A Restaurant Website in Eilat: What It Needs and What Just Wastes Money
A restaurant website has to do three things. Show the menu with no downloads and no pinching to zoom. Let someone book a table or order food in a few taps. And load fast on the phone of a person standing in the street and hungry. Everything else is nice to have. Those three decide whether the diner walks in or moves on to the next place.
The menu is the page everyone comes for
Before a person picks where to eat they want to know what is on offer. In a survey by the research firm MGH among 1,101 adults in the United States, 77% said they visit a restaurant website before dining in or ordering out. The thing that most influences their decision after that visit is the menu items. The survey is from 2019 and it is not young, but this particular finding has not changed. People come to see what there is and what it costs.
From that comes the most common mistake we see. A menu uploaded as a PDF download or as a scanned image. On a phone that means waiting for a download and then zooming and dragging left and right just to read a price. Google also does not read text that sits inside an image, so the name of your dish does not exist as far as it is concerned. A menu should be an ordinary page on the site, with real text, that loads immediately.
In the same survey 33% said a site that is hard to navigate put them off and 30% said a site that looked old put them off. This is not about aesthetics. A restaurant whose website looks abandoned suggests the restaurant might be abandoned too.
Why a restaurant in Eilat does not show up in the big searches
We checked five years of searches about Eilat from inside Israel in Google Trends and gathered the findings in our demand map. What stood out there was food, by its absence. At the top of the list of searches related to Eilat sit hotels and weather and shops. There is not one restaurant.
That does not mean people are not searching for somewhere to eat. They search a great deal, it is just spread across dozens of different phrasings. One types restaurants in Eilat. Another looks for where to eat in Eilat with kids. A third asks about fresh fish and a fourth wants a kosher restaurant. Each phrasing on its own is too small for the top of the list, but together they are the whole market.
That is good news for a small restaurant. Every hotel and portal competes over the general phrases. Over the exact question your customer asks there is almost no competition. A page that answers precisely that can rank high without a chain budget. We expanded on the method in our guide to promoting a business in Eilat.
There is one more reason those searches do not appear in the measurement. Many of them happen once the tourist is already in Eilat. Google travel research found that 85% of travelers decide on activities only after arriving at the destination. They sit in the hotel and search for somewhere to eat nearby. For that search a Google Business Profile is worth more than any page on your site.
What the AI chats answer when you ask about a restaurant in Eilat
In September 2026 we asked an AI search engine the question an ordinary person would type. A recommended restaurant in Eilat. The engine answered with the names of two specific restaurants and displayed ten sources it drew the answer from.
It is worth pausing on what happened there. The engine did not point to a list of twenty restaurants. It picked two and gave them as the answer. Anyone who did not appear in that answer simply did not exist for the person asking.
And what decided who did appear was not the restaurant website but what is written about it elsewhere. Local tourism sites, business directories and articles. That is exactly what we do in our GEO service, and we set out the same logic in our guide to the Google Business Profile.
Table booking: what happens when there is no way to book
A diner who has decided they want you needs a way to close it now. If the only way is a phone call you lose everyone searching while you are closed and everyone who simply does not like calling. In season in Eilat it also means an engaged line exactly in the hours when demand peaks.
The answer does not have to be an expensive system. A simple form that lands in your WhatsApp covers most of what a small restaurant needs. A larger restaurant will want real availability management so it does not take a booking for a table that is already taken.
| How they book | Who it suits | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Phone only | A small restaurant with steady occupancy | Misses everyone searching while closed and everyone who will not call |
| A form that lands in WhatsApp | Most small and mid sized restaurants | Someone has to answer. A booking with no confirmation is a lost booking |
| A booking system with availability | A restaurant with several sittings and changing occupancy | Needs constant updating. A system that is out of date is worse than none |
| A booking link on the Google profile | Every restaurant | That is where they see you first. For a tourist searching nearby it is the front door |
Delivery and the commission nobody sees
Delivery apps bring orders and that makes them hard to give up. But it is worth knowing what they cost. According to a calculation published by the Israeli business daily Globes in January 2025, the commission charged by the leading platform in Israel stands at about 27%, and at the end of the process the restaurant is left with 68 shekels out of a 100 shekel order. The Israeli restaurateurs association filed a complaint on this with the Competition Authority and the matter was debated in the Knesset Economics Committee.
The conclusion is not to abandon the apps. They bring customers who had never heard of you. The conclusion is that you should also have a way to order directly. The customer who already ate with you and wants to again does not need a middleman, and on a direct order no platform commission comes off at all.
The simple way to move people there is to give them a reason. Something small that exists only on a direct order. And to mention it where the customer already is. On the packaging, on the receipt and on a sign at the door.
Photos that sell and photos that hurt
Food sells through the eyes, so photos are not decoration but part of the menu. Three points that come up on every restaurant site we build.
- Photos of your dishes and not stock photos. A diner recognises a stock image and understands they are not really seeing what will arrive at the table
- One good photo per dish beats five mediocre ones. A menu with forty images loads slowly and on a phone that ends in people leaving
- Photos compressed to a modern format. A heavy image is the most common reason for a slow site, and a slow site loses the person standing in the street and hungry
English and Hebrew, and why it matters most in Eilat
In Eilat a large share of diners do not read Hebrew. A tourist from abroad searches in English and asks different questions. What is there here that is vegetarian. Where do people eat near the beach. Do you need to book ahead. A restaurant whose menu exists only in Hebrew takes itself out of the running with that audience.
Machine translating the site does not solve it. Dish names translated automatically come out strange and sometimes funny, and a tourist who sees that stops trusting the rest of the site. A menu page in English written by a person is a day of work and it lasts for years. We expanded on this audience in our guide to a website for a tourism business.
And if you are kosher or have a vegetarian or gluten free menu, that has to be written in text and somewhere visible. These are exactly the precise searches we talked about, and you cannot show up in them if the information is buried inside a picture of a menu.
What to build first and how urgent it really is
A restaurant does not need everything on day one. This is the order we work in when a restaurant comes to us.
- First. A full and current Google Business Profile with correct opening hours and real photos. That is what the tourist already in Eilat sees first, and it is free
- Second. A real menu page on the site. Text and not an image. Hebrew and English
- Third. One clear way to book a table that works while you are closed too
- Fourth. Photos of your own dishes, compressed properly
- Fifth. Direct food ordering, if delivery is a meaningful part of the business
- Sixth. Content that answers the exact questions the customer asks. That is the part that works over time, which is also why it comes last
Sources and verification
As in every article on this blog, every number here was checked against its source. This is how we checked this time.
- The MGH survey on diner behavior online. 1,101 adults in the United States. 77% visit a website before a meal or an order. 33% were put off by a site that is hard to navigate and 30% by a site that looked old. The survey was published in August 2019 and is cited here with that date
- A calculation published by Globes in January 2025 on the commission charged by the leading delivery platform in Israel. About 27%, and 68 shekels left to the restaurant out of a 100 shekel order. Cross checked against parallel coverage in Calcalist and against reporting on the Knesset Economics Committee debate and the complaint filed with the Competition Authority by the restaurateurs association
- Our own Google Trends check from August 2026. Five years of searches about Eilat from inside Israel. Restaurants do not appear in the leading list of related searches. The full data is in our demand map article
- Our own check from September 2026. We asked an AI search engine for a recommended restaurant in Eilat and got the names of two restaurants and ten sources
- Google travel research. 85% of travelers decide on activities after arriving at the destination
This is exactly what we do at Website building in Eilat. If you want us to go over it together for your business, write to us.
Frequently asked questions
The Google profile is the single most important thing and a restaurant without one loses whoever is searching nearby right now. But the profile belongs to Google and the social accounts belong to the network. A website is the only place where the menu appears the way you want it and where someone can order without a middleman taking a commission.
Because on a phone it means a download and zooming and dragging, and most people give up along the way. And because Google does not read text inside an image, so your dish names do not exist as far as it is concerned. A menu should be an ordinary page with real text.
It depends mainly on whether you need only a menu and table booking or also food ordering with payment. We set out what goes into the price of a business website in a separate article on website cost. The more useful question is what to build first, and that is set out in the last section here.
No. They bring new customers who had never heard of you. But according to the Globes calculation from January 2025 the commission is about 27% and the restaurant is left with 68 shekels out of 100. So it is worth also having a way to order directly, for the returning customer who already knows who you are.
Yes, and not a machine translated one. A large share of diners in Eilat do not read Hebrew, they search in English and they ask different questions. Dish names translated automatically come out strange and damage the tourist trust in everything else on the site.
You do not compete on the general phrases. You compete on the exact questions the customer asks, like where to eat fresh fish in Eilat or a kosher restaurant near the promenade. There is almost no competition there, and a page that answers exactly that question can rank high without a big budget.
Want us to look at this for your business?
Just write to us on WhatsApp. The first conversation comes with no commitment. 050-294-0127
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