Successful Restaurant Websites

The Salty Truth of Googling Yourself

We recommend Googling (and Yahoo-ing!) your restaurant on a quarterly basis.  It will only take a few minutes and can provide you with incredibly useful information.

1. Discover where your website appears in search results based on a variety of query combinations.  (e.g. “oklahoma city bbq” or “[your restaurant] gaithersburg”) Is it time to optimize your website for searchability? 

2. Monitor your online reputation.  There’s no need to obsess over this.  But it’s good to have an idea about what your customers are saying about you. This could help you gain valuable insights or generate new ideas.

3. Identify any outdated pages or versions of your site that may not have been taken down.  It’s embarrassing when you’ve recently redesigned your site and a visitor somehow stumbles across your homepage from 1996.

4. Verify that wherever your business information appears online, it’s accurate.  If it’s not, provide site owners with correct or missing information about your restaurant.  For example, sometimes a directory listing may not list your website.  Make sure it appears wherever possible!

5. You may have received some great press you weren’t aware of.  Many restaurants have “News” or “Press” sections that aren’t updated nearly enough.  Add links to select online press to help give a more timely feel to your site.

Bonus Tip:  See who’s linking to you!   Enter your url into Yahoo Site Explorer to find out what websites are linking to yours.

The NRA brought this interesting article to our attention on the typography of printed menu design and how it impacts diners’ perceptions of complexity, sophistication and value.  While it does not discuss websites specifically, it makes some very relevant points about the importance of font size, selection and readability.  These points are as important if not moreso online, where issues such as screen resolution, browser version, monitor quality and user settings may affect how your information is presented on the Web.   Online and offline, restaurants should always select typefaces that are scannable and simple.   Presenting information in complex or illegible typography conveys a lack of transparency about your food.  This obscurity sends a message that what diners see may not be what they get when it comes to your menu.  As always, the message….keep it simple!

“In a paper that will appear in the October issue of Psychological Science, Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz suggest that small changes in menu fonts can significantly alter people’s perceptions of dishes’ complexity and value.”

“People infer that if something on a menu is difficult to understand or hard to read that it takes great skill and effort to prepare,” says Song, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of Michigan. “When I go to an expensive French restaurant, I can hardly pronounce the words on the menu, so I take for granted that it’s expensive because it’s not comprehensible.”

“Similarly, Song says, using an offbeat typeface to obscure a dish’s description may signal hidden value to an unsuspecting diner on unfamiliar ground. That may explain the implicit logic employed by restaurants offering exorbitant entrees described with elaborately scripted fonts in microscopic print.”

I’ll Have That Typeface On the Menu (Time)

We get a lot of visits from bakery owners and are delighted to share with you our latest Nice Site of the Week from Anjou Bakery, 2008 Winner of the Gallo Award for Outstanding Bread/Baked Good. 

Anjou Bakery

Congratulations to Seattle’s Maneki, one of five winners of the America’s Classic Award from the James Beard Foundation, and as far as I can tell, the only winner of this award with a website!

Maneki

Research shows that website visitors don’t read - they scan.   As a result, you should always make the layout of your email newsletter scannable.  This means enabling the eye to follow a simple, logical, uninterrupted path through the content.  A scannable and intutive layout is created with a columnar grid (usually two columns), a variety of content types (imagery, features, callouts, and links), consistent stylistic conventions (fonts, sizes and colors) and small, easily digestible blocks of content.  A large, misplaced advertising unit, a long block of text, or inappropriately sized imagery will interfere with the scanning process and disrupt the reader’s attention.   Following these guidelines will help to create visual balance, encouraging users to scroll down while easily viewing your newsletter in its entirety.  This increases the likelihood of something catching their eye and taking action.  In addition, keep your layout consistent from one edition to the next.  This saves you time in design and helps create brand familiarity for your readers.

We are pleased to announce a new regular column on Successful Restaurant Websites titled “Good Tips.”  Each Good Tips post will provide helpful guidelines, advice and resources for your restaurant website, online marketing efforts and more!  Even better, many of our Good Tips apply not just to restaurants, but to all types of websites so feel free to share these useful tips with your friends!

If you have a particular question or issue (preferably about web design) you’d like us to explore in our Good Tips column, please share it with us at info@successfulrestaurantwebsites.com.

While the idea of a fast food restaurant website in three dimensions makes me feel a little nauseous, (see the closeup of chili in the Carl’s Jr. intro) I would be remiss in not mentioning the launch of two new websites- Carl’s Jr. and Hardees- with a 3D social networking component.   Integrating with MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, etc, each website allows you to visit a virtual restaurant or bring back takeout to a virtual living room.  In each 3D space, users can enjoy virtual burgers with virtual friends.   I don’t advocate immersive 3D environments for my readers’ restaurant websites, but I do find the way food brands are entering the online lives of their customers both fascinating and clever.  Carl’s Jr., you may recall, has a track record of innovative, edgy and controversial advertising.

Carl’s Jr.

Hardee’s

Consumerist presents an interesting comparison of how the top 50 restaurant chains present information on nutrition and allergens on their websites.   According to their matrix, some of the worst offenders are TGIF, Applebee’s, Sbarro, California Pizza Kitchen, Bennigan’s, Fuddrucker’s, IHOP and Perkins who provide nothing in the way of nutrition or allergen information on their sites.  It will be interesting to see when and how this movement toward transparency in displaying nutritional information will play out with independent restaurants.

Consumerist’s Ultimate Fast Food Nutrition Guide 2008

A recent Boston Globe review of Kowloon in Saugus, Massachusetts focused on the inspired Tiki decor of the landmark restaurant.   It also mentioned that Kowloon thoughtfully includes pictures of some of their old menus, matchbook covers and business cards on their website.   The Kowloon site itself is somewhat dated (appropriately enough), but we thought this was a fun way to tell a story about themselves on their website.

Decor Provides the Most Spark (Boston Globe)

Kowloon Restaurant