What Is It About Restaurant Websites?
portlandfoodanddrink.comDavid Chang's Momofuku has a great website for its restaurants:
Everything is pretty stripped down and simplified. No gratuitous use of flash.
I also like their use of reservations, for the most part the system is set up to treat everyone as equals, so its not like a celeb can just come in:
"In March 2008, Chang opened Momofuku Ko, a 12 seat restaurant that takes reservations six days in advance, online only, on a first-come-first-served basis, without regard to social status or income. The highly limited seating, along with Chang's popularity in New York, has caused a furor, generating frustration for both influential and ordinary people who have failed to secure a reservation"
A few weeks ago a post of the same nature as this was posted. It's worth noting: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130419
Here is a restaurant website for a UK based chain that we just launched (in Dec 09).
I feel its both attractive and functional. Its primarily supposed to be a website (i.e used from a normal web browser) but will work fine on your iphone.
There is no flash but we've used jquery extensively for 'flashiness'.
There is also prominent twitter/flickr and facebook engagement throughout.
There are menu's (web based and pdf choices), offers and locations. Try googling for 'giraffe menu' - the menu is the top hit.
We spent a while fine tuning the location finder http://giraffe.net/restaurants which uses the google API to provide 'a nearest list' functionality. Once you chosen a restaurant it will also provide you with a list of other restaurants close to your choice.
The site www.usabilitypost.com did a feature on the location finder as we've also done something cool with the location search box.
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/11/30/search-dropdown-hybr...
The idea behind the site is simple. Get people to the restaurants. We've had a lot of feedback that suggests that it does just that and we're quite proud of the result.
Here's a restaurant web site that I recently used when deciding where to eat with friends. While it wouldn't win any design awards, it had exactly what I needed - a menu, an image of the location, and an address.
A lot of local businesses don't get my business because they don't have or want a web site, and I don't use the yellow pages. A decent web site is becoming increasingly important IMO.
No design awards, but this website does exactly what I want as a restaurant customer.
I can see how small, local businesses fall into the trap of all-flash, all-hard-to-actually-use. But what about a high profile, nationally known restaurant like The French Laundry. Why does their site suck so much?
I just attempted to find the hours for that restaurant, but got too annoyed that it kept opening up new windows...
Reminds me why I generally just type "<restaurant name> menu" into Google, and generally someone has a direct link to a PDF.
The French Laundry isn't the type of restaurant that you check hours (reservations are required and if there is an open spot you take it) or menus (they change daily).
The French Laundry could probably put up an "under construction" graphic without affecting their business in the least.
But a restaurant of its caliber should have a good website, regardless.
Being a web developer, I agree, obviously, but I'm not sure if it's true. If they're packed to capacity 100% of the time with a crap website, paying for a better one if just an unnecessary expense, isn't it? Especially if they're a small business with no desire to expand into a chain?
But they are a chain, in a sense. Keller is, anyway.
My biggest complaint, among many, is that their ubiquitous Flash intros have a "skip intro" button -- inside the Flash animation. Why do I have Flashblock, again?
Does a website have any effect on the success of a restaurant or other local, offline business?
Restaurant websites are frustrating for me (and you ;-), but do they matter to anyone that doesn't read HN?
Yes they matter. I worked on a website for a national restaurant chain for a while, and they get over 100 million dollars in online orders through their website a year. Same with pizza places. Making it easier to order food on the web brings in a lot of money. If this process is painful, it will have a definite impact on revenue.
You can also directly email customers who spend the most money (based on info in the online ordering database) and send them weekly specials and coupons on the website. This is very effective.
"Pizza Hut is getting 30 percent of its sales online. Moreover, online boosts the amount of sales – online orders are ten percent higher than in-person orders because it is so easy to check off additional or more expensive items." Source: http://localonliner.com/2010/01/29/newspapers-partner-with-a...
I think he was referring to actual restaurants, not "restaurants" like pizza hut. When I think of restaurant I imagine a sit-down place that is not fast food.
These site-down restaurants without take-out/delivery should have all of their information easily available online for potential customers to find before they make a reservation. So, yes, I think that it is still very important to have an easy to use website for a restaurant.
As with most things, form trumps substance when you're selling websites to a local business. They want to have a sexier website than their competitors. Their competitors all have sites with big Flash intros and cool animations and stuff. This is what your layperson cares about when viewing your portfolio; they don't care about functionality across platforms, they don't care about accessibility or immediacy of pertinent information. They just want something that looks "pretty", and even "pretty" usually just turns into useless gobs of Comet Cursors, background music, and Flash.
Actually, we've found success in converting restaurants away from Flash by touting the SEO benefits of pure HTML. Once client of ours ( http://www.bluefinatlanta.com/ ) had their site entirely in Flash (not even a PDF menu!), but showed up nowhere for "sushi bars atlanta". We redid the entire site (with a HTML food menu, thankyouverymuch) and now they're number 2. They're getting a ton more traffic (which they can also now track more effectively by having unique pages) and have totally seen the benefit. It's definitely one of our better case studies for other prospective clients.
TL;DR - You've got to sell them on the business aspects, like SEO.
I agree wholeheartedly. It is a lack of understanding on the part of the business owners for about what a website is FOR and a lack of interest in educating them on the part of the developers on these websites.
I'm sure this isn't an original idea but web development firms should offer a subscription package to owners. This subscription would assist them in monitoring the performance of their total web presence (not just the website which is becoming less relevant these days) and assisting them in improving it. It could certainly prove a point of difference in a saturated market especially if you got a great case study or two behind you to present to customers.
The difficulty is that site developers are just programmers and designers and not salesmen and marketers so they either don't understand or care about what I just talked about or don't know how to sell it to the business owners.
I know what you are saying and this might be the attitude of people who own one restaurant. But when you start dealing with chains and bigger businesses they are much more interested in using the site to engage their customers. It needs to be a delivery method for offers and competitions and like the other commenters point out, SEO is a massive consideration.
Bums on seats is the bottom line.
As with most things, form trumps substance when you're selling Y to X.
Such things tend to devalue the Internet. I think this is part of the problem Yelp is trying to solve.
Most of the fx that restaraunts want to do on their website could be done with jQuery. The http://www.frenchlaundry.com/, for example, is simply a bunch of fade in/out's and a few picture slideshows.
My hunch is many websites are made 1) with a small budget or 2) by a family member or friend who has a pirated copy of a WYSIWYG web dev app (usually flash).
For most your hunch is dead wrong the family member or small budget websites are the ones that look like MSFrontpage and other such website designs.
Flash websites are usually payed for and in good amounts to and they are done by people who don't really understand usability but do know marketability (for themselves) and how to make things look pretty.
Sounds like there is some money to be made here.
I'll never understand the complaint in scenario #2. Use the device in your hand for what it was originally intended, and CALL them.
I'm deaf. How would you suggest that I do this?
Seriously, I do understand the point you're making, but keep in mind that not everyone is interested in the phone portion of their smartphone, or able to make effective use of it. :)
Are there no TTS gateway apps for the Sidekick/iPhone? I know there's websites that let you type phone conversations.
(Missed this comment earlier)
There are. I'm actually a customer of Sprint IP Relay and have a personal number set up with them that's linked to my Google Talk account. However, making a relay call is generally massively frustrating for the parties on both sides of the line, so I tend to avoid it.
I doubt the restaurant has the time to read the menu to me. I'd much rather just look at it on my phone.
As would I. However, these are restaurateurs we're talking about here. They chop animals and plants with metal implements, cook them over fire and serve them on earthenware. It's not exactly a bleeding-edge-tech industry.
If the worst thing about a restaurant is its website, I'm a happy guy. They'll catch up, but I can't say I blame them for focusing on other things.
But that just negates the reason for having a website in the first place. As a business owner surely they don't want their (and their staff's) valuable time taken up fielding phone calls that could be readily solved by a half decent website. Sure it won't be the preferred method for everyone so you will still get phone calls but the cost/benifit ratio is high.
I've never been a fan of this argument.
1) Sure, its called a phone, but thats just because at some point it was a phone. Now its a phone/browser/weak computer/video game system. The name is almost misleading.
You have a good point that its doesn't make sense to complain "I'm using tool A to do job B for which it wasn't made and it doesn't work" but thats no longer the case for many modern "phones."
2) If the restaurant can get more business by adapting to people who "use their phone incorrectly" then they might as well do that (assuming the cost/benefit works out).
What if I don't know the number? I could maybe find it on the website, assuming I could get there.
Google. Weak restaurant websites can use them as a crutch.