While lots of people have noted the general terribleness of restaurant sites, I haven't ever seen an explanation for why this industry's online presence is so singularly bruising. The rest of the Web long ago did away with auto-playing music, Flash buttons and menus, and elaborate intro pages, but restaurant sites seem stuck in 1999. The problem is getting worse in the age of the mobile Web—Flash doesn't work on Apple's devices, and while some of these sites do load on non-Apple smartphones, they take forever to do so, and their finicky navigation makes them impossible to use.
Over the last few weeks I've spent countless hours, now lost forever, plumbing the depths of restaurant Web hell. I also spoke to several industry experts about the reasons behind all these maliciously poorly designed pages. I heard several theories for why restaurant sites are so bad—that they can't afford to pay for good designers, that they don't understand what people want from a site, and that they don't really care what's on their site. But the best answer I found was this: Restaurant sites are the product of restaurant culture. These nightmarish websites were spawned by restaurateurs who mistakenly believe they can control the online world the same way they lord over a restaurant. "In restaurants, the expertise is in the kitchen and in hospitality in general," says Eng San Kho, a partner at the New York design firm Love and War, which has created several unusually great restaurant sites (more on those in a bit). "People in restaurants have a sense that they want to create an entertainment experience online—that's why disco music starts, that's why Flash slideshows open. They think they can still play the host even here online."
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad?
They don't know any better. [Link]
1 comment:
That was a terrific article. Thanks. I can't tell you the number of times I've checked a restaurant site for menu info and hours, only to find page after page of flash pictures and useless stuff INSTEAD of the simple info I need.
But I'm also frequently surprised when a restaurant doesn't even HAVE a website. In this day and age? Why ever not? I'm not interested in what other diners have to say about the place. I want a menu, a price range, directions and, most important, hours of operation, since we often eat out after 10:00. That's not asking too much. Well, apparently, yes it is.
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