So, you need a website for your restaurant. You’ve probably heard about easy do-it-yourself tools like Wix, WordPress, or Squarespace that promise beautiful sites in a few clicks. As a restaurant owner in Spain, it’s tempting to save money and build your own site after hours. After all, how hard can it be, right? In this conversational guide, we’ll explore the reality behind DIY website builders – the good, the bad, and the hidden challenges that can lurk beneath the surface. A friendly heads-up: what looks “free and easy” at first might come with costs (in time, headaches, or lost customers) that aren’t immediately obvious. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of going DIY versus getting professional help, so you can make the best decision for your tapería, cafetería, or asador here in Spain.
Building your own website sounds great for a few reasons. Let’s look at why many restaurant owners consider the DIY route:
Those are the pros – and they’re not insignificant. Low cost, full control, and quick results make DIY site builders appealing, especially for a small family restaurant or a new café just getting started. If your website needs are extremely basic (say, just a page with your address, menu, and hours) and you’re not aiming high with online marketing, a DIY site can do the job for the short term (jonroc.com).
However, before you break out the toolkit and start dragging-and-dropping content, it’s important to understand the flip side. Like many things in life, with DIY websites “you get what you pay for.” Let’s uncover some of the hidden challenges that come with the DIY approach – challenges that can especially impact restaurants trying to attract diners online.
When a hungry customer lands on your website, you want them to find information fast – think menu, location, opening hours, reservation button. If your DIY website’s navigation is confusing or the layout is cluttered, you could lose that potential diner in seconds. Providing a smooth, easy user experience (UX) is harder than simply picking a pretty template.
Many DIY sites suffer in usability because restaurant owners (understandably) aren’t UX designers. A site that is hard to navigate or visually messy will frustrate visitors, causing them to leave (raising your bounce rate) and possibly driving customers away (jlbworks.com). In fact, one survey found 33% of people were discouraged by a restaurant’s website simply because it was hard to navigate (restaurantdive.com). That means one-third of potential guests might give up on your eatery if your site menus and links are confusing!
Consider the user’s perspective: if someone can’t quickly find your menu or reservation page, they’ll likely move on to a competitor or a delivery app. And if your site’s text is too small, or the colors make it hard to read, the effect is the same – they leave. DIY templates provide a structure, but it’s on you to organize and present info in a way that makes sense for customers. Achieving a truly intuitive design without professional help can be tricky.
Also, keep in mind that a restaurant website often has to pack a lot in: menus, photos, reviews, booking forms, maybe even multiple language options (especially here in Spain where you might want English for tourists and Spanish for locals). Ensuring all that content is well-organized and user-friendly is a challenge for the DIY approach. It’s not impossible – but it requires a good amount of thought, testing, and design sense.
Bottom line: if your DIY site ends up with poor usability, it can cost you customers. Nearly 70% of diners in one study said they’ve been discouraged from visiting a restaurant because of its website (restaurantdive.com). Don’t let a hard-to-use site be the reason a potential guest decides “meh, this looks too complicated – let’s order pizza instead.”
Having a beautiful website won’t help much if no one can find it on Google. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of making your site show up when people search for things like “best paella in Marbella” or “tapas bar near me open now.” DIY builders often advertise that they are “SEO-friendly” or come with SEO features out of the box. It’s true they include basics – like letting you add meta titles or descriptions – but getting a site to rank well is a lot more complex than ticking a few SEO boxes on a template (jonroc.com).
The reality is DIY platforms have limits on SEO customization. They might not let you tweak the site structure, URL formats, or advanced metadata the way a developer could. Many restaurant owners using DIY tools assume their site is automatically optimized, only to find out later that their pages aren’t ranking for important keywords (like “restaurant in {your town}”). As one analysis put it, website builders might offer pre-set SEO features, but “SEO is a lot more complicated than that” (jonroc.com). Without an expert eye, crucial elements like proper headings, alt tags for images, schema markup for your menu, or fast-loading code might be missing – all of which affect how Google sees your site.
Why does this matter? Because Google is huge for restaurants. In 2025, a whopping 62% of consumers discover restaurants through Google platforms (Search, Maps, etc.) (oddle.me). And nearly 89% of diners research restaurants on their mobile devices before ever visiting (oddle.me). If your site isn’t showing up when people nearby search “Mediterranean restaurant in Valencia,” you’re practically invisible to a large chunk of your market. Good SEO can help you rank higher, but a DIY site might lack the fine-tuning to get you there (jlbworks.com).
Moreover, SEO isn’t a one-and-done task – it requires ongoing content updates, link building, and optimization. Are you prepared to become an SEO specialist on top of running your restaurant? Most owners simply don’t have the time. And without proper SEO, you risk missing out on diners who never even know you exist (jlbworks.com). It’s like having a great restaurant down a quiet alley with no signs pointing to it. The food might be amazing, but if nobody finds the door, it stays empty.
Think about how people in Spain (and everywhere) search for food these days: they pull out their phones and Google “restaurants near me” or scroll through options on the go. If your website doesn’t load quickly on a smartphone or doesn’t display correctly on a small screen, that potential customer is as good as gone.
DIY site builders claim to offer mobile-responsive templates, and many do an okay job at it. But problems can creep in once you start customizing. Perhaps you add large images of your delicious platos, or a background video of your restaurant interior – suddenly the mobile version chugs. Or maybe the template wasn’t truly optimized, and elements overlap awkwardly on a phone. Remember, 89% of all dining research is done via mobile now (oddle.me), so a site that isn’t smooth on mobile is a non-starter.
Speed is equally critical. We live in an impatient world. If your website takes more than a few seconds to load, people bail. Google’s research famously found that 53% of mobile users will abandon a site that doesn’t load within 3 seconds (marketingdive.com). Yes, just three seconds! For context, many DIY sites hosted on basic plans or filled with unoptimized media can easily take 5, 6, 7+ seconds to load – which is a recipe for losing more than half your visitors before they even see your homepage.
A slow or unresponsive site hurts not only user experience but also your Google rankings (Google favors fast sites). DIY platforms often use cheap, shared hosting and bloated code, which can slow things down (jonroc.com) As a non-professional, you might not know how to optimize images, enable caching, or refine the code to speed up your pages. It’s like trying to cook in a kitchen with a dull knife and a weak stove – you’ll get there eventually, but it’s far from efficient.
For restaurant sites, speed can directly impact sales. Imagine a user trying to pull up your menu on their phone while deciding where to eat; if that menu page spins and spins, they’ll likely move on. Or if they click “Reserve a table” and nothing happens for 5 seconds, they’ll give up. Mobile-friendliness and speed are not optional – they’re baseline requirements if you want online visitors to turn into real customers.
When someone visits your website, it’s often their first impression of your restaurant – even before seeing your storefront or tasting your food. What do you want that impression to be? Warm, professional, and appetizing? Or clunky, confusing, and amateurish? The look and feel of your site directly impact how people perceive your business. In fact, a restaurant’s website that looks outdated or poorly designed can immediately plant seeds of doubt in a visitor’s mind about the quality of the restaurant.
Consider this: 30% of consumers in a survey said they were discouraged from a restaurant because the website looked old or out-of-date (restaurantdive.com). This is huge – nearly one in three people might think “hmm, if the website is this outdated, maybe the restaurant is too.” It might sound harsh, but we do judge a book by its cover online. A clean, modern website design inspires trust; an ugly or broken site raises red flags. Just as diners might be wary of a restaurant with a flickering neon sign and peeling paint on the door, they’ll be wary of a website that feels neglected.
DIY builders offer templates that can look decent, but they also tend to have a certain cookie-cutter feel. It’s easy to spot a generic Wix or Squarespace template. If your site looks like a dozen others, it doesn’t exactly scream “we put care and quality into what we do.” Moreover, without professional design tweaks, many DIY sites end up with awkward spacing, inconsistent fonts, or images that don’t quite line up – little things that subtly signal “amateur.” Users might not pinpoint it, but they’ll feel it. And that feeling translates to less trust.
Trust is especially important if you want customers to do something on your site, like making a reservation or ordering food. People hesitate to enter their details or credit card info if the site looks sketchy or unprofessional. A well-designed site, on the other hand, gives an impression of credibility and safety.
Let’s not forget content accuracy and updates. With a DIY site, it’s on you to keep everything current – specials, menus, holiday hours, etc. An outdated menu from 2019 or an event calendar showing last year’s feria can also erode trust (“do they even pay attention to their own site?”). Keeping content fresh is a challenge if you’re juggling it on your own, but it’s crucial for maintaining a trustworthy image.
In summary, design and trust go hand in hand. Your website is like the digital front door to your restaurant. If it’s neat, inviting, and professional, people step in with confidence. If it’s sloppy, confusing, or antiquated, many will turn away. Studies have shown that nearly 70% of diners have been discouraged from visiting a restaurant because of its website (restaurantdive.com), which includes factors like poor ease of use and visual appeal. It’s not just “nice to have” a good design – it directly impacts your bookings.
One aspect often overlooked in the DIY vs professional decision is your own time and effort. As a restaurant owner, you know how precious time is – you’re managing staff, suppliers, customers, and a hundred daily fires. Building and maintaining a website can become a serious time sink when you do it yourself.
Sure, building a basic site might only take a few hours to initially set up. But making it good – that’s where the hours start adding up. Tweaking the layout so it doesn’t look like a generic template, resizing images, trying out plugins for an online booking form, fixing that one section that just doesn’t look right on mobile… DIY sites can be “incredibly time-consuming to create, even with drag-and-drop templates” (jonroc.com). One author put it perfectly: even if it’s easy to get started, getting a DIY site exactly how you want can eat up huge chunks of your time (jonroc.com). It’s like playing whack-a-mole with website issues – solve one, discover another.
And it doesn’t end at launch. Websites are living things. You’ll need to update it regularly – add new photos of your dishes, post holiday opening hours, update menus, write blogs (if you’re doing content marketing), etc. If a plugin breaks or an update causes something to look off, guess who has to troubleshoot? You. “Learning how to use a website builder, troubleshooting issues, and continuously updating your site can take hours away from your core business activities,” as one web expert noted (jlbworks.com). Every hour you spend Googling why your contact form stopped working is an hour not spent improving your recipes, training your chef, or interacting with customers in person.
There’s also the aspect of ongoing maintenance and technical support. When you DIY, you’re effectively your own IT department. If the site goes down, or you get a mysterious error, the burden’s on you to figure it out (or spend more money to hire a freelancer for a quick fix). DIY platforms do have support and forums, but it’s not the same as having a dedicated pro who can quickly handle issues. Many website designers offer maintenance or at least give you some training/support; with DIY, you “have to figure it out on your own” when things go wrong (jonroc.com).
Lastly, think about the opportunity cost. Your time has value. The hours (and frustration) spent wrestling with a site could be spent doing what you love and do best – running your restaurant and delighting guests. Sometimes owners start with DIY to save money, but end up paying in stress and lost opportunities. As one agency bluntly put it, the time investment can quickly add up, and for small business owners, time is a precious resource that could be better spent elsewhere (jlbworks.com). In many cases, “cheap” DIY websites become expensive in the long run when you consider the value of your time and the potential business lost due to a subpar site.
We’ve talked about the big challenges like usability, SEO, etc. But there are other sneaky costs and limitations to be aware of when going the DIY route:
In short, the DIY route has hidden costs – some monetary, some in flexibility. Many business owners begin DIY to save money, only to find that the features they truly need require subscriptions or that the site’s limitations end up costing them more in missed opportunities. As one web agency put it, trying the cheap route often leads to paying more later, whereas “a professional, custom-built website may require a higher upfront investment, but it offers a better return in the long run” (jlbworks.com).
Reading all the above, you might feel a bit overwhelmed – and that’s okay! The purpose here isn’t to scare you off DIY completely, but to give a realistic picture. For many restaurant owners, especially here in Spain, the best use of your time and resources is to focus on your restaurant and let web professionals focus on your website. That’s where Eat The Web comes in.
We specialize in building websites for restaurants (and other local businesses), so we understand the unique needs of a restaurant site. Our goal is to deliver a fast, beautiful, Google-ready website that genuinely helps bring in more diners and bookings – without you having to lift a finger on the tech stuff. Here’s what that means:
In essence, Eat The Web offers restaurant owners a way to get all the benefits of a great website – sleek design, strong online presence, more customer bookings – without the pitfalls of going DIY. It’s a smart solution for those who understand the value of their own time and the importance of getting their web presence right. As we like to say, “websites that work as hard as you do” (eattheweb.menu)– meaning your site will actively help grow your business, not just sit there looking pretty.
Your focus should be on crafting delicious meals and providing a memorable dining experience – not wrestling with website builders. A poor website can quietly hurt your restaurant by turning away potential customers, whereas a great website can become one of your best assets, bringing in more diners and bookings day and night. If you’ve read this far, you likely care about getting your web presence right.
Eat The Web is here to help. We’ve helped restaurant owners across Spain get fast, mobile-friendly, beautiful websites that rank on Google and impress visitors. Instead of a DIY site that “works for now,” invest in a website that will work for you long-term. It’s like hiring a friendly local guide for your online journey – we know the tech landscape, so you don’t have to.
Don’t let your website be the empty table in the corner. Get in touch with Eat The Web today, and let’s cook up a website that turns curious browsers into satisfied diners. ¡Buen provecho!
Contact us to start a conversation about your restaurant’s website – we’d love to chat about how to make your life easier and your business even more successful. Your restaurant deserves a website as great as your food, and we’re ready to make it happen.
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