Just Finished My First Offline Site. Opinions Please.

[Handsome J]

So, after much study from the folks here, plus alot of research on Wordpress and general website building, I have just about finished my first offline site. Im looking for opinions. The site is centered on a local small restaurant franchise (Tony Sopranos Pizza) here in NJ. I have signed up two stores for an annual agreement. Site is mostly done except for the owner profiles. I added google voice (liked the layout so much, I added the format to my site) to the first restaurant in locations/menu to see how it would work.

We all talk about adding value, judge for yourself:

This is the only of the 9 locations online today:

TONY SOPRANOS PIZZA, VOORHEES, NJ,(856)719-1010, Quality Home-Style Quisine-NOT Your Standard Pizzeria...

This is my site I just built:

Tony Sopranos Pizza & Ristorante

My site basically is a landing page for all the locations. Even though they all share a main domain, they each have specific store info and location info. I also feel I have a better domain for all of them, easy for customers to remember. This was a fun first project. Now that I have two on board, I think it will be easy to close the other 7, especially when they see for a minimal advertising investment, they have an awesome online delivery system that will make them money. So, please speak up, tell me what you think.

[Peter Burke]

Hi HJ

I like the site.

I also like the way that you have themed the site with the TV series.

That's actually the main reason why I thought I'd comment and possibly ask a few questions that you don't have to answer because maybe you've already answered yourself.

The theme itself is cool but I'm not entirely sure that a good theme for a family restaurant is associating it with a mafia family (real or not )

Secondly you may want to check that you have royalties to use the 'family dining/get together photograph) I think it's number 2 in the sequence.

Often these 'media' companies can come down quite heavy if they think you are cashing in on their 'property'. So at the least get written permission to use their pictures.

You might also get hit with associating the series with a restaurant. Just cover your 'a..s'
on this one.

Once you get that sorted.

The other thing I liked was that the site info is 'above the fold'

Hope that is of some use

Good luck

[Handsome J]

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

Hi HJ

I like the site.

I also like the way that you have themed the site with the TV series.

That's actually the main reason why I thought I'd comment and possibly ask a few questions that you don't have to answer because maybe you've already answered yourself.

The theme itself is cool but I'm not entirely sure that a good theme for a family restaurant is associating it with a mafia family (real or not )

Secondly you may want to check that you have royalties to use the 'family dining/get together photograph) I think it's number 2 in the sequence.

Often these 'media' companies can come down quite heavy if they think you are cashing in on their 'property'. So at the least get written permission to use their pictures.

You might also get hit with associating the series with a restaurant. Just cover your 'a..s'
on this one.

Once you get that sorted.

The other thing I liked was that the site info is 'above the fold'

Hope that is of some use

Good luck

Thanks for the comment. I should have mentioned the owners pay a licensing fee to use the name from the network. The restaurants are all mob themed. Mostly specific to the series.

[Riz]

Restaurants benefit immensly from a customer list.

Why not have an opt in box for email promotions?

Riz

[rosetrees]

I like the second one - like Peter said all the info you want is right there in front of you.

The first one worries me. I'm assuming it's a scan of the menus. If so, there's nothing there for Google to find. I know it would be tedious, but I think you'd be better off typing out the menu and adding pics.

Also, as Riz said, add a mailing list.

[greenovni]

First site is just a picture that gives you no benefit of google crawling so the site trying to rank using only meta description and meta keywords.

Second site is nice looking - feedburner signup not working - You might want to go after a real optin email list

Email Marketing and Email List Manager | MailChimp (Non Aff) offers you a free mailing solution up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails a month, anything after 500 subscribers carries a reasonable monthly fee.

[Handsome J]

I agree with you all, a real email list is needed. I have suggested it and it was met with skepticism. I will be adding a getresponse or aweber interface within the week. I definitely want to learn that side of the business now. Thus far has been a great education. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

[greenovni]

Originally Posted by Handsome J

I agree with you all, a real email list is needed. I have suggested it and it was met with skepticism. I will be adding a getresponse or aweber interface within the week. I definitely want to learn that side of the business now. Thus far has been a great education. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

J You might want to think about also of writing a small pdf explaining the benefits of having your own list, how it works, how it is a company asset etc and give it to your prospective clients so you could erase that skepticism from the get go.

[travlinguy]

As for the first site. I really liked it. It's loaded with colorful images of great looking Italian dishes. I did notice that some of the images have some fuzzy artifact going on. This often comes from copying and recopying them as they make their way from one computer to the next. An easy way to get rid of that stuff is to open the image in PhotoShop, blow it up to the size of Bayonne, and use the touch-up tool to take out the fuzziness.

A couple of people have already commented that the lack of text on the site will be detrimental to getting picked up by the SEs. There's an easy fix to that. Crop out your best pics and incorporate some keyword rich descriptions below each of them. If you feel you need the entire menu on the site, provide links from the home page to it.

Overall, a very nice job. Looking at that stuff made me hungry. Good Luck!