by Theresa Carpine 19.August 2008 16:36
Something that most people don’t know about me is that I love to eat. Really. I spend an inordinate amount of my day thinking about what I am going to eat later on. And ironically, eating helps me to focus; I am pretty sure that my snacking abilities sustained me through four years of college lectures. So while you’ll usually find me munching on something at my desk, there is nothing quite like sitting down to a hearty meal with friends after a long day at work or play.
Unfortunately, I also possess very limited cooking abilities. So besides simply eating, another one of my favorite activities is eating out! While eating out is decidedly taxing (literally) on the pocketbook, my bad habit also provides the inspiration for this blog post: restaurant websites.
As with any business, what an owner includes on their restaurant’s website depends on the individual establishment. But here are some of my suggestions, as a seasoned restaurant website surfer, for the most important information to include, and some other fun ideas.
All the essentials (name, address, phone number and hours of operation) should be easily found on the homepage because a potential client is probably searching for one of those four facts. Including a photo or graphic of your restaurant’s marquee, so patrons will recognize it when they drive by, is also a good idea. A few quality images of your restaurant will also make the website more interesting visually. A contact email can also be included, but only if you’re going to check it and respond to it on a regular basis.
If you’re going to have a website with multiple pages, I suggest including the menu to give people a quick glance of what you have to offer. A word of warning, however, on menus: make sure that the menus are updated frequently to reflect changes in seasonal fare; I find it a little irritating when I’m looking at a restaurant’s “winter” menu in June.
Providing a menu on a website is especially useful your restaurant offers a call ahead service for To-Go orders. If you really want to get fancy, you could even include an online order form, as seen on the website of the oft heralded Mindfly neighbor, Rocket Donuts.
Finally, I would encourage restaurateurs to provide a personal message about the history of their establishment on a website. Yeah, it’s kind of cheesy, but a lot of people, like me, like cheese (mmm...cheese), especially if they’re interested to know if you use locally-produced and organic ingredients, or if there are any local charitable organizations that your restaurant regularly supports. And, of course, a blog is an easy and personal way to inform people of special events at your restaurant, like live music, and to keep your website’s content fresh and current.
by Theresa Carpine 24.July 2008 08:57
It’s always a bit confusing when I try to explain exactly what I do at Mindfly. I work for a web design and development company, but I don’t actually do web design or development. Mostly I write. I write a little of this and a little of that. So when it falls on me to write a Mindfly blog post, the writing part is easy. But making it connect to, you know, web stuff…that’s a little trickier for me.
At a recent family gathering, my mother was trying to explain what I do exactly (“she works for a web design and development company, but doesn’t actually do web design or development”) to my uncle, who also happens to be in the web biz for a public school district. He mentioned to her that their district website was being overhauled to make it ADA-compliant. And I don’t mean making a dentist-friendly website.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by the United States Congress in 1990 to ensure “access to employment, state and local government programs and services, access to places of public accommodations, transportation, non-profits service providers and telecommunications” for people with disabilities. Websites of state and local governments fall in the category of “public services” under Title II of the ADA, which means that extra steps have to be taken to ensure that people with disabilities can still access the resources of those websites.
For example, a person with impaired or limited vision might use a screen reader program, which speaks the text on a website for the visitor. But a screen reader can’t read an image, so an ADA-compliant website should include an “alt” tag in the HTML code with a brief and meaningful description of the image.
Unlike government agencies, creating a website that is accessible for people with disabilities is not a requirement for private or business websites, but you could be discounting a population of potential customers that can’t access your site. If you’d like some more tips for making an ADA-compliant website, check out Website Accessibility Under Title II of the ADA, which describes some of the issues, solutions and other considerations that web designers and developers may want to account for when creating a website.
by Karina Beattiger 8.May 2008 08:18
Alliteration aside, I am what some may call a rabid hater of all blog and networking sites whose main method for gauging interest is akin to a high school dance. (You may choose your own details.) Facebook, MySpace, DeviantArt, LiveJournal -- I can talk here, I used to be an eeeeeaaaaaaarly adopter, with a username people tried to pay me to give up -- and other such 'friendslist driven' networking sites. You know what I'm talking about. For years, I've managed to stay away from the sheer ridiculousness that is "What do you mean, I'm not in your top 10?" and "Did you see what Nancy posted in her blog about George, who posted in his blog about Ray, who posted in Nancy's blog about that kid who set his pants on fire?" (C'mon, Youtubers, you've seen it, too...)
So when Twitter started making an appearance a couple years ago, I subconsciously filed it under 'don't care' and moved on. It was, to my way of thinking, just another popularity game with not-so-subtle hints of obssessive stalking and a continuation of the 'let's plug in to the internet and never leave' theme that's been creeping up on us (avalanched?) for the past decade or so. Yes, as a web designer, I can't talk too loudly, so I won't. About that, anyway. This time.
Except... Then I learned that WD Weems had his own Twitter. And that he was incorporating it into his blog. And that, now knowing you can do such a thing, he was incorporating it into his blog in a pretty awesome way. Oh, ho, ho. I am intrigued. And then he upped the ante: did you know Andy Clarke has a Twitter feed? I bet you do -- he's got 1,682 followers (in Twit-speak, it means 1,682 people are watching his feed). You're one of them, aren't you? It's okay; stand proud. I am, too.
This is where Twitter starts to feel vaguely stalkery to me. On the one hand, I'm the kind of person who watches my IMs to see what everyone's away messages are. If they're sufficiently clever, I leave a message with them. If not, the tiny part of me that is a frothing-at-the-mouth Virgo is at least content to know what everyone is doing in some vain attempt at controlling the schedules and whereabouts of my friends. (Why I am not dead in a ditch somewhere is beyond me -- my friends are tolerant and kind.) On the other hand, it's pretty fascinating to get a glimpse into the daily lives of people who are, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than pixels on a screen to me: Kyle swears Andy is flesh and blood, but maybe he's just a really excellently crafted virtual reality rock star with fingers in every port worldwide, leaving clever comments like Alice, only with personality.
And then here's where Twitter starts expanding from simple stalkery. Andy isn't the only web guru on the system. Eric Meyer, star of meyerweb.com; Jeffrey Zeldman, of A List Apart fame as well as his own self-named blog; and so on. I could keep going, but I'm on a time limit here. My tea is getting cold.
There's a point to all this name-dropping, though, I promise: all of these gurus are linked through Twitter. Of course, Twitter isn't the only application that does this, but bear with me here. The beauty of Twitter is that it only allows for a few lines at a time -- there's a 140 character limit. This doesn't allow for very much room. It forces the Tweeter to keep it short and concise, either dabbling in the mysterious one-liner or laying out a thought-provoking statement of opinion or fact. Or, my personal favorite, engaging in the slow, yet fun to watch, exchange of comments to each other, a la the all-purpose @ sign. When they all meet up for a conference or event, the back and forth of Tweets and Twitterers takes on a uniform subject -- from the saga of the disappearing underpansuitcase to the travels and travails of getting to and from and surving the conference in question.
As if this wasn't cool enough, the sheer PR capability of an easily maintained mini-blog is mind-blowing. Not only can you single-handedly let people know that you're active, alive, and feeling chipper (or not), but you can always take the opportunity to network with your peers, as well. You can input the code into your website, or blog, or whathaveyou, offering a neat and easy way to inform your non-Twitter stalkers that you're up and about and busy as a bee, or you can simply use it as a kind of periscope into everyone else's lives.
...It really does sound a little stalkish, doesn't it?
So, a brief recap, then. Twitter:
- A Toy: Fulfilling everyone's undying need to stalk somebody.
- A Tool: Networking, idea-sharing, and a kind of GPS on the pulse of the community.
- A Guilty Pleasure: Because I admit to an undying need to stalk people.
All in all, like any tool, you're going to find your fair share of twits as well as tradesman. The key here is to find the community that you're interested in to begin with. When used sparingly, and without the popularity-driven fanaticism of MySpace's friends list-padding mindset, Twitter can be a useful and effective tool of the trade. As well as a guilty pleasure.
...What? I've got my cake. Now I'm going to eat it, too!