Why your website matters more than you think
Most independent UK takeaways take a meaningful share of orders through Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats. According to each platform's published pricing, commission ranges from around 14% (collection / order-only models) to ~30% (full delivery). On six-figure annual order volume, that's a serious annual line item for work your own website could do without commission.
A direct-order website doesn't replace the aggregators (you still want them — they're a customer-acquisition channel). It captures repeat customers who already know you, before they fall back into the aggregator app and cost you commission again.
The arithmetic isn't complicated: even capturing a modest share of repeat orders direct typically pays back a properly-built website within a few months for most takeaways with steady online volume. We'll happily walk through the maths on your specific numbers if you'd like.
What we build differently
Speed. We aim for high Lighthouse mobile scores out of the box. Every dropped point is dropped customers — research from Google and the HTTPArchive Web Almanac has consistently shown a meaningful drop in conversion as mobile load times increase.
Real ordering, not a Wix plugin. We integrate proper ordering systems (or build a custom one on Stripe). The customer experience is comparable to Just Eat — basket, postcode check, time slot, payment, confirmation SMS.
Schema markup. We add Restaurant, Menu, MenuItem, LocalBusiness and FAQPage schema by default. Google reads these, and your search snippets get richer (star ratings, price ranges, hours).
Multilingual the right way. We use proper hreflang tags and separate URLs per language — not the Google Translate widget that hurts your SEO.
What we don't build
We don't build sites that look impressive but load slowly. Heavy parallax, video backgrounds, custom cursor effects — they look great in the agency portfolio and bad in production. Mobile users on 4G will not wait.
We also don't recommend WordPress for new builds. It's fine if you already have a WordPress site you love, but for new restaurants we use modern stacks (Next.js, Astro, or our own framework) that are faster, cheaper to host, and harder to hack.
Multilingual: who actually needs it
If your menu and reviews include any of: Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, Punjabi, Tamil, Turkish — and you're in an area with the corresponding diaspora — a properly localised site can be one of the higher-ROI website investments. The combination of authentic copy in the first language, proper hreflang tags, and a language switcher that respects user choice tends to read as more trustworthy to those communities than a Google-Translate widget.
But it has to be done properly: real translations (not auto-translated), proper URL structure, and a language switcher that respects user choice. We do this regularly — talk to us about specific examples relevant to your community.