What is the biggest problem with restaurant websites these days? Do you have any egregious examples? How could they be better -- what basics should every restaurant website have?

The biggest thing is that if your restaurant website isn't designed to work an iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices, you hate your customers.

In part, that means no Flash — which is officially dead for all mobile devices as of the other day. A site I can think of offhand is Basta Pasta — a restaurant I adore — but their site is an all-Flash atrocity.

And in part that means having a clean design that works on computers and mobile. People want to know where the restaurant is located; when it's open; what's on the menu. That's all.

What about PDF menus? People complain about them a lot but they often work well on mobile devices.

Totally agree about Flash. I think owners want to convey this feeling of the experience of the restaurant via music, movement, using Flash. But all it's doing is causing restaurant go-ers to spend more time on the site trying to find what they need.

Another huge trend in restaurant sites that I believe creates a frustrating user experience is those PDF menus! To be fair, the reasons restaurants do this is because they don't have the proper tools to update the site, so they create and upload PDF versions of their print menus. As designers and developers, it really needs to be our initiative to give them these tools and stop the PDF menu trend!

One of the big problems here is that chefs are like schoolteachers, or doctors: they're one of those professions which doesn't involve a lot of time looking at screens and using the internet. So they tend not to have an intuitive understanding of what purpose a website serves, and can easily be talked into signing off on something gaudy and flashy and useless. They don't get annoyed by sites which auto-play music, because they don't spend much time visiting websites at all.

If designed and developed properly, a HTML menu should be a more seamless viewing experience than loading a seperate PDF. Downloading a PDF can always be an option

Yeah, HTML all the way. The less extra crap you're dealing with on your phone the better — and PDFs do tend to be heavy documents which can be a problem to download, particularly if you're on AT&T in New York.

Honestly, you don't even need a web SITE, all you need is a web PAGE. Name, address, map, phone number, OpenTable widget, ARE YOU OPEN FOR LUNCH. Amazing how many restaurants make it impossible to find out that information online. Menus are nice, HTML menus are better. But frankly just a link to Menupages would suffice.

I actually love that Allswell has done, since their menu changes nightly. Just a Tumblr of the nightly menu. Works on laptop or phone, easy to get to, easy to deal with.

And most importantly: They actually update it. Nothing's worse than a restaurant that doesn't update their website. Nothing. Even Flash sites are more acceptable than a site that's never update..

Amen to that.

Also, people want to see what the vibe of the restaurant's like. To have that come across in the site's design, in a non-obnoxious way, is ideal. I love what the Meatball Shop does, for example.

I'll push back against Matt on this one. There's an opportunity cost, to restaurants, of spending time and effort updating your website every day. And don't give me the "it's easy, you just..." thing, that works about as well on chefs as the other way round when they try to tell me how to make a hollandaise. *If* you're the kind of person who finds that ki d of thing easy and natural, then of course you should do it. (And you don't need is to tell you that.) But if it's a chore for you, you will end up not dong it. And a website that's designed to be updated frequently and isn't is much worse than a website which is designed to be static.

Speaking of Tumblr, can/should restaurants use it for their main site, as Allswell has done, or is it better used as a social media supplement? Same goes for Facebook. Do or Dine seems to exist solely on Facebook facebook.com

They get the information across but sacrifice major design elements.

I don't think that a site needs to be updated everyday, for every restaurant — that doesn't make sense for, say, Osteria Morini. But in Allswell's case, where the menu changes nightly and that's a big part of what they do, I'd like to see an accurate menu.

I kind of lean toward an original site; like Sky was saying, people want a sense of what a restaurant is like. That's basically impossible on Facebook. It's a little easier on Tumblr.

Matt, you can't have it both ways. Either you want an original site, or you want a site that's updated every day. But you can't have both, unless you want restaurants to be struggling with CMS vagaries rather than, you know, *cooking*.

Agree w/ Matt - I feel like treating a facebook page as one's main site is a cop-out. It's an essential "extra," but shouldn't be the main thing. Tumblr is a little different, in that a restaurant can display those essential components while making it their own style. I like what Buvette does. And the feed keeps the content relevant and up-to-date.

WRONG. Buvette is blogger. Apologize. But you get the idea.

Northern Spy Food Co. does a pretty commendable job there. And it's not about updating every day — that's not what I'm arguing for. I ultimately just want current, accurate information that's easy to access. I don't care very much about what the URL is (as long as it's easy to get to).

And re: Tumblr, there are ways to do interesting things with it. Newsweek's a poor example of a lot of things, but I kind of like its Tumblr site. Feels more like a real one. newsweek.tumblr.com

Indeed. And back to what Felix previously said - all a restaurant needs, ultimately, is a nicely designed, simple page with all the basic info and social media links. And from that, if a diner wants to explore further, they can go to its tumblr, facebook, etc.

Rather than cluttering their site with "personality" (which often leads to a badly designed site), restaurants can really embrace tumblr to tell the story of their culture. I'm biased, but momofuku does an excellent job of this momofuku.tumblr.com

Shake Shack also does a great job integrating social media into a simple, clean site. For example they display check-ins which is really cool. Makes it feel current and relevant

Ha, it's nice that we asked everyone to bring examples of terrible websites and you all are recommending people who are doing it right. Here's the Shake Shack link btw shakeshack.com That scrolly vertical integration actually works really well on a mobile device.

I end up on the La Lanterna lalanternacaffe.com site often to get the jazz schedule for Bar Next Door. So much going on here I'm not even sure where to begin! The grey on black navigation is a great touch, and I think is an example of not using social media correctly. I understand not investing a lot in your site, but if its something you update often for a live music schedule, people will also be visiting it often! And there are great tools for non technical people like, onepagerapp.com that make it easy to create a super simple site that's not an eye sore.

One gripe, brought up by @matthewtulini is the abundance of menus without prices on the web. This is not really a design concern, but it's a common annoyance.

twitter.com

And here's another restaurant using Tumblr well thirtyacres.tumblr.com

Oh, I mentioned Basta Pasta earlier. It is very much a textbook lesson in what not to do. bastapastanyc.com

Lure is another tumblr example. Good design for keeping one's food porn up-to-date.
And definitely, can't agree more about prices not being shown.

From the comments: "It's remarkable how often the most basic information (phone number, address, operating hours) is not easy to find. For NYC restaurants, the address should show the cross street or a map. Otherwise, you need to go to another site to plug in that address to see where it is."

And for fun, this is a pretty special website if your sound is on: pitapanny.com

Has any restaurant ever successfully deployed embedded music or ambient noise on their website? Like, ever?