Web design for cafés and coffee shops
Are you open, and can I bring the dog and the pram?
That is genuinely the whole search. Somebody is walking into town with a buggy and a labrador, it is ten past four, and they want to know whether you are still serving and whether they will be welcome. Every café website in the country opens with a paragraph about ethically sourced beans and buries the opening hours on a contact page. We do the opposite, host it and look after it, with a £0 upfront website design fee.
- Per month: £49.99
- Upfront website design fee: £0
Illustration: a cafés & coffee shops pictogram beside an example website built for that trade.
What people are checking
The six things nobody asks and everybody wants to know.
A café is a practical decision made in about ten seconds on a pavement. None of these are glamorous and every one of them decides whether somebody comes in.
- 01
Are you open now
Every day of the week, with the actual times, in the first screen. Also whether the kitchen stops before you do, which catches people out constantly.
- 02
Dogs
Yes, no, or only in a certain area. It is one of the most searched things about any café and one of the least often answered.
- 03
Prams and buggies
Whether there is room, whether there are steps and whether the door is manageable one-handed. Parents plan their whole morning around this.
- 04
Wifi and somewhere to work
Whether you have it, whether there are plugs, and honestly whether you would rather people did not sit all afternoon at the weekend.
- 05
Vegan, gluten free and children
What you always have, rather than a full menu. Somebody with a requirement is checking whether the whole group can come.
- 06
Where exactly, and parking
A tappable address, and whether the nearby car park is the free one or the other one. In a market town this genuinely decides it.
None of this needs writing beautifully. It needs to be findable in seconds and correct, which between them are worth more than any amount of copy about the roastery.
On a phone
They are outside, in the rain, with two bars of signal.
There is no more mobile business than a café. Everything about the site should assume somebody standing on a pavement who will give it about four seconds before walking to the next place.
- Today's hours, not a table
"Open until 4pm today" is instantly understood. A grid of seven days requires reading, and reading is what nobody is doing.
- Nothing heavy
No sliders, no video, no fonts that arrive late. A café site should be one of the fastest pages on the internet.
- The address as a link
One tap into their maps app. It is the most-used control on the whole site and it is astonishing how often it is plain text.
The place
Show the room, at the time of day it is busiest.
People are deciding whether it looks like somewhere they want to sit. An empty café at seven in the morning does not answer that; a full one at eleven, with light coming in, does.
Photographs here are illustrative. Your own room and counter replace them, and we can pull your Instagram in so it stays current without any effort.
Where customers come from
Google Maps is your website, whether you like it or not.
For a café, far more people will see your Business Profile than your website: the hours, the photographs, the reviews and the little "busy at this time" graph. What the website does is back that up and answer the things the map cannot — dogs, prams, wifi, the kitchen closing at three — and give the profile something credible to link to.
The rest is repeat trade from a very small area. A café lives on the same people several times a week, from a few streets and a couple of nearby villages. That makes the practical details worth more than anything aspirational: somebody who found out you have highchairs and a plug socket becomes a Tuesday regular, and Tuesday regulars are the whole business.
Your site plan
Four pages, and one of them is just practical answers.
A café does not need a big website and should not have one. What it needs is to be right, fast, and to answer the awkward practical questions nobody wants to ring and ask.
Your suggested site plan
4 pagesHome
Today's hours, dogs, the kitchen times, and a tappable address.
- Hours
- Dogs
- Where
Menu
Short, current, with prices, kitchen times and what is always vegan or gluten free.
- Prices
- Kitchen times
- Always available
Visiting
Prams, accessibility, wifi and plugs, parking, and whether you take bookings at all.
- Prams
- Access
- Wifi
About & contact
Who you are, where the coffee comes from, and how to reach you about anything else.
- About
- Coffee
- Contact
Generally up to five pages on Website, planned around how your customers choose.
Need something extra later? No problem. PrimeStart customers can order additional services such as extra pages, branding and one-off optimisation through their client dashboard whenever they need them.
Your Client Platform
Change your bank holiday hours from the counter.
Every PrimeStart customer gets their own Client Platform. It is where the project lives while it is being built, and where you ask for changes once it is live.
- Follow the build stage by stage, without emailing to ask
- Send a new menu or photographs straight from your phone
- Message PrimeStart directly, with the whole thread in one place
- Preview the draft on a phone before anybody else sees it
- Approve the website before it goes live
- Ask for changes afterwards, and order services when you need them
- See your SEO report, tracked searches and recommendations each month (Website + SEO)
There is nothing technical to learn and no WordPress to open. One login, and the rest is us.
Illustration of the Client Platform for a fictional cafés & coffee shops business. SEO reporting is included with Website + SEO.
SEO
Three searches, and two of them are about the dog.
Website + SEO is optional monthly work on how easily local customers find you, aimed at three searches agreed with you. Café searches are unusually practical, and being the answer to a specific question beats competing on "best coffee".
- £349.99/monthTotal. The website is included: the £49.99 Website is not added on top.
- 3 searchesAgreed with you at the start. Additional agreed search targets are £50/month each.
- Monthly workSearch and competitor research, website improvements, Google Business Profile work, local listings, technical monitoring and a clear monthly report in your Client Platform.
- 6-month minimumAfter the SEO minimum you can continue, or stop the SEO work and keep the Website for the rest of its 18-month term. Every month of it counts towards both.
Nobody can promise a position on Google, and we do not. What we commit to is the agreed work every month, tracking what happens, and changing course when the evidence says to.
- 01“coffee shop near me Frome”
The big one, almost entirely on a phone, and decided in seconds. Hours and photographs in your Business Profile do most of the work here.
- 02“dog friendly cafe Frome”
Specific, loyal and startlingly high volume. People plan walks around it, they come back weekly, and most cafés never say whether dogs are welcome.
- 03“breakfast near me Frome”
Time-limited and high intent. Somebody searching at half past nine on a Saturday is going somewhere in the next twenty minutes.
For a café, keeping the Google Business Profile accurate — hours, bank holidays, photographs, replies to reviews — is often worth more than anything on the website itself, and the two work together. We research your area first, recommend three that make commercial sense, explain why, and agree them with you before any work starts. Additional agreed searches are +£50 a month each.
Already have a website you are happy with? Ongoing SEO is only available with the managed website, as Website + SEO — PrimeStart does not run SEO on a site it does not host. If you would rather keep your current site, talk to us first and we will tell you honestly whether moving it across is worth it.
The plans
The same café website, with or without the monthly SEO work.
The Website is the whole thing: designed, built, hosted, managed and kept current, with your domain name included. Website + SEO adds monthly work on how easily local customers find it. Clear pricing. Straightforward terms. No surprises.
A café website that is fast, correct and answers the practical questions nobody wants to ring and ask.
Designers usually charge for the build before the website exists. We absorb that cost and recover it through the monthly service, which is why the plan carries a minimum term, and why there is nothing to pay up front beyond the first month.
Complete the term and the website is yours: stay with us on a rolling basis with no new minimum, or move it to hosting of your own.
Want PrimeStart working on how customers find you? Website + SEO is £349.99 a month in total, with the same website included. The same managed website, plus monthly work on three agreed local searches and the Business Profile that carries most café traffic. How SEO works
£49.99per month
- Upfront website design fee
- £0
- What you pay to start
- Your first £49.99, at signup
- Minimum term
- 18 months
- Over the minimum term
- 18 × £49.99 = £899.82
- After month 18
- The website is yours
- If you stay
- £49.99 a month, rolling, no new minimum
What the plan includes
- Today's hours, first thingNot a seven-day grid buried on a contact page
- Dogs, prams, wifi and plugsThe questions people search for and cafés never answer
- A short readable menuWith prices and the kitchen times, which prevent the usual disappointment
- A tappable addressThe most-used control on the site, and often plain text
- Fast on a wet pavementBecause four seconds is genuinely all you get
- A professionally designed, custom-built WordPress websiteGenerally up to five pages, planned around how cafés & coffee shops are chosen
- Hosting, your domain name and SSLIncluded and managed by PrimeStart
- Security, backups and updatesKept current, backed up regularly, WordPress and plugins updated by us
- Enquiry forms and basic Google foundationsForms that reach you; structure, titles and descriptions search engines read
- Support, small changes and your Client PlatformReasonable small changes subject to fair use, and one place to follow, message and approve
How it works
Your part takes an afternoon between services.
Choose a plan, send us your menu and hours, then tell us what to change on the draft. We do the rest.
- 1
Choose your plan
Website, or Website + SEO. The upfront website design fee is £0 and your first monthly payment is taken at signup.
- 2
Send us the practical bits
A short onboarding in your Client Platform: your menu and prices, your hours and kitchen times, dogs, prams, wifi, parking, photographs, and where enquiries should land.
- 3
Ready to Build
We check we have what we need. If a price or a policy needs a decision, we say exactly which, and get on with the rest.
- 4
First draft
A working draft on a phone first: hours, menu and the practical answers.
- 5
Approve and launch
Reasonable in-scope changes, then you approve it. Nothing is published until you say so.
We aim to have your first website draft ready within 5 working days once PrimeStart has everything needed and confirms your project is Ready to Build. Payment alone doesn’t start the clock; missing details, revisions or domain delays can extend it.
You review the draft and request reasonable in-scope changes. If there’s a genuine problem we can’t put right within scope after reasonable attempts, we can cancel the agreement and refund Website subscription payments made, subject to any disclosed non-recoverable third-party costs.
Questions cafés ask us
How much does a website for a café cost?
What happens at the end of the 18 months?
Is the domain name included?
We only have Instagram and Google. Is a website worth it?
Can you take online orders?
Our menu changes constantly. Is that a problem?
How quickly will I see a first draft?
What is SEO, and do I need it to start?
You make the coffee. We'll run the website.
Web design for cafés at £49.99 a month with a £0 upfront website design fee: hours that are always right, a short readable menu, and the practical answers people search for.
Prefer to call? +44 7446 265140 or email contact@primestart.co.uk