I recently had the pleasure of finishing up a new website for the wonderful people at Isaac’s Way Restraurant, located in the heart of Fredericton New Brunswick. The restrauant has a large involvement in the local community and runs an onsite art auction to support local charities as well as many contests in the comminity. It was critical when putting together the site to ensure staff had the ability to easily update the website and change menu items, art pieces as well as blogs with minimal effort.

The site uses WordPress as a content management solution with a host of plugins to help ensure the website is an effective tool for the business owners. In addition to standard anti-spam and caching scripts, the site also features full integration with Twitter, automated keyword suggestions and search engine optimization techniques, Google sitemaps and the Simple Image Grabber to help keep pictures fresh.

Objectives

As with all websites I work on, the site was built around the business objectives and uses a simple design to help communicate the warm family friendly nature of the restaurant, the cheerful staff and the wonderful menu but the real question I asked myself as I scanned dozens of restaurant websites around the world was … why do people come to a restaurant website?

Here’s what I came up with:

• To gain a sense of the establishment and the food at the restaurant
• To find out about employment or partnership opportunities
• To learn about special deals, contests and selection
• To get contact information, location and parking details

With that in mind, I wanted to ensure the visitor had easy access to the physical location of the restaurant and included the Google map tool as an insert on their website. The map tool from Google is a self contained application linking directly to Google’s website. By using it on the webpage, visitors may access standard features such as the Map, Satellite or Terrain maps (as well as Street View when it is available) but more importantly they will also gain access to the Get Direction feature or be able to link the restaurant to local hotels and convention centers.

Throughout the website I’ve included links in both the sidebar and footer to the directions page to ensure visitors are always capable of finding the business quickly and easily.

You can visit Isaac’s Way restaurant online at http://isaacsway.ca.