Cooking up bad restaurant websites
Happy Monday, everyone. Hope you had a great weekend.
One of my colleagues last week drew my attention to a funny article on Slate.com about restaurant websites. The writer, Farhad Manjoo, takes to task the owners of some high-end restaurants such as Fleur de Lys in San Francisco, Buddakan in New York and Cavatore in Houston for what he calls”maliciously poorly designed pages” so flashy and difficult to navigate that they are a complete waste of readers’ time.
Manjoo seems to be saying that people just want to know whether the food sounds good and the prices sound doable, but instead they get a lot of show and pizazz, with little valuable content.
I’ve noticed that a lot of restaurant chains and some of the fanciest restaurants in America have very flashy, sometimes annoying websites. But none of that has ever bothered me as much as searching for a restaurant online, only to find that they have no online presence at all, not even a Facebook page.
To me, it seems obvious that if you’re going to open a restaurant, you should have someplace for people to land when they search your name. A lot of folks use the Internet for all of their searching needs these days, and that includes searches for places to eat. When I look up a restaurant, I’m often looking for the telephone number, address and the menu.
I have no problem with restaurants skipping their own web pages for Facebook pages. Some restaurant Facebook pages have more useful information, including uploaded menu pages, than their websites may have had. And I enjoy seeing the community around a restaurant, which comes out in the comments left by regulars. Choosing Facebook also saves money, which makes a lot of sense for restaurateurs these days.
What do you think of Manjoo’s article, if you care? Do you have a favorite local restaurant website?
August 15, 2011 - 10:27 AM
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Given our food allergy concerns, restaurant websites can truly make or break a potential visit. Most chains have good information available pertaining to which foods contain various allergens, or have a list of allergen-friendly menu items available. That helps a lot.
For local restaurants or regional chains that have only a handful of locations, I understand why they may not have as much detailed information available, but it’s definitely helpful to have some idea of the menu and a contact area, so I can e-mail or call and get additional information.
I’m not sure I have a favorite restaurant website out there, but I will agree that any business, restaurant or otherwise, lacking any web presence outside of a listing on Yelp, Urban Spoon, or the Yellow Pages is a lot less likely to get my business, because I don’t get much of anything helpful from those.
I’ve seen several bad websites for restaurants. I really dislike when restaurants only have a Facebook page online, as though they’re too juvenile and interested in chatting to create a serious presence on the internet. Frankly, I don’t know why all restaurants, no matter the size or niche, don’t have websites. They don’t have to be flashy, they can be just enough to give location, phone number, and menus.
How hard is that? Pay a busboy $100 to create a website for you, and update it when you update your menu, every 4-5 years. (That’s addressed to the blue plate diner type restaurants who still don’t understand the internet).
Here is a perfectly functional website for a very unpretentious restaurant…
http://www.thepinetavern.com/
three of my favorite restaurants, Crock & Roll, Rockfish and Local Roots, all happen to have good websites!
http://crockandrollsoups.com/
http://www.localrootsrestaurant.com/
http://www.rockfishfood.com/
Lindsey, just read the Look who’s cooking: Robin Reed. Any chance of getting the recipe for BBQ chicken vinegar based from Harrisonburg?
Carol, I will certainly ask Robin and let you know!
I largely agree with the article. There’s nothing more annoying than having to fight through a slow Flash-based website to try to squeeze some basic information out of it, all while enduring the constant loop of some cheesy auto-play music…
When I’m looking for a place to take someone special to dinner, I’m generally looking at a couple of places at a time, trying to decide on the one that best fits our plans. I generally already know a bit about their style and reputation, so all the “ambiance” is really unnecessary. What I need are the hard facts: times, places, menu details, and contact info for reservations (or even better, an online reservation system).
I wish all restaurants had web sites. When I go to a site, I want the menu and prices. Make them easy to find. The food should be the primary focus, not a biography of the chef.
Because people do have allergies, it would be nice if they told you the ingredients in a dish. Fix it so that you can click on a dish and find out.
My needs are pretty basic when it comes to restaurant Web sites – all I really need is a phone number and address or map and the days and hours they’re open for business. A menu is nice, but not essential. Embedded music on any site is an instant deal-killer.
Using Facebook as a Web site isn’t a turn-off, but if it’s a toss-up between one place with a “real” site and another with a Facebook site, I’ll choose the former. What *really* gets my goat, however, is when a restaurant has their site on Facebook – and it’s locked away from people not on Facebook!
One of my favorite local restaurant sites is for The Red Hen in Lexington (sadly, I haven’t yet had the pleasure of dining there): http://www.redhenlex.com/draft/main.html
The slate.com article should be mandatory reading for the Valley’s restauranteurs, they would be wise to learn from others’ mistakes.
How hard is it to craft a nice looking informational page that easily allows a potential diner to find 1) a phone number 2) an address 3) the hours and 4) a menu? The answer is, it’s not hard at all but owners think expanding “the dining experience” is necessary to their web presence (if they have one at all).
This isn’t as bad an example of some of the sites mentioned in the article but for a quick contrast and compare, consider the following local eateries and their web sites:
http://24churchavenue.com/
A google search lands me on 24 church’s home page. Super, I learn they consider themselves one of the hottest new restaurants and nightclubs downtown but if I want to find out what’s really important to me as a new diner or someone from out of town, I have to click the ABOUT page to learn what their hours actually are. Then, if I want to call for some reason or plug the address into my gps, I have to click on the CONTACT US page to see the full address.
Converserely, let’s consider Metro.
http://www.metroroanoke.com/
Metro’s home page shows all of the key basic information on its home page and even gives a feel for what their dishes look like. All on the same page.
Sure, it takes just a little bit of planning and work to leverage the internet effectively but it should be a given these days that people rely heavily on finding information there, whether it’s at home or on the run from their smart phone/pda.