A plea to all restaurant web site creators
posted on 14 Nov 2007 by maki ::
10 comments
Please stop with the Flash-only sites. If you must have a Flash site, please provide a plain HTML alternative, for those of us who might want to visit your site in a hurry, or on our Plain Jane cell phones.
For goodness sake, please get rid of those annoying, meaningless, splash pages. That is so 1998.
You want a useful front page that your customers would really appreciate? Put your address, your reservation phone number, and hours of operation there.
Please take a little time to convert your menu to HTML. Stop with the PDF-only menus! If you must, provide a ‘typical’ menu in HTML and then a link to your current PDF menu. But PDF-only menus? I’m not even going to bother. And this is coming from someone who makes their living from PDF programming.
AND FOR CRYING OUT LOUD STOP WITH THE AUTOMATICALLY PLAYING MUSIC!
Thank you. Have a great day.
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Thank you
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Since I work in a field tightly related to online restaurant marketing I have been saying this for years. Very difficult to get the message across though. Part of the problem is that with an inaccesible, non spiderable, complicated, annoying web site you never get to see what traffic and potential customers you actually lose out on.
Did I say thank you?
// Manne
—
http://manne.typepad.com/tummyrumble/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/hultberg
Thank you
Al I got to say is this:
“YOU GO GIRL” Two thumbs up!
G
That pretty much says it all
Amen sister!
yess!!
yess!!
Ditto, ditto, ditto!!!
Ditto, ditto, ditto!!!
Nothing new to add really
but the more people who Just Say No to Flash Sites the better. Dear restaurant, I’m looking for a menu, a phone number and an address. The speed and ease with which I can get them has a direct impact on whether I dine with you or somebody else.
Side issue, if I do visit, please turn down the music. Thanks.
Oh my gosh.
I think I love you. I thought I was the only one sitting there muttering under my breath about pdf menus.
Yes, yes, a zillion times
Yes, yes, a zillion times yes. Location, hours, phone number, parking?, and menus. That’s all I want. I don’t need a slide-show of stills to decide to eat there.
The big problem is, BTW, that one company in Toronto, MenuPalace, pretty much seems to have a monopoly on creating restaurant websites, and they believe that Flash and PDFs are clearly the way to go. Cut off the head, MenuPalace, and the lousy websites would die.
Agreed!
Linked from a different site, and I can’t agree more. It drives me crazy!
I couldn’t agree with you
I couldn’t agree with you more. Beyond the annoying slow loading flash pages they are also the best way to ensure your website doesn’t get top ranking on the search engines. Although search engines can “read” the inside of the flash files, but they can follow links or interpret different text formatting options. If one must have flash on the site, it’s recommended to keep it under 25% of the content area.
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