Chinese Restaurant Website

Loic · #1 (**permalink**) 07-04-2007, 10:34 PM

Hi,

This is my second website which I designed for my current employer.
I will appreciate any comment/suggestion you can give me.
Jasmine Palace restaurant:
Jasmine Palace Chinese Restaurant in Limerick and Ennis

davebarnes · #2 (**permalink**) 07-04-2007, 11:03 PM

+ Very classy looking website.
+ Not Flash. Thank you.

- You need to visit your website using Firefox 2 under Mac OS X. You won't like what you see on certain pages. Broken menus to start.

pagetta · #3 (**permalink**) 07-05-2007, 05:23 AM

very nice design, I love the colour palette and some great images there
- doesn't work in FF as dave said
- I personally would have more text and information on the home page - more text for seo purposes, perhaps some images of the food or restaurant. you need a 'call-to-action' other than your menu to make people click through - perhaps a 'featured dish' or 'download a voucher for free glass of wine' sort of thing.
-gallery is nice but you can achieve similar using css which is much slicker and faster the use.
Nice website though lovely simple clean dsign very professional looking

Dcrux · #4 (**permalink**) 07-05-2007, 07:44 AM

Yes, let's not show the food. Rather, let's show one-liners with less descriptive copy than the Rich Bowl outlet at the mall. Don't show the chef or build up an image of a master with a profile, just mention the fact there are chefs. The About Us was almost generic filler, about what you'd expect from a template.

Please don't show me a tastefully done interior of the actual restaurant, because I'll be much more interested in the designer's shopping spree at iStockPhoto.

I view this site as the designer's attempt at selling their next web layout client, not making the client's cash register ring. This site makes me want to go out and buy the book CSS Zen Garden put out, not visit the restaurant. It doesn't even persuade me to think about food as an abstract notion. Absolutely gorgeous layout, as a web site I wonder what the purpose was. It makes me long for the days of brochureware sites, and I dislike brochureware sites.

Let me guess: Trying to start up a web design business on the side?

Loic · #5 (**permalink**) 07-05-2007, 09:54 AM

Hi guys, thank you for you comments.
As for Firefox 2 on Mac OS, I'll have to check it out as soon as possible.
Thank you for your constructive comment Dcrux.
Point taken.
My intention wasn't exactly to sabotage the business of my employer - who's also a friend.
As I don't have a background in graphic design I guess my main concern was to make the site functional as well as aesthetically attractive...
I design three different websites for the same businessman, all of them Chinese restaurants ( one modern Asian Fusion Food restaurant, my first website: Z-WE-TON Restaurant in Limerick. It stands for Good Food, one Chinese Fast Food restaurant, which should be ready within a few weeks, and this high class restaurant.
As my aim was to give each website a very different style, I wanted to emphasize the sophisticated atmosphere of this restaurant.
The restaurant will be entirely refurbished in a couple of months and a professional photographer will be hired to take pictures of the renovated place as well as dishes.
I guess this will be the occasion to make a few changes on the website graphic-wise.
As for your guess it is actually a good one, I would like to offer web design services, but I would like to do it well.
Hence thank you for your help.

Dubbya · #6 (**permalink**) 07-05-2007, 04:02 PM

It's really a nice layout. Very tasteful.

Two typos:

Fresh Mussels in Spicy Hot Wine
"try ou"

should read: "try our"

On the Vegetarian menu:

Buddha's Feast
"crispy tofu with the freshest seasonal in a soya based tangy sauce"

"freshest seasonal" what???

Loic · #7 (**permalink**) 07-05-2007, 05:05 PM

Thanks a lot Dubbya.
Sorry about the typos.