Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Are Restaurant Websites in Silver Spring Terrible?

Farhad Manjoo in slate yesterday had an article on why restaurant website are so overdone. Typical annoyances include unnecessary flash animations, annoying music and hard to find menus (see this example) or better yet don't click on it.

Manjoo doesn't have any hard data, but he thinks it is due to naive chefs and owners, as well as website builders who can make more by doing complex stuff than just posting the menu, hours, reservation info, and directions. This would be a good question for economists, are people irrational, is information imperfect (chef don't know what makes a good website) or our we missing something.

So how about Silver Spring, my town, how do they stack up on terrible websites. I'm not an expert on food or websites but I think I can review what is terrible or generally good about both. A quick review doesn't show anything too bad.

So here a few from Silver Spring

8407 kitchen bar a place I like to eat out on a date night, the website is a little busy but I was able to find things quickly. I also agree "The lamb Bolognese is legendary"
Jackie's another good date night option, tends to do better appetizer than main dishes. Website looks good and not to hard to find anything. Menu's are in pdf form, but they change enough that I don't find that a big deal.
Ray's The Classic is minimalist with pdf menus. One of the better deals in town is the Hell Burger served in the bar.
Pacci's Pizza makes the best pizza in town, but their website menus lacks prices and could use a little formatting, but I found the phone and menu pretty easily
Thai Derm my takeout standby has pdf menus but info is easy to find

So my quick sampling of places in Silver Spring, doesn't show any website that make me not want to go there. After reviewing a few others, I nominate Mrs K's Tollhouse as the most annoying Silver Spring restaurant website based on the music.

Anyone have examples of worse ones in the DC area?





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1 comment:

Strub said...

Someone on MetaFilter (can't find the original quote, of course) suggested awhile back that the audience for over-presented websites isn't potential customers, but potential business partners or investors. Basically, the owners want to signal "Look! I'm a serious person with a professional web site" first and providing useful information (menus, hours, phone numbers) is secondary.

Not sure I buy it, but it's a potentially confounding variable I guess.