You typed your name in last lesson. Now think about who's reading it.
What you'll be able to do by the end
- Identify which of six common diner-intent questions your restaurant's site must answer first.
- Rank the six intents by importance for your specific restaurant.
- Recognize that this single ranking shapes every page-design decision later in the bootcamp.
Plain language version — the fast read
Diners open your site to answer one question. Are you open? Where are you? Is the menu what they want? Pick the question YOUR diners ask first. That choice shapes every later page.
A website that tries to do all six things equally well does none of them. The first decision in good restaurant web design is admitting which thing your site is most for, more than the other five.
It is 7:42pm on a Tuesday. A diner — a regular customer, a stranger from out of town, a couple deciding where to eat for an anniversary — types your restaurant's name into Google and lands on your site. They didn't come for a tour. They came to answer one specific question. There are six common ones.
Drag the cards below — or use the up and down buttons — to put them in order of importance for your restaurant. There is no right answer. A neighborhood Vietnamese takeout spot ranks these differently than a tasting-menu room in midtown. Your ranking becomes a setting the rest of the bootcamp listens to.
Now look at your top two. That's the "job" your site is for, more than the other four. Notice what isn't there: "browse our story," "learn about our chef," "see our event calendar." Those things can exist on your site, but they don't make the top six because they're not what gets a diner from "I'm hungry" to "I'm at this restaurant."
What this means for every later lesson
If find hours and address is your top job — common for takeout, counter spots, and any restaurant where the regular is in a hurry — then your home page leads with hours, your phone number is always visible, and a map is one tap away. The menu is one click in.
If book a table is your top job — common for date-night, occasion-driven, or reservation-heavy spots — then your reservation button is the loudest thing on the page and shows up on every screen.
If see the menu is your top job — common for cuisine-led restaurants where the menu is the marketing — then the menu lives on the home page itself, not behind a link. You and your prices are not hiding.
If judge if it fits is your top job — common for any spot where the room and feel matter as much as the food — then large photos of the room (not just food) belong on the home page, and your one-sentence promise (you'll write it in the next lesson) has to be sharp.
Your ranking is saved. Later lessons in the bootcamp will read this and adjust their guidance to match — you won't need to remember it.
The mistake almost every new restaurant site makes
The mistake is treating the home page like a brochure. A brochure assumes the reader has time. A restaurant home page is read by someone with thirty seconds and a hungry friend. If your top job is see the menu and a diner has to click "Menu" to find it, you've put a door between them and the answer they came for. Doors lose customers.
This is the principle the rest of Module 1 builds on: your site is for one thing first, everything else second. Lesson 3 takes the top job and turns it into a one-sentence promise.
You just named what your site is for.
A ranked priority list — saved in your browser — of the six things diners use restaurant websites to do, in the order that matters for your restaurant. The top two are now load-bearing decisions for every later lesson.
This is the single decision that separates a competent restaurant site from a generic one. Most operators never make it consciously. You just did.