Screen_shot_2010-08-04_at_10.34.42_AM.png
People have said this many times before—some of them have even been very funny about it—but we need to keep saying this until it finally hits home: Nobody has ever gone to a restaurant website to be impressed by the web design.

When I want to figure out where I'm going to eat, my process, I think, is not unique. I'll Google a restaurant on my phone. I'll read recommendations online (at sites that I trust). But sooner or later, I'm going to want to go to the restaurant's own website. This is always a frustrating experience.

My Android phone, like the vast majority of phones out there, can't handle Flash. For some reason, restaurant owners seem to believe that a Flash entry for their website is essential. But it's not just Flash: If I want to order takeout on my way home, I'll need to see a menu. Most restaurants, for some reason, make their menus available as a downloadable PDF only, which is crazy inefficient on a mobile browser.

And so I suggest to restaurant owners: If you don't have a smart phone, borrow a friend's. Try to find your website on the phone the way a customer would. Then be completely flabbergasted at how frustrating an experience it is. If, for some reason, you feel that your website absolutely needs to have all the bells and whistles (it doesn't), you should at least make sure that you have a super-simple mobile-ready version of the site available for impatient people with your hours, your phone number, your address, and your menu. We want to buy food from you and you are making it incredibly difficult.

This has been an Andy Rooney Moment™.