Case study · Web design · Romania
Il Forno
A Neapolitan pizzeria's digital storefront
The founder learned his dough in Naples, under Vincenzo — thirty years at the peel. He brought the method home to Str. Memorandumului: a wood-fired Visciano oven, San Marzano tomato from the slopes of Vesuvius, Casolare mozzarella carried in from Naples. The pizza was already Neapolitan to the bone. The site had to earn the same word — vera — and put the menu one tap from an order.
The challenge
Appetite starts before the first bite.
Most people meet a pizzeria before they smell it. They meet it on a phone, standing in a kitchen at 8pm, deciding where dinner comes from. Il Forno had the harder half sorted — the recognised Visciano oven at the centre of the room, tomato from the volcanic soil of Vesuvius, an open kitchen with a screen on the dough so you watch your pizza take the flame, and a bottega along the wall selling the wines, pastas and sauces the kitchen trusts. None of that reaches a first-time visitor scrolling in the dark.
So the site had one job before charm: read as genuinely Neapolitan in three seconds — not a template with a red-and-green flag, but the real thing — and turn a hungry, distracted, small-screen visitor into an order in as few taps as possible. It had to open fast, say “Vera Pizza Napoletana” and mean it, and never leave anyone hunting for the Glovo button. And it had to launch the day the doors did — no soft period, no placeholder, the storefront live the moment the first pizza came out.
What we built
A menu you can almost taste
We built the whole thing end to end — design, development, hosting — on WordPress with Elementor Pro, so nothing about it looks like WordPress. Near-black navy, a white mark, and food shot large and close: the leopard-spotted cornicione, the tartufo, the crudo draped over rocket. Romanian copy that says what it means — “Tradiție napoletană în inima Clujului” — and, quietly confident, “Maybe the best pizza in Cluj-Napoca.” Every screen points one direction — eat — with Glovo, Bolt Food and Wolt within thumb's reach and the phone, +40 722 431 315, a tap behind them.
Underneath sits a menu the team runs itself. Margherita at 41, Al Tartufo at 60, a new focaccia on a Friday — when a price moves or a pizza joins the twenty-three, the kitchen edits it, no ticket, no wait. Local SEO tuned for how Cluj actually searches — “pizza Cluj”, “Napoletana delivery” — points nearby phones straight to the oven, and hosting we look after keeps it all standing. We shipped it live at opening, on schedule.
A row of signature Neapolitan pizzas, cornicione charred and puffed
In practice
What went into it
Web design
A dark, near-black interface where large, close-cropped food photography carries the room — no flags, no clichés.
Web development
Built end to end on WordPress and Elementor Pro, mobile-first because the order starts on a phone.
Menu system
The team updates all twenty-three pizzas, prices and the bar themselves, without touching a developer.
SEO
On-page local optimisation for “pizza Cluj” and “Napoletana delivery” so nearby searches find the oven first.
The outcome
Launched
Live on ilforno.ro at opening, on schedule
1 partner
Design, build, menu, SEO and hosting from a single team
3 channels
Glovo, Bolt Food and Wolt ordering one tap from any page
Mobile-first
Optimized for the phones where most orders begin
Il Forno opened with a site as authentic as its dough — live and ordering from the first day, on schedule and from one team. The kitchen keeps the menu current itself, and every visit lands one tap from Glovo, Bolt Food, Wolt or the phone.
How we work
Four steps, every time.
Discovery call
Thirty free minutes to understand the business, the market, and where the money actually leaks.
Custom strategy
A plan built around the one metric that matters — not a template, not a channel checklist.
Implementation
Senior hands build it: campaigns, pages, tracking — the whole funnel wired as one system.
Monitor & optimise
We watch the numbers every week and cut what doesn’t pay, so results compound instead of fading.
I worked with Cittago for website design and promotion campaigns. They have a very professional and innovative team. It was a pleasure to work with them because they have good ideas and the implementation process was fast. We will definitely collaborate in the long term!
A fair first step
Curious what we would cook up for you?
Thirty minutes with a senior strategist, no script and no pitch. We'll look at how your business shows up online and sketch what we would do first — yours to keep, whoever does it.
15 years · 5.0 on Google · 56 brands · 11.4× average return on ads · 6 countries
