Does my café need a website if I'm already on Instagram?

A lot of cafés run perfectly well off an Instagram account. You post the new bake, the seasonal drink, the photo of the queue on a Saturday, and your regulars see it. It's free, it's on your phone, and it's where a lot of your customers already are. So I don't think the question is whether Instagram is good. It is. The question is whether it does everything you need it to.

The short answer

If most of your customers are regulars and locals who already follow you, Instagram might be enough for now. If you want people who've never heard of you to find you, read your menu and know when you're open, a website does that a lot better. And most cafés end up wanting both, because they do different jobs.

When Instagram is enough for now

I'd honestly hold off on a website if:

• Most of your trade is regulars and people walking past.
• Your menu's small and doesn't change much, or it's on the board and that's fine.
• You're just starting out and still working out what you sell.
• You haven't got the photos or the words together yet.

In that case, I'd set up a free Google Business Profile first, with your address, your hours and some photos. That gets you on Google Maps, and it's free to do yourself. Then come back to a website when you've outgrown it.

Being found when people search

Think about someone in a new area typing "café near me" or "coffee in [your town]" into Google. What they usually see first is a map with a handful of places on it, and those come from Google Business Profiles. Google says it ranks them mainly on how relevant they are to the search, how close they are, and how well known the business is. Nobody can pay for a better spot in those results, and nobody can promise you one.

What a website adds is somewhere to send people from that profile. The profile has a space for your website, and when someone taps it they land on a page that's all about you, with your menu, your hours and how to find you, not a grid of photos they have to scroll through. Every site I build is set up for Google, which means page titles and descriptions, a sitemap and Search Console. If you haven't got a Google Business Profile yet, I can set that up and link it to the site as an add-on, which is $99.

That's the groundwork done properly, not a promise about where you'll rank. I'd rather be straight about that than sell you a number one spot I can't control.

A menu people can actually read

This is the big one for most cafés. On Instagram, your menu is usually a photo in a post from a few months ago, or a highlight someone has to tap through. On a phone, standing on the pavement, that's a lot of effort.

On a website it can be a proper page. Food and drink, prices, what's vegan or gluten free if that matters to your customers, all as real text people can read and zoom into. When it changes, it gets changed, rather than you posting a new photo and hoping people see the newest one and not the old one.

If you make cakes to order, the site can show what you make, and people can ask about one through the contact form, which comes straight to you.

Hours that are easy to find

Opening hours sound boring until somebody walks over and you're shut. On Instagram they're usually in the bio, if they're there at all, and changes tend to go in a story that's gone in a day.

On a site, your hours sit in one obvious place. If you change them for the winter, you change them once, and your Google Business Profile should match.

Not depending on one app

This one's less obvious, but I think it matters. Your Instagram account belongs to Instagram. They decide who sees your posts, and they don't show every post to everyone who follows you. Instagram has said its feed is ranked for each person, so a post can go out and plenty of your followers might never see it.

And if you ever get locked out of the account, or it gets hacked, which does happen, your menu and your hours go with it until you get it back. A website is in your own accounts. Hosting and the domain are set up in your name, and once it's paid for, the site's yours. It doesn't depend on one app's rules, or on you being able to log in to it.

I'm not saying leave Instagram. I'm saying don't make it the only place your café exists.

Ordering ahead

If you want people to order on the way and pick it up, I'll link the site to Square or similar, so the Order ahead button goes straight to your ordering page there. That's usually the simplest way to do it, and it means your orders stay in the system you already use.

If you want ordering built into the site itself, that's a bigger job, and I quote it separately.

Keeping Instagram in the picture

A website doesn't mean giving up Instagram. The site links to it, clearly, so people who like what they see can follow you.

Showing your latest posts on the site itself is a different thing. It means connecting to Instagram's own system, so it's an integration, which I quote rather than include. For most cafés, I think a clear link and a few good photos of your own on the site do the job.

What it'd cost for a café

What decides it is your menu. A menu people can look through makes it a Business site, which starts at $1,999. If people mainly need your hours and where to find you, Starter covers it, from $999. Those are founding prices for my first 5 clients, and they go up after that.

The websites for cafés page has a checklist for this. Tick what your café needs and it'll show you which package it lands on, and if you're still not sure, pick either and I'll tell you on the call which one fits, even if it's the cheaper one.