I’ve often said that restaurant sites are a lot like band sites used to be, before MySpace came along.  Despite still being aesthetically-challenged, those sites at least brought some standardization to an area where all too often, designers used the creative spaces those bands occupied as an excuse to get way too experimental with the user experience.

Which begs the question – where is the MySpace for restaurants?  I know there’s LetsEat.at, which offers free, templated sites and iPhone-friendly mobile sites.  But I don’t know that it will ever reach critical mass and truly break the tyrannical grip of Flash intros, incorrect/out-of-date info, and poor organization that strangles most of today’s restaurant websites.

Blazonco, can you guys help?

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brianvan:

andrearosen:

peterfeld:

First you wait for it to load, then starts the cheesy music and flash show. You can skip intro if you manage to locate the link — then the flash home page will slowly load, but you still have to click around to find the address, which was all you wanted. They’re all like that. Someone should tell them.

I’ve taken on the awful task of editing The L’s bar and restaurant listings for our new site and find myself skipping over restaurants’ official sites and heading straight for NY Mag or Yelp. Too many go overboard on flash and/or make you download a PDF to view the menu. That said, a few do an awesome job, especially Pequena, whose site is adorably designed and information is easy to find. Check that menu link! Love the scroll. STK, you should be taking notes (forcing people to go through your corporate site? For shame! I don’t want Bagatelle’s address, dicks.).

Again, emphasis mine, and I do find Pequena’s website to be almost a perfect example of what restaurant websites should aspire to be.

Lesser restaurant websites include any of the following design errors:

• “Skip intro” – never have an intro. Everyone skips it. You paid that designer for nothing.
• Flash – best used as trim, not as a complete shell. Websites are not movies. Also, I might want to cut-n-paste your address, and not need to transcribe it if I need to pass it along to someone else… speaking of address…
• Missing or incorrect info – here are the essentials: Name, phone number, address, hours. How many restaurant websites get some of that info wrong? It’d be easier to count the ones that get it all correct! I’ve seen restaurant websites missing both the address and the phone number; how the fuck am I supposed to get there, shithead? And seriously, if anything else is listed on the website, make sure it is correct or up-to-date. Finally, take down your website if you’re permanently closed, just like you’d disconnect the phones in that case.
• Poor site organization – mostly because they want pictures up-front and all over the place. Do not bury the address and phone number 10 clicks into the “user experience”.
• SEO – probably critically important for a restaurant. But those Flash behemoths are invisible to text-only-reading Google, and you basically do not exist if you’re not in Google.

The thing is, it’s not a long list, because the concept is simple… but people still fuck it up gloriously while paying some designer $4,000 for what ends up being a useless promotional video or slideshow. The insane thing is that they all do it. I would apply myself to fix it, but I’ve been warned that restauranteurs are notoriously poor clients. Apparently they’re often needy and broke. It is not possible to do good business with clients like that.