If you’ve chosen Toast as your restaurant management point of sale software to help your business grow, it’s likely that you are looking to create a website that will help you cut costs (say bye to third parties), streamline your operations, and grow your restaurant with a site you can own and control. You’ve come to the right place! As marketers and designers, we know that a well-designed website is crucial to getting more orders and sign-ups.
At Slam, we’ve helped small and large businesses with their Toast website design, digital presence (Instagram, TikTok, SEO), and are excited to guide you through the process!
We're offering a free 30-minute session for Toast customers looking to design their website. Book below:
In this guide, we'll share examples of restaurants that have successfully integrated Toast into their website design, along with tips and resources to help you do the same! Ready to create a website that’s beautiful, effective, and functional. First, let’s dive into the basics.
What’s Toast POS and How Does it Help Restaurants?
Toast is a comprehensive restaurant management system that serves as a point of sale, enabling restaurants to enhance their operations, boost sales, and provide an exceptional guest experience.
What Does Toast POS Provide for My Restaurant?
Toast provides several tools and resources that you can use to integrate its point of sale (POS) system with your restaurant's website:
- Toast API: Toast offers a comprehensive API (application programming interface) that developers can use to build custom integrations between Toast and your website. With the API, you can access and manipulate data from your Toast POS, such as menu items, orders, and customer information.
- Toast Webhooks: Toast Webhooks allow you to receive real-time notifications when events occur in your Toast POS system. You can use these notifications to trigger actions on your website, such as updating order status or sending automated emails to customers.
- Toast Online Ordering: Toast Online Ordering is a built-in tool that allows you to create a custom online ordering page for your website. Customers can browse your menu, customize their orders, and pay online directly through your website.
- Toast Integrations: Toast offers integrations with popular third-party software and services, such as Grubhub, Postmates, and DoorDash. These integrations allow you to manage all of your online orders in one place and streamline your operations.
Why is it Important to Have a Great Design for Your Website Using Toast?
Easy answer! Most businesses are found through:
- Google or SEO
- Referrals or word of mouth
- Social media
This means that people will visit your website to find out about your services, reviews, to see if you’re legit and a place they want to try out. Let’s break it down:
- First impressions matter
- User experience
- Stand out from your competition
- Increase online orders and reservations
First Impressions Matter
A website is usually the first interaction a potential customer will have with your business, whether it’s a restaurant, a coffee shop, a hair salon, or a book store. They will form an immediate opinion about your restaurant.
If it looks outdated or unprofessional, it can turn change the reputation of your business.
If it’s slow and hard to navigate, they will bounce pretty quickly too
But think about it – if you design the website and integrate Toast in a way that makes it easy for them to order something with just one click, that’s a big win.
User Experience on Your Toast Website Design
A bad user experience means money left on the table, and potential customers unable to make a reservation, order directly from you, or even contact you. People don’t have time to go through your whole site and look for what they need. Think about the last time you were on a clunky website, and you spent more time than you thought to book a ticket or buy a product. You hated the experience and remembered them poorly.
Investing in great website design that integrates Toast well is what will make your potential customers happy and buy stuff from your company!
Stand Out From Your Competition
Most small businesses have a lot of competition. Dozens of restaurants and coffee shops serving the same stuff are down the street. What can make you stand out?
- Pricing
- Quality of product
- Store vibes and design
- Hours and availability
- Easiness to purchase something
The last one is often taken for granted by most businesses. And for those who use Toast, you’re already standing out. Will I go to the store where I can order ahead for pick-up with 1-2 clicks, or a site that barely loads and looks like it was designed 20 years ago? You know the answer.
Increase Online Orders and Reservations
Integrating Toast into your website is one of the best ways to cut third party costs. Doordash and Uber are taking too much of your money. Plus, you can create a strong loyalty program through their system.
At Slam, we’ve helped many restaurants (and stores) integrate Toast into their website design! And it’s done magic. More orders directly through your system vs. giving a percentage to third parties.
Now you might be wondering, how do you so? We’ll explain! Note how Toast's software can help streamline the ordering process, but it's up to the website design to make that process easy and intuitive for customers.
How to Design & Integrate Toast’s Restaurant Online Ordering System and POS for Your Website
When you use Toast instead of Doordash or Uber Eats, you’re taking charge of the relationship with customers and preserve your profit margins by providing them with the convenience of ordering takeout or delivery directly from you, without any commission fees.
According to Toast, you can save up to $36K a year in commissions. Plus, Toast offers a Loyalty program software and email marketing features for your business. These are big benefits of using Toast!
Now you might be asking…how do I integrate Toast to my restaurant website? Easy! We’ll walk you through the steps:
- Create an account on Toast for your restaurant
- Design a website that ensures easy UX and clear CTA (call to action)
- Test the ordering process to ensure it works smoothly
Create an Account on Toast for Your Restaurant
To create an account on Toast for your restaurant, follow these steps:
- Go to the Toast website and click on the "Get Started" button.
- Fill out the required information, including your name, restaurant name, and email address.
- Next, select your restaurant type, such as full-service, quick-service, or bar.
- You will then be prompted to choose your payment processor and hardware options.
- Once you have completed these steps, you can schedule a demo with a Toast representative to learn more about the software and get started with setting up your account.
Keep in mind that Toast is a paid service, and you will need to sign up for a subscription to use the software. However, Toast offers a free demo and trial period, so you can test the software and ensure it meets the needs of your restaurant before committing to a subscription.
If you have additional questions, call their Sales team at (617) 297-1005
If you already have an account, log-in here.
If you’re under 10 people, check out the Toast Starter Kit. The kit includes:
- A Toast Flex tablet
- A cash drawer
- A receipt printer
- A starter bundle of Toast software
- Toast’s customer service and support (training docs)
Now that you have Toast set-up, let’s break down how you can include Toast on your website design!
Design a Toast website design that ensures easy UX and clear CTA (call to action)
At Slam, we’ve helped businesses like Sprig & Sprout, the leading Vietnamese restaurant in the D.C. area, grow their online orders through SEO and refresh its look and brand.
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This website redesign’s goal was to get more people to order directly from the restaurant and discouraging from ordering through third parties (yep, Doordash and Uber Eats have crazy fees).
To do so, we went through our brand discovery and web design and development process:
- Grab inspiration, create mood-board for copy and design, and align on direction
- Align on content outlines, website structure and sitemap
- Choose the right color scheme (color pairing) and font pairing
- Create a copy doc that matches wire-frames and sitemap
- Design high fidelity mock-ups integrating Toast to CTAs (order, loyalty program, menu)
- Add meta titles and meta descriptions to each page
- Transfer old links to new site
- Set-up the DNS transfer
- Connect to Google Analytics and set-up Google Search Console
- Launch website with Toast links & make some $$$
- Update sitemap on Google Search Console
- Update Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) – if you need tips on small business SEO, read our local SEO guide.
- Training and documentation
For Sprig & Sprout, we added CTAs to different Toast links to:
- The order button
- The reward loyalty program
- Links to download the Google Play Store & App Store
Test and QA the Ordering Process to Ensure it Works Smoothly
Before you finally the launch your website and Toast integration, test all the links!
At Slam, we QA all of our pages with multiple folks, browsers, and for mobile and desktop to ensure all the links and screen sizes are pixel perfect.
Interested in partnering with us? Reach out here!
Choosing the Right Web Platform for Your Restaurant & Toast Integration
Our preferred platform to build a site for small businesses and restaurants is Webflow. The TLDR is that:
- Webflow’s SEO is already built into Webflow natively vs using plug-ins through WordPress
- Because of the lack of plug-ins, most Webflow sites load so much faster than Squarespace or Wix or WordPress.
- For e-commerce businesses, Webflow’s Ecommerce builds off of native parts of the rest of the Webflow CMS.
- Editing the site is smooth! As you navigate your website's front end, you can seamlessly edit content by simply clicking on the designated edit symbols that appear throughout the page. With WordPress, unless you’re a dev, design changes will take some time.
If you’re curious, take a look at our full guide on Webflow vs. WordPress.
Thus, because you don’t need anything customed, Webflow is the right choice for your restaurant and small business. It’s the fastest, most versatile CMS option for your site.
With Sprig & Sprout, the project leads will now be able to update the site’s copy in a couple of seconds vs. relying on a vendor.
Setting up Toast Integration
Check out how we set it up for one of our most recent clients in our case studies!
Case Study: Matteo, an Italian Restaurant in Salt Lake City
Matteo, in their aim to pay homage to their roots while giving visitors and diners an up-to-date and easily navigable UX, sought a website design that encapsulated their entire aesthetic. Our approach? Clean, bold colors, a responsive site experience, clear-cut layout, and images that reflect their physical location—inviting, indulgent, and rustic with a modern flair.
Our implementation of OpenTable and Toast, paired with prominent navigation to each, streamlines online ordering and reservations, making authentic Italian dining a couple clicks away.
Last Tips for Your Toast Web Design
Now that you know how to design a website for your restaurant and integrate it to Toast, here are a couple of things to avoid:
- Don't clutter the website with too much information or too many options.
- Don't make the ordering process too complex or difficult to navigate. It should take 1-2 clicks max for people to get to ordering food
- Don't neglect mobile users, since the majority of folks will come from mobile
Great web design makes a difference and is what makes you stand out from competitors! If you’d like to design a great Toast experience for your website, reach out to us via hello@slammedialab.com or contact us through our form!
Need more small business tips on local SEO, social, or web design? Take a look below!
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