Over on Slate, an article popped up that seriously took many restaurant websites to task. The main complaint? Users can’t easily get to the information they want.
Sadly, this is true of many websites in a number of different industries, but like Farhad Manjoo (the author of the Slate article), I’ve noticed it a lot more often with restaurants (hotels often have many of the same problems).
The core problem is that the owners of the website are more concerned with what they want the visitors to think is important. Rarely is this what’s important to visitors when they’re coming to a website.
For restaurants, the key things most users look for on a website are:
- Location
- Hours of Operation
- Menu
- Reservations
- Availability for parties/large groups
If you don’t have that info easy to find and up to date, you’re going to lose business. Perhaps even worse, you may end up with customers who show up already upset with the service they’ve gotten, which will make it even more difficult to make them happy during their actual visit.
No matter your industry, when you’re building out your website you should first be thinking about what your visitors will want–not what you want them to think is important. Make your site useful and you’ll get more visitors who become customers. Make it useful and easy to share (using social media) and those customers will bring you many more.
A good user experience should always be your target. Flashy intros, self-important sites, and hard to find useful information make you miss that target.
What can you do differently on your website that can make it more useful to your visitors?