How to take bookings on your restaurant's own website

People who find you on your website or social media are often ready to book. If the only way to book is to ring during service, many won't bother. A booking form on your own website takes bookings at any hour and sends them straight to you.

Your own website or a booking marketplace

Marketplaces list many restaurants together and can bring you guests who have never heard of you. Some charge for every guest they send, including guests who would have found you anyway. A form on your own website is for the people who already know you: regulars, locals and anyone who searched for you by name. Some guests will also find you through search engines such as Google.

You can use both. What matters is that every booking, from the phone, the form or a marketplace, ends up in the same place, so you never give one table to two parties. Our guide to stopping double bookings covers that.

What the form should ask

Keep the form short. Every extra question loses some guests before they finish.

Date and party size first, because they decide which times you can offer.
A time, chosen from the times you can actually seat them.
Name, phone number and email address, so you can reach them and they can receive a confirmation.
An optional note for allergies, a birthday or a pushchair, kept short.

Only offer times you can seat

This is the rule that matters most. A form that accepts any time the guest types results in double bookings and evenings you can't run. Before a time is offered, it should take account of:

your opening hours on that day, and the last time you can seat a full sitting;
how long a sitting lasts, plus the time it takes to clear and reset the table;
whether a table that seats that party is free for the whole sitting;
any tables you keep back for walk-ins.

A simple form that emails you requests is better than nothing, but then the guest doesn't know whether they have a table until you reply, and you have to check and answer every request by hand.

Ask larger parties to call

Set a largest party size for online bookings and ask bigger groups to call instead, with your phone number on the form. A large group often needs a conversation: a set menu, tables pushed together, or an earlier or later time that works better for both of you.

Confirm straight away, and let guests change or cancel

Send a confirmation as soon as the booking is made, with the date, time, party size and your phone number. Guests who don't hear back often book somewhere else as well, just in case.

Give them a way to change or cancel without phoning. Plans shift: a friend drops out, a train runs late, or the evening suits better an hour later. If changing a booking means ringing during your busiest hours, some guests won't bother and simply arrive with the wrong number or at the wrong time, and others won't turn up at all.

A link in the confirmation email that lets guests move the time, change the party size or cancel makes things smoother for you too. Your staff aren't pulled away from the floor to take calls, your bookings stay accurate without anyone retyping them, a cancelled table comes back while you can still fill it, and a larger party is seated at a table that fits them instead of being squeezed in on the night.

Allergy notes

Guests will use a notes section to tell you about allergies. Under UK data protection law, allergy and other health details are a special kind of personal information, so the form should explain what you will use a note for and ask the guest to agree before it is saved.

Putting it on your website

Whoever looks after your website will need to know where the form goes. A checklist:

Put a "Book a table" link on every page, at the top, not only on a contact page.
Give the form its own page, so you can link to it from social media and emails.
Try it on a phone, where most guests will use it.
Make a test booking yourself, then change and cancel it. That way you've tried every step your guests will use.
Keep your phone number on the same page, for guests who would rather call or who have any issues.

How Tables & Floors does it

Tables & Floors gives you a booking form to add to your website: copy two lines of code from your Settings and paste them into your booking page, or send them to whoever looks after your site.

Guests choose a date and party size and can pick only the times a table is free for the whole sitting, including clearing time. Tables you keep for walk-ins are never offered.
Parties larger than your online limit are asked to call you.
Larger parties are given two or three tables next to each other automatically when no single table fits.
Guests are asked to agree before a note is saved, as UK data protection law requires.
Each guest receives a confirmation email with a private link to amend or cancel their booking before their booked time.
The booking appears straight away on every tablet and phone you use, marked as new until someone acknowledges it.

A guest books on their phone, and the restaurant acknowledges the new reservation (no sound).

See online booking and guests changing their own booking on the features page.