10 Takeaway Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Orders Right Now

Why Your Website Might Be Working Against You

We audit a lot of takeaway and restaurant websites. The same mistakes keep showing up — on sites built five years ago and sites built last month. Some owners know something feels off but can't pinpoint it. Others think the site is fine because it 'looks nice'.

Looking nice is not the same as working. A site that doesn't load in three seconds on a mobile, doesn't show your menu in text, or buries your phone number below three paragraphs of copy is losing you orders every single day — quietly, with no error message.

Here are the ten mistakes we find most often, why each one costs you, and the 5-minute check you can do right now.

Mistake 1: Your Menu Is a JPEG or PDF

This is the single most damaging mistake on the list. Scanning a paper menu and uploading the image — or exporting a PDF from Word — feels like a quick win. It isn't.

Google cannot read text inside an image or a PDF the way it reads real HTML text on a page. That means when someone searches 'chicken tikka masala takeaway [your town]', your menu is invisible. Your competitor whose dishes are written in actual text on the page wins that click.

AI Overviews and voice search pull answers from readable, structured text. A JPEG cannot be cited. A properly marked-up menu with schema can show individual dishes in search results.

5-minute check: Right-click any part of your menu on your website and choose 'Inspect'. If you see an img tag pointing to a file ending .jpg, .png, or .pdf — your menu is invisible to Google. Read more about why PDF menus hurt your rankings.

Mistake 2: No Prices on the Menu

Leaving prices off feels like it keeps things flexible. What it actually does is send the customer to Just Eat or Deliveroo to check — and then they order from there.

Customers deciding where to order want to compare quickly. If your site makes them ring up or guess, they'll move on. Transparent pricing also signals confidence. Hidden pricing signals the opposite.

5-minute check: Load your menu page. Can you see a price next to every item without clicking anything? If not, add them. Every item, every size, every option.

Mistake 3: Outdated Opening Hours

Your website says you open at 5 pm. Your Google Business Profile says 4 pm. Your actual opening time is 4:30 pm. A customer shows up at 4:15 pm, finds you shut, and leaves a one-star review.

Wrong hours are one of the most common reasons for bad reviews — and one of the easiest to fix. They also affect whether you appear in 'open now' searches, which are high-intent clicks from people ready to order.

5-minute check: Search your shop name on Google right now. Check the hours panel. Then open your website. Do all three sources — GBP, website, and reality — match exactly? Update whichever doesn't.

Mistake 4: You've Never Tested It on a Mobile

Most takeaway orders are placed on a phone. Most takeaway websites are built and checked on a desktop. These two facts collide badly.

Common mobile failures: text that's too small to read without pinching, buttons that are too close together to tap accurately, images that push the page sideways, and forms that are impossible to complete with a thumb.

Google also ranks mobile experience. A site that fails on mobile is penalised in search before a single customer even sees it. We wrote a full five-second test guide for takeaway websites if you want a proper method.

5-minute check: Pull up your site on your actual phone — not a browser preview, your real phone — and try to navigate from the homepage to placing an order. Every step that causes friction is a dropped customer.

Mistake 5: Slow, Uncompressed Images

A food photo taken on a decent camera is often 4–8 MB. Upload that directly to your website and the page takes ten seconds to load on mobile data. Most customers leave after three.

Page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor. Slow pages rank lower and convert worse. Every uncompressed image is both a rankings problem and a conversion problem.

5-minute check: Go to pagespeed.web.dev, paste your URL, and run the test. A score below 50 on mobile is a problem. Look at the image-related recommendations — they're almost always the quickest wins. More on how site speed directly costs you orders.

Mistake 6: Buried Phone Number

Some customers will never use an online order form. They ring. If they can't find your number in two seconds, they ring someone else.

Your phone number belongs in the header — visible on every page, on every device — and ideally as a clickable tel: link so it dials directly from a mobile.

5-minute check: Load your homepage on your phone. Without scrolling, can you see a phone number? Tap it — does it dial? If you scrolled or had to visit the contact page, it's buried.

Mistake 7: No Order Button Above the Fold

'Above the fold' means what's visible before the customer scrolls. If your order button is below your opening story, your team photos, and a paragraph about your 'passion for food' — most customers will never see it.

The one job of a takeaway homepage is to convert a hungry person into an order. Everything above the fold should serve that goal: your name, what you sell, your location, and one clear call to action — Order Now, Order Collection, or Book a Table.

5-minute check: Open your homepage on mobile. Screenshot just the first screen. Does it contain an order button or a clear next step? If not, that's the first thing to move.

Mistake 8: Ignoring Reviews (or Handling Them Badly)

Reviews on Google, Tripadvisor, and Just Eat affect where you rank and whether people choose you. Not responding to reviews — positive or negative — tells prospective customers that nobody's minding the shop.

The mistake isn't just ignoring bad reviews. It's also not doing anything to generate good ones. The DMCC guidelines are clear: you cannot pay for reviews, fake them, or only show customers the review form after they've said they're happy. What you can do is ask every satisfied customer — in person, via a receipt QR code, or in a follow-up message — to leave an honest review.

5-minute check: Search your business on Google. When did you last respond to a review? Is your average below 4.0? If yes to either, reviews need attention this week.

Mistake 9: No SSL Certificate

SSL is what makes your website address start with https:// instead of http://. Without it, Chrome and other browsers show visitors a 'Not Secure' warning in the address bar.

That warning kills trust instantly. It also means Google ranks you lower. SSL certificates are free on virtually every modern hosting platform. There is no reason not to have one.

5-minute check: Look at your website address bar right now. Does it show a padlock icon? If it shows a warning triangle or the words 'Not Secure', call your hosting provider today.

Mistake 10: Dead Social Links

The Facebook icon in your footer links to a page that was last posted on in 2021. The Instagram goes to an account that no longer exists. The Twitter/X link 404s.

Dead links signal to visitors that your business isn't active. They also send link equity to nowhere. Either keep your social accounts genuinely active, or remove the links from your website entirely. A missing icon is better than a broken one.

5-minute check: Click every social link in your header and footer. Does each one open a real, recently active account? Remove any that don't.

Quick Reference: The 10 Mistakes at a Glance

Most of these checks take under five minutes. Most of the fixes take under an hour. Yet most takeaway websites we audit have four or more of these problems live right now.

If you want a proper audit rather than a self-check, contact us and we'll go through your site in detail.

What a Properly Built Site Looks Like

A site that avoids all ten mistakes above will: load fast on mobile, show your full menu in readable text with prices, display correct hours, carry an SSL certificate, have a visible order button before the scroll, and link to active social accounts or none at all.

That's not a premium feature. That's the baseline. Takely's Starter package at £499 + £49/mo covers all of this — menu as real searchable text with schema markup, Google Business Profile linked, live in 7 days. The Growth package at £999 + £79/mo adds five pages, locally-targeted landing pages, a review engine, and monthly analytics.

The 30-day rolling contract means if it's not working, you're not locked in. You own the domain and the data either way.

Beyond the website itself, if you're paying 14% commission on collection orders through Just Eat, that's £4.20 on every £30 order. Processing the same order through your own site costs roughly £1.91 all-in — 4% (£1.20) plus card fees around 2% (£0.71). The website that avoids these ten mistakes is the one that makes direct ordering actually happen.