Tommy Collison

This week, I’m working with Look and Taste, and I’d be doing a lot of work when it comes to restaurants. With that, I need to be able to get key information from a load of different restaurants. Now, if I’ve got to search through a million pages to find out the key information, you fail.

Before I continue, I’m *not* a PR person, and am *not* a so-called SEO expert. I’m just someone doing an internship with the L+T folks, and this is one of the things I’ve picked up on.

If I were a restauranteur, this is what I’d be thinking about on my site. Some thoughts.

1. Have your name + address in big writing. Really big

No really, some of the sites I visited didn’t have this!

2. Include every communication method you can think of

Just cover all the bases. It doesn’t take long to set up yourrestaurantname@gmail.com, or even better, info@yourrestaurantname.com. In no particular order, you should ideally have:

- phone
- address (with GPS co-ordinates and a Google Map if at all possible)
- email
- facebook
- twitter

Also, contact forms (example) are a big no. Just no.

3. Include what sort of cuisine you are, and a menu

Everything on your menu, please, too, not just food and prices. We like allergy information, service charges, and, crucially, opening hours. This should actually be in bold, at the top of your site. Oh, and *not* in a PDF form. Yes, looks lovely, but some of us can’t open them, and Google doesn’t fancy them. Oh, and if you force us to download one, you earn 6 FAIL points. Having said that, offer people the chance to download a PDF, but don’t make us rely on it.

Photo owned by basykes (cc)

4. Don’t have lots of flash

Leaving aside the folks who couldn’t see it, it looks tacky. Makes our browsers run slow too, and that’s just not on :)

5. Finally, don’t sacrifice usability for authenticity

If you’re an authentic old Irish pub, there’s nothing wrong that. Where the wrong comes in is when you have a goddawful pasty yellow paper look. Also, Zapfino (example) is a fun font for birthday invitations. Restaurants? Not so much..