“Never Said About Restaurant Websites” - Too True

by: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

If hilarious Tumblrs and Web inside jokes are your idea of fun, you must check out the low-key but completely hysterical new blog “Never Said About Restaurant Websites.”

A few gems:

“I hope the phone number and address are actually images so I can’t copy and paste them!”

—No persons

“I like when the music blasts as soon as the site loads. It signals to everyone at work that I am going out to eat!”

—No one I know.

“I go to restaurant websites for the ambiance.”

—Anyone?

Of course, as Slate.com’s Farhad Manjoo pointed out back in August in his very funny article, “Overdone: Why are Restaurant Websites So Horrifically Bad?” the blog brings up a very real problem. While many other small businesses have managed to use their online presence to their advantage, with sharply designed sites, high-quality content and plenty of useful information for potential customers, too many restaurants still seem to be behind the curve.

Features like music that plays automatically, complicated flash animation, “welcome” pages that have to be manually “skipped,” menus that take forever to load as separate PDFs, while they may feel so early 2000s, seem to be mainstays of even the finest restaurants’ websites. And for the life of us, we can’t figure out why that is.

After all, most customers head to a site, especially that of a restaurant, for the most basic information:

·      What are the hours?

·      Where is it located?

·      Can I make a reservation?

·      What’s on the menu?

And yet it seems we have to wade through multiple verses of whatever odd love song the restaurant’s (presumably in-house) website designer thought conveyed the “mood” of the place before we can track down a menu, and even then, breakfast, lunch, dinner & drinks all have to load separately…As PDFs.

What gives?

We’ve got some advice for restaurant owners out there: Leave the website flourishes behind, and instead, invest some time in a clean, well-designed site, with clean, well-written content. Present the relevant information in a prominent place that’s easy for patrons to find, and maybe even consider allowing customers to do things like book reservations online. These days, simplicity and high-quality content, not bells and whistles, rule the Web.

And please, oh please, don’t make us listen to “That’s Amore” again! 

Shoot us a note if you want the names of some fab site designers we heart.

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?