The author is too kind. Most proprietors of these things are 100% about food and service, and have no clue when it comes to tech. They tend to be very opinionated and tend to slough over anything outside of their core activity. They consider web sites just animated menus, and as such are suckers for sites as mini movies. Then tend to be action and not analysis oriented, so maybe after a few years of fail web sites, they will eventually stumble on what works instead of throwing money at pretentious wanna be movie makers.
Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
101–110 of 134 posts
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another reason certainly is a lack of resources (cash) to commit to the project. Sure, an established, profitable restaurant should have no trouble funding a modest, tidy, professionally built site. But the truth is, most restaurants youre visiting aren't "established" and "profitable."
The restaurant website topic comes up frequently, and this is a frequent response. But there are two reasons it's clearly wrong: 1) Restaurants could jam their hours and menu onto a free theme for much less money than they spend getting a bespoke Flash monstrosity and be vastly more usable, yet do the latter anyway. 2) There are lots of cash-strapped small businesses around that don't have as uniformly unusable websi…
> for much less money than they spend getting a bespoke Flash monstrosity
Actually, that Flash monstrosity with animations and music playing is the cheap option. You don't even need a coder to produce a website like that, just a designer (whereas you usually need at minimum a designer + a coder to build an HTML website). The thing about sucky websites is that they are made by sucky companies, and sucky companies are cheap! (Also many sucky websites are made by very good companies that just have no choice when a repeat client only has a pittance for a new site)
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another reason certainly is a lack of resources (cash) to commit to the project. Sure, an established, profitable restaurant should have no trouble funding a modest, tidy, professionally built site. But the truth is, most restaurants youre visiting aren't "established" and "profitable."
Wouldn't you agree that building a Flash site is harder, more expensive than a simple HTML/CSS site?
Absolutely not. You need a designer to design and build the entire thing in one application for the former, and someone to build the PSD, then slice it, write the HTML and CSS... Flash is a much faster workflow, and it's a workflow that more people are good enough at to make a passable website.
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#104As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons. If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money. Restaurants are also sometimes run…
Mind if I ask what company you work for?
I don't really want to pimp it out because that's not why I'm on HN, but if you want to talk in more depth my email address is on my profile :)
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#105Restaurants have websites? I just use Google Places or Yelp. Not only do I get the hours of operation, a rough idea of the price, and a phone number without even clicking, I also get reviews. Who would even think to look for a restaurant's own page?
Please bear in mind that places is pretty easy to stand out on, currently. The restaurants you are seeing are the ones that have hired (good) SEO people. A little bit of effort currently goes a LONG way on places (in the UK at least), so by looking for restaurants this way you'll still only be seeing a subset of them.
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#106>> Over the last few weeks I've spent countless hours, now lost forever, plumbing the depths of restaurant Web hell I'm sorry but the author of this article has obviously missed the following sites built by the UK based company Engage Interactive. These guys have nailed the UK market and make awesome restaurant websites for some of the biggest chains / names. www.strada.co.uk www.bellaitalia.co.uk www.caferouge.co.uk…
Pocket Diner is the wrong way, IMO, to go about things. It's not really that hard to make a single site that works well on all devices, this is exactly what I meant by spinning more money out of clients by selling them different versions for mobile.
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's really bad, because it's generally totally unnecessary. Menus are generally almost entirely text (unless you're at McDonald's or the Chinese take-out), so there's essentially zero gain from making them a PDF. Meanwhile, they're slower to load and if you're on a device that doesn't support PDF, you're just SOL.
Menus are way more than just text - the layout, relative sizing etc are often very carefully designed to Make More Money. Salon had an article about this last year: http://www.salon.com/food/francis_lam/2010/02/22/how_menus_m...
It's foolish to think that a PDF representation on a 3" screen (or a portrait screen which almost all screen are) has the same effect. The context is different - in a restaurant, I've made a decision to be there, and I'm sitting down physically holding the menu in my hand, often with music in the background, the smell of the food in the place, sitting with friends/family, etc.
In a restaurant, we're in "impulse buy mode", and menus may be oriented around maximizing our impulse buys. Almost without exception, people looking at a website are in research/decision mode, and the same presentation in both makes for a crappy experience.
Rather than using the same stupid layout/pricing tricks in a crappy PDF on a website, they should be using 'tricks' like showing us the hours of the restaurant so we know if we drive 20 minutes there they'll be open, or the 'trick' of answering your emails as quickly as you answer your phone (indeed, another trick might be answering your phone pleasantly with clear, paced speech that most people can understand).
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#108As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons. If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money. Restaurants are also sometimes run…
> Is a PDF download really so bad?
I much prefer a PDF menu. In fact I actively look for a menu download link when I eat out, which is often. It reassures me that I'm seeing exactly the same menu that I'll see when I sit down at the table. Too often the website has a little bit of html showing a 'typical menu', and I'm left simply not knowing if the food on the site is the food you're offering tonight.
But when I see a PDF that's clearly exactly what was sent to the menu printing company, that's perfect. Too often I've sat down in a restaurant, looked over the menu and thought "actually, there's nothing here I really fancy".
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#109As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons. If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money. Restaurants are also sometimes run…
I have about 120 paying restaurant customers, and I couldn't agree more about the PDF menu. You could give them the slickest, easiest interface in the world, and they'll never use it. They don't have time. The PDF menu already looks good, they already put a ton of time into it to get it exactly right, and they don't want to duplicate that effort. Restaurant menus are meticulously laid out and a lot of effort is put i…
The PDF menu already looks good, they already put a ton of time into it to get it exactly right, and they don't want to duplicate that effort.
Well... why bother cleaning the outside of your restaurant - washing the windows, trimming the landscaping, cleaning around the dumpster, etc? They've already put so much effort in to making the inside of the restaurant look perfect, why duplicate that effort?
A good website - fast loading, clean info, nice pics, optimized for the web - gets people to decide to spend money with you by coming in. A nice custom menu gets people to decide how they'll spend money with you (and how much).
This shouldn't be an either/or decision, but it appears the majority of owners don't think this far ahead. Given the little I've known about restaurant owners (worked in a few restaurants growing up), this is not at all surprising.
Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
#110As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons. If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money. Restaurants are also sometimes run…
> Is a PDF download really so bad? I much prefer a PDF menu. In fact I actively look for a menu download link when I eat out, which is often. It reassures me that I'm seeing exactly the same menu that I'll see when I sit down at the table. Too often the website has a little bit of html showing a 'typical menu', and I'm left simply not knowing if the food on the site is the food you're offering tonight. But when I see…
It'd be nice to have both, but the PDF is often too small to read on most screens, requires a lot of scrolling, etc.
Similarly, just because you have a PDF menu doesn't mean they have the food on the menu.
PDF menus that simply say "daily soup" or "ask for our specials" are pretty much designed for in-store use only, and basically useless on the web for decision making. When you're in a restaurant already seated, you can deal with uncertainty by ordering something different. When you're on the web, you deal with uncertainty by going someplace else altogether.