Il Gusto Tavola
A complete digital front door for a new Old City trattoria. Brand, website, print menus, reservations, and local search, built from zero.
Organic result for the restaurant's branded search on Google
Site visitors in the first five weeks after launch
Covers booked directly through the website's reservation channel
Of all covers year to date attributed to the website
Measured via site analytics and OpenTable source attribution, June to July 2026
A restaurant with no digital footprint
Il Gusto opened its doors in Old City with zero online presence. No website, no Google listing, no reservation system, no menus, and a location in one of Philadelphia's most competitive dining corridors.
Old City delivers foot traffic, but modern restaurant discovery happens on Google and OpenTable before anyone walks past the door. The owners needed the entire digital and print foundation ready for opening day: a site that turns searches into reservations, a Google presence that makes the restaurant findable, and physical menus that match the brand guests see online.
A palette drawn from the dining room
Deep navy, warm cream, burgundy, and brass gold, carried through every touchpoint from the first search result to the printed menu on the table.
A classical Italian serif carries the headlines and the printed menus, signaling tradition and craft.
A clean grotesque handles navigation, hours, and calls to action, keeping the practical layer effortless.
Designed around two jobs
A restaurant site has exactly two conversions: view the menu and reserve a table. The four-page WordPress build is structured so every section funnels toward one of those actions, with hours, location, and the BYOB story surfaced exactly where guests expect them.
The build is mobile-first, since most visits arrive from a Google search on a phone, standing somewhere on Chestnut Street.
ilgustotavola.com. Scroll to travel the mobile view from the menu down to the reservation step, the two actions the site is built around.
Lunch and dinner service menus, designed for print and mirrored on the website's menu page.
booked directly through the website channel in the first weeks, about 23% of all covers year to date.
Instead of a generic booking link, the site integrates OpenTable through a RestRef referral URL tagged to the restaurant website. Every reservation that starts on the site is individually attributable in the OpenTable dashboard.
That single decision turns the website into a measurable asset. The site is now the restaurant's second-largest booked-reservation source, behind only the OpenTable network itself and ahead of phone and in-house bookings combined.
OpenTable source report. "Your Network" covers arrive tagged with a Restaurant Website RestRef source.
Findable from day one
I created and verified the Google Business Profile from scratch: hours, photos, menu links, service attributes, and the direct Reserve a table integration through OpenTable.
On the site, I handled metadata, local keyword targeting, and indexing through Search Console. Within the first month the site held the top organic position for branded searches, and the verified profile now surfaces the restaurant's 5.0 Google rating across 21 reviews with one-tap booking, visibility that did not exist before this project.
Branded search results with the completed knowledge panel and Reserve a table action.
Five weeks after launch
Organic result for branded search, ranking above Yelp and OpenTable, with a fully populated knowledge panel and one-tap reservations.
Visitors and 4,404 page views from June 9 to July 16, with daily visitors climbing from single digits pre-launch to a sustained 50 to 140 per day.
Booked through the website's tracked reservation channel, roughly 23% of all covers year to date and the second-largest booked source overall.
Average session at a 40% bounce rate and nearly two pages per session, meaning most visitors reach the menu or the reservation step.
Website, print menus, verified Google Business Profile, and tracked reservation pipeline, all shipped as one coherent system before opening.
Traffic from June 9 to July 16, 2026. The step change in late June marks launch and Google Business Profile verification.
Designed & developed by Jesse Loko
jrocca.com