A Quick Site Audit
TweetTwo things converged today for me today. First, I found out that there is finally a pizza place that will deliver food to my area. Hooray! That’s a big deal, since no restaurants of any sort has done that in my small town before now. Second, I was looking at the websites of some of the sponsors of the FamousBloggers Comluv contest, and noticed that one was a Chinese takeout place that also delivers. It made me wish that our local Chinese restaurant delivered as well. Since I was on the site, I began to analyze it in my head (as I always do), and thought I’d point out a few things I like about it – as well as a few things I’d recommend they change (if they ever asked me, which they haven’t). LOL. You can see a screenshot of the site at the end of this post, but I’d recommend actually going to the site to get a good look at it.
Things I Like About The Site
1. Giant phone number in the header. You can’t miss that call to action, now can you?
2. Map to the location to make it easy to find them – again right there above the fold, and in your face.
3. Menu that can be downloaded and printed out – again displayed prominently.
4. News feed, showing what’s going on, when they’re closed, what new items are available, etc. is great.
5. Reviews are great. That always makes a new potential customer feel more comfortable about ordering from you. Prominent position; good job.
Things I’d Change
1. Break up the paragraphs of text on the home page. Use headings for emphasis. For example, I’d use a big heading such as “Why People From Lancaster, Calgate and Morecambe Love Us, and then explain about their quality meat and fresh produce. A sharp photo of that high-quality food wouldn’t hurt either.
2. The ingredients list is a little weird. While I am a fan of tag clouds, it doesn’t make as much sense in this situation as it does in others. Clicking an ingredient takes you to a page showing the various meals offered that use that ingredient. It’s “kinda cool” but “kinda odd”, you know?
3. Hours of Service is preceded by a heading that says “Oriental Cuisine”. Huh? The heading should say “Hours of Service” or “When We’re Open” or something related. Sure, they do serve oriental cuisine, and that should be somewhere – but just not as the heading over the service hours. I’d also expect those hours to be a little more noticeable.
4. Subscribe for Offers list signup is a good idea, but I’d like to see a little more explanation to really convince the visitor to sign up. What kind of offers? Sell me on the really great deals I’ll get right in my email inbox, if only I’ll let you have my email address.
Summary
All in all, I really like the way this site has presented nearly everything I’d want to know right on the home page. I don’t have to work hard to find the information I need. My only real beef is that they could do a slightly better job of making a few things stand out, and really sell me on how awesome they are. But I like the site, and if I didn’t live 4,422 miles away, I’d place my order right now.
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10 Responses to “A Quick Site Audit”
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Very much enjoyed reading this, and placed it on Stumbleupon in the hope more people will think about a site as they organize its components.
It is so, so easy to get distracted and put important things in the wrong place and then get used to seeing the wrong thing over and over and going “meh.” I know for myself, this is a cardinal sin.
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I thought the Oriental Cuisine heading is kinda funny too… and their header image probably needs to stand out more instead of using a slightly dark red text on a red background.
Recent post by Cindy ..The Circle of Trust- an Ultra Fractal graphic novel
That’s a good point about the logo color not contrasting enough with the header background, Cindy.
A number of their pages have robots meta tags set at noindex, follow. I don’t know if that’s intentional (and if it is, I don’t know why), or that might be one of those WordPress quirks.
But I like the site, for the most part. It’s not your standard-issue restaurant site, and it makes great use of customer reviews.
Good catch, Bob. I was looking at it from a marketing point of view and didn’t do an SEO audit on it at all, but certainly if they have unintended noindexes on pages, that’s not good.
Ha, I like the ingredient tag cloud! Yeah, maybe not useful all the time, but there really are times I can remember when I’ve been standing at the counter at the Chinese place craving an ingredient (like that yummy black bean sauce for some reason) and want to know which dishes I can get it in. Great, now I want shrimp with black bean sauce. Mmmmmm….
Recent post by Jill Kocher ..Back in the Blogging Saddle
Good point, Jill. I can see the usefulness of it in that situation. I’m not sure I’d give it that much prominence, but you’re right. It has a usefulness.
They maybe could do with a better server. Took me 4 attempts to load the page. Maybe this blog is giving them a lot of traffic that they cannot handle?
I notice that they have a “Report This Post” after each post, which is a bit strange too. As if their designer used a default multi-user blog theme to start with. Strange.
What this is really is an interesting example of how any bricks and mortar business can use WordPress to build a simple but effective website that gives a little more than the tradition static html pages. The tags (ingredients) is a great idea.
As for the SEO, the All In One SEO Plugin does default to block tag pages (and cat pages too I think). So that explains that. They do have that installed. Another example of a web designer not configuring the settings to the best advantage for the customer.
The top level nav is too basic (just the home and about page – the default settings in WP). It really could do with the menu as well. Very easy to do, only laziness on the part of the designer keeps it as bare as it is.
Interesting insights into more details, Jon. I bet you’re right in that much of the issues come from just not spending time configuring the default out-of-the-box WP settings. A little time could probably go a long way on this one.