Reminder to restaurants...

If you are a restaurant utilizing a website to post restaurant information and menus, please please please be sure and keep it updated. I realize it's a pain in back side, but for some people it is the first exposure to your restaurant they may have. A restaurant can be forgiven if the site isn't flashy or expertly designed - although a well designed site is a real asset- but it's hard to forgive a site with outdated or incorrect information; that's just sloppy. I shriek if I run an ad in my paper for a client with an incorrect address or phone number. However, as I was looking through web sites to help select the perfect restaurant for my family and I, I ran across many sites that were outdated by weeks and months. In some cases they had incorrect hours of operation or open/closed days ("NEW SUMMER HOURS!") That'll hurt your business. I know you (the restauranteur) are concerned with "THE MEAL" and your skills are in the kitchen not necessarily in computer technology but do yourself a BIG favor, find some geek that will keep your website up to date for you. Trade out for meals or something but someone should be checking your website at least weekly. This is one of the best investments a restaurant - or any business for that matter- can make in itself. And that's from someone that sells print advertising!

Excellent post, Carla.

Wow, is that ever the truth! It's not just for younger people, either. My wife and I are in our 50s. We frequently cruise local restaurant websites and/or print their menus to help us decide where to eat. I get so disappointed when a particular dish that made us decide to go there is still on their website but is gone from the menu when we get there.

Very true, Carla.

For the Shrimp & Grits Throwdown, I went to each restaurant's site to validate the correct spelling of their full name, and as a marketing person ( and a customer) I was shocked at how many were out-of-date. I won't name names, but many of the same problems you saw. In one case, a "blog" section which when clicked revealed that is was last updated with an event in 2007. I also know of several restaurants that don't even have a website...

To the Restaurants: For many of us- this is the first thing we check ( for hours, phone number, menu, events, etc) before we ever come to your place. Please keep it up-to-date so you can give the best possible first impression.

Deb

[Robin Garr]

Speaking as a sometime Website developer, I can identify the problem here, and it's not really the restaurants.

Very frequently, a developer will hard-sell a restaurant into setting up a Website for a fee. The restaurateur thinks it would be cool to have a Website, but doesnt' really understand what's involved. The developer wants the cash flow and enjoys the fun of setting up the site. But when it comes time for routine updates and maintenance, it's a whole nuther story. The restaurateur typically doesn't know how to do it (and may not have even been given access to his own site). The developer has moved on to other things, is busy, and has very little interest in going back to do routine drudge work.

Best situation: Do it yourself if you know how, or get a savvy employee to do it for a little extra cash. Or make sure you're dealing with a serious, professional Web developer who doesn't view you as a one-time cash injection but an ongoing partner.

This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. For starters, I think all restaurants (and retail businesses in general) should have websites, and that they should contain, at a bare minimum, location, hours, and phone number. You can register a domain with Doteasy for $25/year and get free hosting. They have plenty of templates that you can use to build a basic but functional website. Neither difficult nor expensive.

As Carla said, I'm certain that there are many willing geeks out there who would work for food to keep things updated. Websites are a huge asset, but if they're not kept current they look really unprofessional (and can result in inconvenienced/disappointed customers).

If someone out there is looking for help. I will work for food. Send me an email or a PM.

Carla ... thank you, also, for an excellent post. I use the net for EVERYTHING before I actually set foot in the place. No website or incorrect data means the loss of my business most of the time. Excellent, excellent post!

[Robin Garr]

If someone out there is looking for help. I will work for food. Send me an email or a PM.

Serious question, Scott, not to pick on you, but as a demonstration of the issue I raised in my post:

If you build a Website for a client, will you commit to update it on demand, on a same-day basis? What will you charge (yes, in food) for this *ongoing* service? Will you commit to make it a priority, even months and years after the site is built?

Or, alternatively, will you set up the site in such a way that someone on the restaurant staff has full access to the server and gets appropriate training in updating it?

This is the question that I believe every restaurateur (or any small-business Website client) ought to get clear with a prospective developer before he begins work.

When I created our website, I took a few bids for someone else to do it, but it always came back to a lack of control of the on-going content that troubled me. I have a ton on information that I keep on the site, and I update it weekly (sometimes bi-weekly if I am jammed) when we get new products in stock. I personally don't care much for the look of my site, which has not changed in 4 years, but I can make all of the changes I want to myself, and do not have to send updates to an outside source to get it done, nor pay the costs of updating a site.

If the state ever allows me to do ecommerce on the site, then I would turn to a professional simply for the security aspect of it, but as I am just a spot for information at this point, I'll keep it in-house.

In my experience, http://www.louisvillediner.com tends to have fairly reliable information on a number of restaurants in the city.

I really think that the restaurant staff needs to be able to update it. I think the task can be accomplished using Wordpress and some plugins and some initial work in the beginning to get the theme setup correctly. As you know (even though you run an OLD version ) -- Wordpress is pretty user friendly. Even more so in the current 2.7.X version.

I run both my real estate site http://www.sellinggreaterlouisville.com and http://www.oldhamcountywired.com on the Wordpress engine. My real estate site looks like a regular static site. But since it is powered by Wordpress on the backend, it is really easy for me to tweak and update from any web browser. FTP clients and html code editing aren't requirements to make changes.

-Scott

If someone out there is looking for help. I will work for food. Send me an email or a PM.

Serious question, Scott, not to pick on you, but as a demonstration of the issue I raised in my post:

If you build a Website for a client, will you commit to update it on demand, on a same-day basis? What will you charge (yes, in food) for this *ongoing* service? Will you commit to make it a priority, even months and years after the site is built?

Or, alternatively, will you set up the site in such a way that someone on the restaurant staff has full access to the server and gets appropriate training in updating it?

This is the question that I believe every restaurateur (or any small-business Website client) ought to get clear with a prospective developer before he begins work.

[Robin Garr]

As you know (even though you run an OLD version ) -- Wordpress is pretty user friendly. Even more so in the current 2.7.X version.

Funny you mention that, Scott. My wife, who is the CMS guru for our little shop, was just saying today that our version is so old (hey, if it ain't broke, etc.), that she's scared to update for fear everything will stop working. You think that's a legitimate concern? (Talking about the main LHB site here, of course, which uses WordPress for content management - the forum is PhpBB3.)

I emailed you Robin.

Everyone else -- Mary is right to be concerned. But, I don't think it is a good enough reason to NOT do it.

After, what, two years now? Creation Gardens still hasn't updated its hours on its web page. Which in the beginning was a pain in the neck for me, coming from Salem to Louisville specifically to pick stuff up there. The hours kept changing day to day, it seemed for a while. The first time, we walked in the door on a Saturday, having checked the hours online, and were met with an exasperated clerk noting the place was closed. Later I learned that that was only for the public, and that I could go through the back door and still be accommodated. Whereupon, every time, I was still met with the same reaction from the same clerk who would invariably say, "What are you doing here? How did you get in here?" When I called to straighten it out? Same thing. I finally gave up and just ignored the whole thing. But it's still exasperating.