible.
Squarespace has quite a few built-in features that you could utilise over external integrations where possible.
Mistake #6. Weak Visuals or Poor Food Photography
Low-quality images harm trust and make your restaurant, bar or café less appealing.
How to Fix It:
Invest in professional food photography - in our own experience, we’re always drawn to spots with better imagery, even if it’s just of the space rather than the food.
Use consistent styling and lighting.
If appropriate, use a visually rich gallery page that reflects your restaurant or product experience. Squarespace have a selection of great gallery section templates.
Mistake #7. No SEO Optimisation
Even if your food website looks great, if people can't find it online, it’s not doing its job.
How to Fix It:
Use Squarespace’s built-in SEO tools. For each page, navigate to Settings > SEO and add an SEO title and description.
Use keywords like “[insert your city here] vegan bakery” or “organic wine delivery” in your page titles, meta descriptions, and copy. This helps Google link your website to these frequently searched titles.
Regularly publish blogs targeting phrases like restaurant website problems or Squarespace food website tips.
Submit your site to Google Search Console and use SEO-friendly image alt text.
Mistake #8. Clunky Navigation and Overcrowded Pages
Confusing layout on your food website = frustrated users = lost potential customers.
How to Fix It:
Try to limit your menu items to no more than 7.
Organise your content into scannable sections; ie: sections your users can scan over rather than providing content that requires in-depth reading.
Use occasional icons, whitespace, and headings to break things up visually.
Mistake #9. No Social Proof or Testimonials
Trust is everything in all industries these days, but especially in the hospitality space - people want to know others love your food or product. And if not, they want to know why. (Hopefully this doesn’t happen, but if it does, we wrote an article on how you can respond to bad reviews as a hospitality business owner.)
How to Fix It:
Add a section for customer reviews, any press mentions, or collaborations. We did this via some cool custom speech bubbles on the SoBe website here.
You could also feature a few Instagram posts on your homepage or in the footer, if your social media page is on-brand.
Mistake #10. Ignoring Analytics and Performance Tracking
Without tracking, you’re guessing what works.
How to Fix It:
Set up Google Analytics and Squarespace Analytics as both will help you see how your website is performing.
Tracking which pages are converting and where users are dropping off means you can tweak as you go along to see if this improve as you want them to.
You could even work with an SEO strategist to outline a plan of your website.
Conclusion: Turn Your Food Website into a Hospitality Power Tool
Avoiding these common food brand website mistakes can dramatically improve your digital presence. Whether you’re a restaurant, bar, CPG brand, or food blogger, a smart, modern website built on a platform like Squarespace can make all the difference.
And if you need a Squarespace expert who also happens to be a passionate food & drink enthusiast, book a call here to transform your food brand’s online presence.
