What people actually want from a café website
Nobody browses a café website for fun. They arrive from Google Maps or Instagram with one question: are you open, what do you have, can I order a cake, where do I park. Answer those in the first screen on a phone and you've won.
The eight pages that matter
- Home. One photo of the counter or the room, opening hours visible without scrolling, today's bakes or specials, and two buttons: "Menu" and "Order a cake".
- Menu. Real text, not a PDF: bakery, breakfast, lunch, cakes, coffee, with prices and V/VG/GF tags. This is the page Google and AI assistants read when someone asks "best croissant near me".
- Cakes and orders. Sizes, prices, flavours, lead time, how to order (phone, WhatsApp, email or form). Celebration cakes are the highest-margin thing most cafés sell and the page is usually missing.
- Catering. Office breakfasts, meeting platters, minimum order and notice. One page can bring in a few corporate regulars.
- About. Who bakes, where the beans come from, since when. Photos of people. This is what people share.
- Gallery. Twelve to twenty good photos. Phone photos in daylight are fine.
- Journal. Three posts a year is enough: seasonal menu, a cake-ordering guide, how you make your sourdough. Each one is a page Google can rank.
- Visit. Address, map, hours, parking, step-free access, dogs, Wi-Fi. Put the same hours on Google Business Profile.
Things that quietly lose customers
- Hours only on Instagram or in an image
- A PDF menu that won't open on a phone
- No price on cakes, so people don't ask
- A contact form and nothing else: cafés get WhatsApp messages, not forms
- A site that takes more than three seconds to load on 4G
WordPress, Squarespace or Wix?
For a café, any of them works if the structure above is there. WordPress with Elementor wins when you want to own the site, pay only for hosting, and edit pages yourself without a monthly builder fee. The free version of Elementor is enough for everything above.
Local SEO in one afternoon
Use the same business name, address and phone on the website, Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Instagram and the main directories. Put the town and neighbourhood in the page titles ("Sourdough bakery in Herne Hill"). Add LocalBusiness schema with your hours. Post a photo on Google every week. That's most of local SEO for a café.
A kit with all eight pages built
Crumb is an 8-page café and bakery website kit for WordPress and free Elementor, with exactly this structure: home, menu, cakes and orders, catering, about, gallery, journal and visit, plus 54 photos and a header and footer. Import it in one click, change the colours once, add your menu and photos. See the live demo.
Questions people ask
How much does a café website cost?
With a template kit, a domain (about $12 a year) and shared hosting (about $5 a month). A custom design from an agency usually starts at $1,500.
Do I need Elementor Pro for a café website?
No. Free Elementor covers pages, menus and galleries. The Crumb kit uses only free plugins.
Should my café menu be a PDF?
Keep a PDF for printing, but publish the menu on your website as text so Google and AI search can read it and phones can scroll it.
How do I take cake orders online without a shop plugin?
A Cakes page with sizes, prices and lead times, plus call, WhatsApp and email buttons, converts well. Add a form or WooCommerce later if volume grows.
Can I use the Crumb kit for a coffee shop or brunch place?
Yes. Rename the menu sections and swap the photos; the structure suits coffee shops, brunch cafés, bakeries and patisseries.