Here at Sonjara, in addition to making public-facing websites, we make a lot of login-based web applications for an organization's internal administration. While it's important for these apps to be both attractive and usable (because otherwise, your administrative users will not enjoy using them and may not use them at all), these are even more important qualities for your public web presence to have. After all, your public site is probably the first thing people see when they find out about you, and where they go to look for important information.
For example,
when I'm not making websites, I enjoy seeking out good food and drink. I have a
lot of places I'll go to regularly because I know and love them, but even so, I'm
always interested in trying new places, and the first place I'll typically go
to find info on a new bar or restaurant is its website. Okay, this is not
entirely true; rather than typing nameofawesomelydeliciousrestaurant.com in
my web browser, crossing my fingers, and hoping that it doesn't send me to
either a restaurant in Boca Raton, FL or a site that would be better served by
one of those new .xxx domains, I will actually Google the restaurant name. The
first things that come up are usually Google map entries and Yelp reviews,
which are also helpful but generally not what I'm looking for just yet. I want
your actual restaurant website and I want to find all the information I'm
looking for on it, within a few clicks or less. Maybe I'm a demanding consumer or maybe I'm expecting too much. But guess what? I'm your ideal consumer. I eat
out a lot. You want me to come to your restaurant, and you want to make me
happy. If this isn't the case, you might be in the wrong business.
Important
tip: Put yourself in my (your audience!) shoes. If you were going to a
website for a bar or restaurant, what would you expect to see there? I know I'm
always looking for the most basic information and I want to find it as quickly
as possible because it's probably 9:30 on a weeknight and I've forgotten to
feed myself again and I need to find out if your restaurant is open until 10
(in which case I won't come bother you when your kitchen is obviously closing
soon; hey, I have friends in the restaurant biz, I get it) or 11 (in which
case I'm so totally there).
Things that I am looking for on a restaurant website:
Things that restaurant websites typically have on them:
Burying your
location and hours somewhere beyond the front page is just silly. That's key
information that prospective diners are looking for. This should be a
no-brainer for improving your site: If you don't have the location and hours on
your homepage, put them there. And ditch the Flash; most users are loading the
site on their iPhones and can't see it anyway, and we don't want to hear music
while we're most likely at work but taking a five-minute break to make dinner
plans for that night. Don't worry, your restaurant is still a beautiful and
unique snowflake even without the animation and music. Actually, since a
majority of restaurant websites seem to have these unnecessary distractions on
them, if you get rid of them, you WILL be unique (and well respected).
As for most
restaurants' serious dependency on using PDFs for their menus, here are what I
think are the potential arguments restaurant proprietors might have for using
PDFs, and I'll provide a more elegant, accessible solution for each one:
The PDF looks just like my printed menu, with my brand and my fonts.
Putting up a new PDF is so easy compared to changing the content on my website.
I don't want my website to just be plain boring HTML.
In fact, the
whole inspiration behind writing this post popped into my head when I saw Beast and
the Hare's site after a San Franciscan friend of mine chatted me up to say, "Hey, check out this restaurant I'm going to tonight," probably in an attempt
to make me jealous of his culinary pursuits. But instead of being jealous of
the admittedly awesome-looking food he was going to eat, I was instead angry
that I had never before seen such a simple and informative yet still beautiful
restaurant website.
To say that
I was furious, in fact, would not be an overstatement. This seems like such an
easy problem to solve, and it's frustrated me repeatedly since the mid-2000s.
It doesn't seem like things are getting better on the whole, though Beast and
the Hare gives me a glimmer of hope and I want to go there and give them all
my money as a result. Well done, Beast and the Hare. And now, step out of my
shoes as hyperactive restaurant-goer and into the shoes of your audience,
whoever they might be, whatever products or services you offer. What is the
most basic information they are
coming to your site to see? How can you elegantly display that information and
make your audience happy? If you're still at a loss, ask us for help.
In the meantime,
have you noticed this same phenomenon, or is this a sign I go out to eat too
much? What are the best and worst restaurant or bar websites you've ever seen?
Are there sites out there that are more guilty of these sins than the food and
beverage industry?
Related Articles:
Your Public Website is for your Audience, not you.
Five Can't-Miss Signs That Your Website Needs a Redesign