Featured case study · Hospitality · Boronia
1947 Cafe: from a page Google couldn’t read to 36 pages in search.
1947 Cafe is a Palestinian and Levantine cafe in Boronia, in Melbourne’s east. Its old website was a single static page nobody at the cafe could edit, with a menu Google couldn’t read. We rebuilt it as a custom WordPress site the owner runs himself, with online bookings, a full catering system, local SEO and analytics built in.
Live since August 2026. Figures from Google Search Console and the site’s own analytics.
- Client
- 1947 Cafe, Boronia VIC
- Industry
- Hospitality, Palestinian and Levantine
- Platform
- Custom WordPress theme, no booking or form plugins
- Live
- August 2026, cared for monthly
The results
What changed in the second month after launch.
Search Console, 1 Oct to 3 Nov 2026 against 28 Aug to 30 Sep 2026. Bookings and calls from the site’s own analytics, 8 Oct to 4 Nov 2026.
- 4×Pages showing in Google, from 9 to 36
- +64%Clicks from searches that don’t name the cafe
- 19Online booking requests in 28 days, 18 confirmed
- 3.2Average Google position for “cafe boronia”
- +125%Clicks from Google to the booking page
- 31Call taps from the site in 28 days
The starting point
41 issues, on a page nobody could edit.
Before the rebuild, the cafe’s website was a static HTML page. Our audit found 41 issues across seven areas. The ones costing the cafe customers:
- Trading hours that contradicted each other on the same site
- Two different phone numbers across the site and directories
- A menu drawn by JavaScript, so Google couldn’t read a single dish
- Broken preview images whenever the link was shared
- www and non-www versions of the site competing with each other
- No way to change a dish, price or opening hour without a developer
- No online bookings, no catering enquiries and no useful analytics
The brief
- A site the owner updates himself: menu, prices, hours and photos
- Online table bookings the owner approves by hand, with no auto-confirm
- A proper catering offer with an enquiry flow
- Be found on Google for the cafe’s name and for local searches like “cafe Boronia”
- Keep the real brand: colours from the existing logo, and no invented story
What we built
One site that runs the menu, the bookings and the catering.
Hand-built in WordPress with no page builder, booking or form plugins, so every part works the way the cafe does.
- 01
Design from the real brand
A design system built from colours sampled from the cafe’s own logo, with no invented history or story.
- Olive, terracotta and cream, with olive on cream at 8.27:1 contrast (AAA)
- Fraunces headings, Inter body text and Amiri for Arabic
- A bottom bar on phones for call, directions and booking
- A footer directory linking every menu section, dietary page and catering page
- 02
A menu the owner runs
Every dish is its own entry: name, description, price, dietary tags, photo and an on/off switch.
- 88 dishes across 17 sections, each section with its own page
- Multi-size pricing for drinks
- Vegan, vegetarian and gluten-friendly pages that update themselves
- Switch a dish off and it disappears everywhere at once
- 03
Online bookings, no plugin
Guests pick a live 30-minute slot. The owner approves every booking by hand, and the guest is emailed when he confirms.
- Capacity per slot, a maximum party size and a 60-day booking window
- Last booking an hour before close
- One-click statuses: pending, confirmed, cancelled, no show, closed
- Duplicate checks, booking references and strict date validation against overbooking
- 04
A catering system
Catering is a big part of the business, so it has its own menu, occasion pages and enquiry inbox.
- 56 items across 14 sections, with section photos
- Eight occasion pages, from office and funeral catering to Ramadan and Christmas
- An enquiry form on every page, with a pick-from-the-menu picker
- Enquiries tracked as viewed, replied, booked or closed, with emails to the owner and the customer
- 05
Local SEO
Built to be found for the cafe’s name and for the local searches its customers make.
- Restaurant, menu, opening hours and booking structured data, down to each dish’s dietary info
- Unique titles and descriptions, clean canonicals and an XML sitemap
- Landing pages for Palestinian food in Melbourne and nearby suburbs
- Search Console and GA4 set up from day one
- 06
Analytics the owner can read
GA4 built into the theme, plus a dashboard inside WordPress that shows what visitors actually do.
- Visitors, page views and the most visited pages
- Actions taken: calls, directions, bookings and enquiries
- Period comparison and CSV export
- No cookies, no IP addresses stored, and staff visits never counted
- 07
A clean launch
The move off the old static host, with everything set up in the cafe’s own name.
- Domain moved into the owner’s name
- Hosting in the cafe’s own account, with SSL
- Authenticated email, so booking and enquiry emails actually arrive
- A written website guide for the owner
- 08
Care every month
Since launch, the site has been audited and improved every month.
- Fixes across bookings, catering and analytics
- Accessibility: visible keyboard focus and contrast fixes
- Security: user-name leaks closed
- Performance: font and image loading tuned
- 09
A local print campaign
Twenty print-ready pieces that bring people from the counter and the street to the website.
- Offer flyer, takeaway menu, catering brochure and order form
- Business and loyalty cards, gift vouchers and Google review table cards
- Window decals, A-frame inserts, a pull-up banner and packaging stickers
- Eight tracked QR codes, so every printed piece shows up in the site analytics
Results in detail
The numbers, straight from Google.
Search Console, 1 Oct to 3 Nov 2026 against 28 Aug to 30 Sep 2026.
| After | Before | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pages showing in Google | 36 | 9 | 4× |
| Clicks from searches not naming the cafe | 59 | 36 | +64% |
| Click rate on those searches | 3.9% | 2.2% | Up 1.7 points |
| Menu page average position | 3.6 | 5.0 | Up 1.4 places |
| Menu page clicks | 47 | 37 | +27% |
| Booking page clicks | 9 | 4 | +125% |
| Total Google clicks | 502 | 483 | +4% |
| Total impressions | 5.83K | 5.55K | +5% |
| Average position, all searches | 6.0 | 6.3 | Up |
| Different searches the site appeared for | 436 | 397 | +10% |
Where the cafe ranks
Average Google position, 1 Oct to 3 Nov 2026.
- “1947 boronia”#1.0
- “cafe boronia”#3.2
- “boronia cafes”#3.8
- “palestinian restaurant melbourne”#7.1
What visitors did
Site analytics, 8 Oct to 4 Nov 2026 (28 days).
- Visitors827
- Page views1,977 (2.4 per visitor)
- Online booking requests19, with 18 confirmed
- Call taps31
- Directions taps3
- Catering enquiries2
- Contact messages1
By the numbers
The size of the build.
All of it custom, all of it editable by the owner.
- 24kLines of custom code, with no page builder, booking or form plugins
- 88Menu dishes across 17 sections and 3 dietary pages
- 56Catering items across 14 sections and 8 occasion pages
- 38Pages in the sitemap, from 10 page templates
- 3Local search landing pages
- 20Print pieces, with 8 tracked QR codes
Timeline
From audit to print, in four stages.
Every stage scoped in writing before work started.
- 01
Audit
August 2026. 41 issues across 7 areas, ranked by what was costing the cafe customers.
- 02
Build and launch
August 2026. Custom theme, menu, bookings and catering, live in late August.
- 03
SEO and care
September to November 2026. Landing pages, structured data, accessibility, security and speed.
- 04
Print campaign
November 2026. Twenty print pieces with tracked QR codes, linking the counter to the site.
The result
Built for the owner to run.
The owner now updates his own menu, prices, hours and photos, approves bookings and answers catering enquiries from one place. Google can read every dish, and more people find the cafe through searches that don’t use its name.
- Client
- 1947 Cafe, a Palestinian and Levantine cafe
- Location
- Boronia, Melbourne’s eastern suburbs
- Scope
- Audit, custom website, bookings, catering, local SEO, analytics, monthly care and a print campaign
Want your website working as hard as you do?
Send us your current site. We will send back a plain-English report on speed, search and enquiries, with the fixes ranked by what matters most. It is how the 1947 Cafe project started.