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Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

juliansanchez.com

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Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#11

Post by bdclimber14 »

Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is.

How often do you go to restaurant websites vs. actual restaurants (not including Yelp or Google maps)? Truth is, they just don't matter. The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost. Also, a small business restaurant owner won't know how to operate a CMS. They just figured out email, remember? Worse, is that websites turn from beautiful assets to liabilities.

The nephew of some restaurant owner finally convinces him or her that the restaurant needs a website. The kid builds it for $100, everything is great. Until the business owner needs to change store hours.

"What's that password that kid gave me again? What do I do with that password? He mentioned logging in somewhere... Now that kid has a job at Google or is doing a startup and doesn't have the time to mess with $10/hr type of work anymore. Crap, now all my patrons are expecting me to be closing later and I am turning them down. What a huge pain, I have to go find a new web designer."

The solution needs to be the anti-CMS. Something that's not as simple as email, but as FAMILIAR ... Email is simple, but it was a huge learning curve for that small business owner. And learning something else just as simple will be a huge pain.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#12

Post by angdis »

jshen wrote: post #4
angdis wrote: post #3

Obviously, because the sites are based on decisions made by one person who is not a web design expert. But that's okay, there are ways around that problem for the restaurant-goer: yelp.com provides a useable interface, socially vetted, and normalized so that places can be compared. I hardly bother with the restaurant's site anymore, they're all on yelp.

true, but it makes it hard for those of us working on local search sites to crawl their sites too :/

Oh, you mean "web-crawl".

With restaurants, its much better to "physically crawl", some of the really good hole-in-the-wall places, I think, would be terrible at self-categorization.

I think its much better for restaurants to list themselves with a service like "yelp" or "open-table" or even the local city paper than to try to make anything more than a bare-bones website.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#13

Post by jshen »

byoung2 wrote: post #7
jshen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true, but it makes it hard for those of us working on local search sites to crawl their sites too :/

Look into the Factual API for restaurants to solve this problem.

it looks like most of your data came from crawling us (yellowpages.com)

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#14

Post by dasht »

Because a lot of web site design services sold to restaurants are sold by hucksters.

p.s.: not all hucksters know that that's what they are. Heck, you or I might be one, without meaning to be so. Of course, plenty enough do mean to be so and do awright for themselves that way.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#15

Post by jshen »

angdis wrote: post #12
jshen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true, but it makes it hard for those of us working on local search sites to crawl their sites too :/

Oh, you mean "web-crawl". With restaurants, its much better to "physically crawl", some of the really good hole-in-the-wall places, I think, would be terrible at self-categorization. I think its much better for restaurants to list themselves with a service like "yelp" or "open-table" or even the local city paper than to try to make anything more than a bare-bones website.

you should always own your online presence.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#16

Post by Volscio »

trafficlight wrote: post #10

All I want to see are the menu and the hours of operation.

Word. I want the hours, location, phone number, and menu. All in a format I can copy & paste into my email to convince my friends to go.

I rarely get any of that at a restaurant's web site.

No wonder that it's easier to google/yelp it and use their listings.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#17

Post by jdminhbg »

bdclimber14 wrote: post #11

Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is. How often do you go to restaurant websites vs. actual restaurants (not including Yelp or Google maps)? Truth is, they just don't matter. The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost. Also, a small business restaurant owner won't know how to operate a CMS. They just figured out email, remember? Worse, is that web…

"The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost."

The question I guess is why restaurant owners spend money having flash monstrosities built when most users -- especially those on mobile devices, which is a big use-case for restaurant websites -- would rather see plain-jane HTML with an address, phone number, and menu.

"The nephew of some restaurant owner finally convinces him or her that the restaurant needs a website."

I suspect this is closer to the truth. The restaurant owner demographic probably runs in the same circles as the dilettante designer demographic, so the site is built by a wait(er|ress) with a copy of Flash CS.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#18

Post by sudont »

dasht wrote: post #14

Because a lot of web site design services sold to restaurants are sold by hucksters. p.s.: not all hucksters know that that's what they are. Heck, you or I might be one, without meaning to be so. Of course, plenty enough do mean to be so and do awright for themselves that way.

Touché. Now, just to figure out how to sell our honest and genuine services to them.

Cold calling? Anybody with similar experience? I’m genuinely interested.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#19

Post by sdizdar »

I spent some time doing customer development for my http://wall.si project, so I have some experience with this.

The top four concerns for restaurants are: personnel, personnel, personnel, and personnel.

Cool looking web site is really peripheral for many restaurants. Mobile support .. What?

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#20

Post by dasil003 »

One reason for menus in PDF is because the menus may change frequently, and a PDF is easy to create from their actual print menus. It doesn't seem like a big deal to update both an InDesign layout and a website, but if different people do those two things, then it's quite likely a mistake will be made, so it's smart just to use the already proofed version.
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