My job involves looking at hundreds of restaurant websites. As multiple tabs gather on my Firefox, I mildly worry that an animated chef doing the polka might show up in my dreams. Restaurant websites are a recipe for disaster, as owners are notoriously tight-fisted and their website designer is often the lowest bidder.
At a recent conference I attended for restaurant owners and managers, a speaker said, “You have to get into the twenty-first century with a website for your business.” The bad news is that owners are listening. Here are some things that that will send your potential customers lunging for the X in the corner of the screen.

Overenthusiastic Use of Multimedia: I’ve seen sites that have buttons that squeal, squeak, or moan every time a mouse runs over them and animated knives that sharpen themselves as a transition to every page.Too often, the multimedia takes the place of actual content; it’s these sorts of sites that have the most “Under Construction” pages – a good segue to the next point.
Serious Offender: Gregoire’s Restaurant . The links are swirling images that I can’t identify, but they look suspiciously like rounded coffins. Move your mouse and out pops the name of the link in a seedy-looking font. Are we meant to be surprised or terrified?

The Under Construction Page: If a page doesn’t exist yet, don’t link to it. There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking on a link that promises information but doesn’t deliver.
Serious Offender: Burrito Boyz . If I were an investor trying to get that ball rolling by clicking on “Invest”, I’d be greeted with a sadly pixelated Under Construction image. Bad news. Anyway, did I say nothing’s more frustrating than the under construction page? That’s a lie. Take the next point, for instance.

Playing Hide-and-Seek: Your potential customer shouldn’t have to hunt for your address, phone number, or other contact information. Put these things on the front page.

Manager in a Fortress: Hey, Rapunzel? If your customer had an especially good or bad experience (okay, most likely bad) she’s going to want to e-mail the owner or manager. Either post your e-mail address or create a feedback form. You can’t placate an angry customer who can’t reach you.
Serious Offender: Bob Chinn. if you’d like, you can read his entire biography, and you can even sign up to have him send you e-mails, but your chance of reaching him is slim to none unless you hire a private detective.

Music: Sorry, Beethoven; vocal website are so Web 1.0, and for good reason. The person doing dinner sleuthing at work will be given away by a burst of music to annoy the coworkers; another person already listening to music will be treated to an unpleasant remix. Play your favorite music at your restaurant; keep it off the internet.
Serious Offender: Katana. No one wants to buy your “Sounds of Katana” CD to “escape into a world of smoky sake, sexy candle-lit moment and luxurious beats” while they’re eating Bagel Bites.

The Orphaned Website: You can’t just slap your logo, address and menu onto a site and forget about it for months. Think of your website as your portfolio that needs continual updating. Post your specials every time they debut and display positive reviews as you receive them.

Thank goodness for Menuism, which will give you all the information you need with an interface that’s just as pretty as you please.

While browsing the restaurant pages you may (or may not) have noticed the Related Links block in the right column. It might not have been so interesting up until now, but we think you’ll be checking it out a more from now on.

What’s the purpose of the related links block? In short, choice and information. Our goal is to provide everything you need to make an informed and tasty dining decision, and that includes adding and allowing you to add links to other online resources for any given restaurant. As long as they help you eat better and tastier, we’re happy.

Over the next few days we’ll be adding related links from a number of other online guides to all the restaurants. That’s the easy part – the hard part is finding the local gems – the small city guide or newspaper whose restaurant reviews you follow religiously, or the local food critic who has a website you set as your homepage. If you know of one, let us know! Or if you’ve written a blog post about a restaurant we have listed, add the link yourself!

So, check out the Related Links for the restaurants, and let us know what you think.

-John