Your ceviche is perfect. Your jerk chicken has a line out the door every Friday night. Your empanadas have been featured in the Sun-Sentinel twice. But here's the thing -- none of that matters if your website is sending potential customers straight to the restaurant down the street. In Fort Lauderdale's competitive dining scene, your website is often the first impression a hungry customer gets. And if that impression involves a broken layout, a blurry photo, or a PDF menu that won't load on an iPhone, you've already lost them.
Here are seven dead giveaways that your restaurant's website needs an upgrade.
1. Your Menu Is a PDF
This is the single most common mistake we see with restaurant websites in Fort Lauderdale. You spent hours formatting your menu in Word or Canva, exported it as a PDF, and uploaded it to your site. Problem solved, right? Not even close.
Nobody wants to download a file just to see if you have a fish taco. PDFs are clunky on mobile, impossible for Google to index properly, and a nightmare to update when you change your prices or swap out a seasonal dish. A modern restaurant website should have your menu built directly into the page as native HTML -- searchable, scrollable, and easy to read on any device. When a customer is standing on Las Olas deciding where to eat, your menu needs to load in under two seconds or they're moving on.
2. Your Site Isn't Mobile-Friendly
Over 70% of restaurant searches happen on phones. Think about how people actually find places to eat -- they're walking around, they're in an Uber, they're scrolling through Google Maps results on the couch. If your site requires pinching and zooming just to read your hours, you're losing covers every single day.
A mobile-friendly restaurant website isn't optional anymore. It's the baseline. Your site should look just as clean on an iPhone SE as it does on a 27-inch monitor. Buttons should be easy to tap, text should be readable without zooming, and your most important information -- menu, hours, location, and a way to order or reserve -- should be front and center.
3. You Haven't Updated It Since COVID
We get it. During the pandemic, you were in survival mode. You slapped a banner on your site that said "Dine-in now available!" or "Curbside pickup only" and moved on to more pressing matters -- like keeping your doors open. That was the right call in 2020.
But it's 2025 now. If your website still has pandemic-era messaging, limited hours from two years ago, or references to restrictions that no longer exist, it makes your restaurant look abandoned. Customers will wonder if you're even still open. A stale website signals a business that doesn't care about the details -- and in the restaurant industry, details are everything.
4. Your Hours and Location Are Wrong
Nothing kills trust faster than showing up to a closed restaurant. A customer drives 20 minutes across Fort Lauderdale because your website says you're open until 10 PM, and the doors are locked at 9. That customer is never coming back, and they're leaving a one-star review on their way home.
Your hours need to be current, prominent, and easy to find -- not buried three clicks deep in a "Contact" page. If you have different hours for brunch, lunch, dinner, or happy hour, lay them out clearly. Same goes for your address. If you've moved, remodeled, or added a second location, your website should reflect that immediately.
5. You Can't Be Found on Google Maps
Your website and your Google Business Profile are two sides of the same coin. When someone searches "best Cuban food near me" or "restaurant website design Fort Lauderdale," Google cross-references your website, your GBP listing, and your reviews to decide where you rank. If your website has outdated info that contradicts your Google listing, both suffer.
A well-built restaurant website reinforces your Google presence. It has consistent NAP (name, address, phone number) data, embedded Google Maps, proper schema markup, and links to your reservation or ordering platforms. If your restaurant doesn't show up when locals search for what you serve, your website is part of the problem. Check out our Google Business Profile setup guide to make sure your listing is working for you, not against you.
Pro Tip
Search for your own restaurant on Google right now. Does the info match what's on your website? If not, fix both today. Inconsistent data confuses Google's algorithm and pushes you down in local search results.
6. You Have No Online Ordering or Reservation CTA
If someone lands on your website and wants to place a takeout order or book a table for Saturday night, can they do it in one click? Or do they have to hunt around, find a phone number, and call during business hours? In 2025, that's a deal-breaker.
A clear "Order Online" or "Reserve a Table" button should be one of the first things a visitor sees. It doesn't matter whether you use Toast, Square, Resy, OpenTable, or a simple contact form -- what matters is that the path from "I want to eat here" to "I just placed my order" is as short as possible. Every extra click is money left on the table. Literally.
7. Your Photos Look Like They Were Taken with a Flip Phone
People eat with their eyes first, and that's especially true online. If your website features dark, grainy, poorly lit photos of your food, you're actively hurting your business. A blurry shot of your signature dish doesn't make anyone hungry -- it makes them scroll past.
You don't necessarily need a professional photographer, though it helps. Even a modern smartphone with decent lighting can produce photos that make your food look appetizing. But the photos on your website need to be high quality, properly sized, and representative of what customers will actually get. Investing in good visuals for your restaurant website design in Fort Lauderdale is one of the highest-ROI moves you can make.
What a Modern Restaurant Website Actually Looks Like
So what does a restaurant website look like when it gets all of these things right? We built a demo to show you. Our Sabor Latino Kitchen template is designed specifically for Fort Lauderdale restaurants and includes everything we've talked about in this article:
- A native HTML menu that loads instantly on any device -- no PDFs
- A prominent "Reserve a Table" call-to-action above the fold
- Embedded Google Maps with accurate location data
- A photo gallery that makes the food look as good as it tastes
- Mobile-first design that works perfectly on phones and tablets
- Fast load times and clean code that Google rewards in search rankings
Take a look at the live demo and see the difference a purpose-built restaurant website makes. This is what your competitors are moving toward -- and what your customers already expect.
Ready to Fix Your Restaurant's Website?
If you recognized your restaurant in two or more of these signs, it's time for a change. The good news is that a modern restaurant website design in Fort Lauderdale doesn't have to be expensive, complicated, or take months to build. We specialize in building fast, conversion-focused websites for restaurants and other local businesses across Broward County.
Check out our restaurant website services to see what we offer, or skip straight to the good part and request a free quote. We'll take a look at your current site, tell you exactly what's holding you back, and show you what a modern version could look like -- no pressure, no obligations.
Your food deserves a website that does it justice. Let's build one.