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What's wrong with restaurant websites: an example

gfweb

By gfweb
in Restaurant Life

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Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher

Posted
Posted

Well, that's better than most.  :smile:

Could easily be made responsive and condensed to one page.

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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted

In yesterday's Observer, Jay Rayner does a great job of excoriating a restaurant's website. He then praises the restaurant for their food. 

 

I wonder, as does he, how many people have been put off by the place's website.

 

I know I would have been,

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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annachan

annachan

Posted
Posted

In yesterday's Observer, Jay Rayner does a great job of excoriating a restaurant's website. He then praises the restaurant for their food. 

 

I wonder, as does he, how many people have been put off by the place's website.

 

I know I would have been,

 

While restaurant websites can be annoying, I go there for their food, not for web development. I don't care how annoying Morimoto's website is, that in itself won't keep me away from the amazing food. If a website doesn't provide enough information, I would usually go to other sites (Yelp, Urbanspoon, etc.) or google the place. More work, but worth it when you find good food.

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ChefPip

ChefPip

Posted
Posted (edited)

Many years ago I was working for an employer and there were real Sign Painters still working in the town.  I mention this in reference to the discussion concerning   "websites".  Today's sign technology revolves around cut out vinyl letters and the sense of style and

panache just doesn't seem to live on with it.

 

When the "sign man " came to produce a gold leaf entrance door where I worked it was amazing to watch him make magic with that

small brush and some other strange tools.  This guy was retirement age back then and had worked as a commercial artist and ad man when younger I learned as I listened to him talking with the owner of the business.  He has picked up sign painting as an avocational interest so he would have a second line of employment if he were without work.  But what really took me was a slogan he had lettered on his Van.

 

"A good sign on a business is a sign of good business".

 

I think that this same attitude could apply to websites for restaurants.  How many Chef's see their work as a form of art ?   Or notice their diners experiencing it that way ?   Are these diners merely hungry hounds or  epicureans ?

 

If you haven't seen sign painters working, here are some Youtube videos where these aging men and a few young devotees

speak of their attitudes toward their work.   Particularly when it comes to the painters opposed to the vinyl cutters.

 

http://youtu.be/IXNbWqnvXuM

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXNbWqnvXuM

Edited by ChefPip (log)
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ebert

ebert

Posted
Posted

morimotorestaurant.com

 

This is THE Morimoto, not some little dumpy pretender.

 

You'd think era of this stuff was long gone, but it lives on in lots of restaurants. I blame consultants.

 

What's wrong?

 

Music-NSFW use

Splash page-irritating

Multiple clicks just to get through the dinner menu

Tiny font- try reaqding this on a mobile

 

Yeah, Poor design and layout of the website. It's very hard even to read the menu. If the restaurants tend to have these kind of improper design, definitely it impacts their business. I hope the owners take swift action to redesign the website. Better to avoid by visiting these kind of restaurant websites. It's waste of time

 

restaurant manager pos

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted

By far the worst I have come across in my extensive research into idiotic and  dysfunctional restaurant website is probably this

 

http://www.foodandcompany.com/food&company.html

 

It's in Italian, but if you can find them they are English translation somewhere. 

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...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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Thanks for the Crepes

Thanks for the Crepes

Posted
Posted

Well, liuzhou,

 

I have to agree with you, although I've come across my share of disagreeable restaurant websites in my time, for sure.

 

This link you provide, was absolutely nothing but an image of red velvet curtains, with no scroll bars at all. I zoomed it out,trying to get scroll bars (control of my own screen back). Nothing. Smaller red curtains: no control returned. Shut the window down.

 

Came back here to give my views, but thought I'll give it another chance. Mind you, I regularly stream videos with no problems, so this wasn't a limitation on my end. I went back to this cursed site, just to be sure, and sure enough, more stuff happened.

 

Will report back in a few minutes.

 

Okay. All I could get it do do was open and close those abominable red curtains.

 

Granted, I don't speak Italian, but I do speak some French and Spanish.

 

GAH. You have the prize for worst restaurant website so far! 

> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

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huiray

huiray

Posted
Posted (edited)

Well, liuzhou,

 

I have to agree with you, although I've come across my share of disagreeable restaurant websites in my time, for sure.

 

This link you provide, was absolutely nothing but an image of red velvet curtains, with no scroll bars at all. I zoomed it out,trying to get scroll bars (control of my own screen back). Nothing. Smaller red curtains: no control returned. Shut the window down.

 

Came back here to give my views, but thought I'll give it another chance. Mind you, I regularly stream videos with no problems, so this wasn't a limitation on my end. I went back to this cursed site, just to be sure, and sure enough, more stuff happened.

 

Will report back in a few minutes.

 

Okay. All I could get it do do was open and close those abominable red curtains.

 

Granted, I don't speak Italian, but I do speak some French and Spanish.

 

GAH. You have the prize for worst restaurant website so far! 

 

Hmm, I don't think this is THAT bad.  You can't do anything other than open & close those curtains?  Didn't the curtains part to show two chefs, with webpage menu items front and center that then flitted to a menu "strip" above the stage? Did you get a pot with steam bubbling out from under the lid? Could you not click on any of them and get the corresponding page for the restaurant (there are several within this "company" with options for navigation on the left?  (yes, the curtains do close then reopen after the bubbling pot shows execution of the loading of the flash player) The food menus links are shown as a picture of a menu being prominently held in the hand of the waiter in the middle of the landing page; and open up after another kind of viewer loads, in a new window...and so on.  If you couldn't get any of this, then Flash (or the other viewer for the menus) was NOT loading properly on your browser.  Try reloading the page.  Oh, turning off the music is easy - the music/no music "buttons" are clearly visible (white type on black) towards the top right of the landing page. 

 

Yes, the website is too complicated and many pages are embedded all over the place and there is just too much use of Flash... but at least they make it clear they are restaurants, the menus and locations are fairly easily reachable - in English, too, with the "Union Jack" symbol fairly visible at the bottom right of the landing page for the individual restaurants...and even their location and telephone numbers are given in fairly visible white on black towards the bottoms of those same landing pages for the individual restaurants.

 

In fact, I actually found the website mildly amusing, even.

 

Unlike another website where one isn't even sure they have anything to do with food, there are no obvious hyperlinks shown on a vast black webpage (one ends up clicking randomly here and there on the page) or one that blathers on in high-falutin' purple prose about their philosophy (trademarked, by the way) and NO MENU whatsoever, no idea what you would be eating unless you called up the Gallery (after looking for it and realizing that maybe that might show you some of the dishes) which then gives you a peek at dishes that were served to someone in the past, blah blah blah on how highly they regard themselves...

Edited by huiray (log)
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liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted (edited)

I have no problems loading the Flash or any other aspect of the website, thank you. I know how to use computers.

 

Nor do I have problems getting to the menus, although I would prefer to have direct access rather than go through a pantomime first.

 

The site is horrible. 

 

Too many web consultants showing off their dubious talents with no sense of taste. No sense of design or accessibility.

 

(P.S. It's the Union Flag.  It's only a Jack when on a ship.)

Edited by liuzhou (log)
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...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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  • 6 months later...
Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher

Posted
Posted

Yeah, that website sucks!

Here are the 'menus.'

 

Sample Dinner Menu

http://media.wix.com/ugd/453aca_b2790301edde4a0b96212ff64825df0d.pdf

 

Sample Brunch Menu

http://media.wix.com/ugd/453aca_317286022b5c4942bca3df52033774d3.pdf

  • Like 1

~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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Thanks for the Crepes

Thanks for the Crepes

Posted
Posted (edited)

Yeah, even though you can spend time and skilled effort to get to what you want from a website, there's absolutely no reason to.

 

I used to be a sysop, debugger and programmer, database admin, BUT I got paid fairly well for those things.

 

If I encounter a ridiculous restautant site, like the last two linked to above, my first thought is PLEASE make it shut up. (Easy with my HP keyboard volume controls, which will be pried from my cold dead hands. Defensive weapon, you know.) My second thought is get me the heck out of here!

 

I enjoy food porn in the form of menu descriptions or photos as much as the next eGer, but I draw the line at doing any what-should-be-paying work to get it. There's too much else out there that is not designed by arrogant so and so's.  :smile:

 

ETA: To make clear that DiggingDog's menu links were not the ones I was calling "ridicules sites." Those are the last two musical, useless resto sites above his post. Sorry, but this is one of my sore points with modern life.

 

DiggingDog,

 

Cool you were able to get to some menus, and I hope you didn't have to spend too much time getting there. You have more patience than I, my friend.  :smile:

Edited by Thanks for the Crepes (log)

> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

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huiray

huiray

Posted
Posted

Read a review of this restaurant and visited their site.  Am I missing something?  I can find no menu, prices, descriptions, etc.

 

I don't find the website THAT bad.  I merely hovered my cursor above the BIG panel in the middle of the website and noticed that my cursor changes to a hand-symbol — indicating that it is a hyperlink, and simply glancing at the command-line of my browser at the bottom left of the browser interface/page shows where the hyperlink points to.  Clicking it then lead one to the various other pages including the menu (in the "kitchen" tab).  I don't find this particularly laborious, but that's just me.  It simply needs one to be conscious of info that may be embedded and be willing to think a little as one is browsing.  Just my 2¢.

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liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted (edited)

Read a review of this restaurant and visited their site.  Am I missing something?  I can find no menu, prices, descriptions, etc.

 

Yes. You are missing something.

 

It took me two only clicks to get to a menu with prices and descriptions. That is still probably one too many, though.

Edited by liuzhou (log)

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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nickrey

nickrey

Posted
Posted

morimotorestaurant.com

 

This is THE Morimoto, not some little dumpy pretender.

 

You'd think era of this stuff was long gone, but it lives on in lots of restaurants. I blame consultants.

 

What's wrong?

 

Music-NSFW use

Splash page-irritating

Multiple clicks just to get through the dinner menu

Tiny font- try reaqding this on a mobile

The Morimoto site looks (and sounds) like the opening credits of a 1960s movie. Perhaps it's intentional?

 

This link is to one of the top Sydney restaurants  Sepia.

 

It is clear, informative and intuitive on a desktop, laptop or tablet, but could be better for smartphone users. This latter group is growing so fast that much of e-space has yet to catch up with them.

 

Most of the other websites quoted look like the developer trying to show how clever they are and achieving an absolute fail in terms of aesthetics, design, and usability.

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Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

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  • 2 months later...
Panosmex

Panosmex

Posted
Posted

From South of the Border, in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico comes this awful website. Mi Lola.

I especially am annoyed by the menus which move by too quickly to be read.

 

I think the marketing is targeted to a youthful age group.

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Buen provecho, Panosmex
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Nancy in Pátzcuaro

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

Posted
Posted

When I clicked on the link for Mi Lola and the music started I immediately closed the window! Ugly--

 

I was curious since I now live in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, which is about 45 minutes from Morelia. Mi Lola is a restaurant I'm not familiar with, and if the website is indicative of their philosophy I know the restaurant will remain one I'm not familiar with. I didn't stay in the website long enough to even find out where it's located.

 

It is always a mistake to garbage up what could be a clean design. One of the problems with everyone having a computer and a boatload of type fonts is that people feel the need to use too many of them. And using those flowery script-type fonts should be illegal. You can't read 'em.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

 

 

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Formerly "Nancy in CO"

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