Thread: Site Review : www.restaurants.ie

Hi All,
We have relaunched this site and would appreciate any feedback regarding design, usability etc.

More functionality will be coming in coming weeks including IPhone App.

Thanks
Alan

Hi,

That looks really good, I can tell a lot of work went into it.

On the pages that have full listing details the info is presented very well the rating system is really nice.

The only negative I'd have is it appears you just added"Golden Pages" type basic listings which show just the name, address, phone and maybe cuisine type. How did you get these listings? By crawling/harvesting other websites?

Why not just list the useful "Full listings" as opposed to rattling off all the "Basic" ones too which don't display very helpful information.

If I wanted to find the number for an indian Restaurant in Kilkenny, I'd use the golden pages as opposed to your "Basic" lsitings. Hoever, if all your listings were packed to the brim with useful info like maps, ratings, comments, menus etc... I'd definitely use your site a whole lot more.

Best of luck with it anyway, again, it looks really really good.

Fair play to yis.

Thanks php.allstar,
As you can imagine it will take sometime to populate the site with full listings as we want to individual restaurants to complete their info.
So over the coming months we will be giving more and more details on the restaurants.

Thanks for your feedback

Alan

Originally Posted by php.allstar

Hi,

That looks really good, I can tell a lot of work went into it.

On the pages that have full listing details the info is presented very well the rating system is really nice.

The only negative I'd have is it appears you just added"Golden Pages" type basic listings which show just the name, address, phone and maybe cuisine type. How did you get these listings? By crawling/harvesting other websites?

Why not just list the useful "Full listings" as opposed to rattling off all the "Basic" ones too which don't display very helpful information.

If I wanted to find the number for an indian Restaurant in Kilkenny, I'd use the golden pages as opposed to your "Basic" lsitings. Hoever, if all your listings were packed to the brim with useful info like maps, ratings, comments, menus etc... I'd definitely use your site a whole lot more.

Best of luck with it anyway, again, it looks really really good.

Fair play to yis.

Small search problem - there's no tapas restaurants in DUBLIN CITY CENTRE, but I get 4 if I search in Dublin 2.

For restaurants with no ratings yet - e.g. the Leitrim Lodge one listed on the front page, the user rating shows as one greyed out star. First impression for a second that registered with me was that it had been rated one star in all categories, before I realised it had no ratings. Maybe give unrated restaurants either 5 grey stars to indicated they haven't been rated, and ratings are out of five, or (since that could give the opposite impression) compromise on 3 grey stars?

On your "cuisine information" popup (which oddly is working OK without Firefox triggering a warning) there's a garbled bit:

Irish cuisine can be divided into two main categories – traditional,

Really like the site, tons of info on recipes, etc. Needs more shooter recipes though

Originally Posted by MOH

Small search problem - there's no tapas restaurants in DUBLIN CITY CENTRE, but I get 4 if I search in Dublin 2.

For restaurants with no ratings yet - e.g. the Leitrim Lodge one listed on the front page, the user rating shows as one greyed out star. First impression for a second that registered with me was that it had been rated one star in all categories, before I realised it had no ratings. Maybe give unrated restaurants either 5 grey stars to indicated they haven't been rated, and ratings are out of five, or (since that could give the opposite impression) compromise on 3 grey stars?

On your "cuisine information" popup (which oddly is working OK without Firefox triggering a warning) there's a garbled bit:


Really like the site, tons of info on recipes, etc. Needs more shooter recipes though

Thanks MOH, I agree with your comments on ratings and I'll get more shooters listed!!!

ACtually, just noticed on the cuisine page pop-up the picture that goes alongside "bar menu" is corrupted


Slight typo on the Christmas Party page - "can facilitate Christmas Partys in Ireland" - should be Parties

Also, as you get more full listings it would be useful if there was a way to filter wedding/christmas venues by location, rather than a countrywide list. Or maybe sort them by county instead of alphabetically, though that might be confusing.

Originally Posted by MOH

ACtually, just noticed on the cuisine page pop-up the picture that goes alongside "bar menu" is corrupted


Slight typo on the Christmas Party page - "can facilitate Christmas Partys in Ireland" - should be Parties

Also, as you get more full listings it would be useful if there was a way to filter wedding/christmas venues by location, rather than a countrywide list. Or maybe sort them by county instead of alphabetically, though that might be confusing.

yes we should have this filter in place with a few days.
tks again

Also you seem to be using pop windows throughout the site.

Many users nowadays employ popup blockers which will prevent these windows from showing. Norton Internet security, Google Toolbar, and Yahoo toolbar for Firefox will block these popups from what I can remember, but I don't use any of these so I can't test.

Why not try something like jQuery modal windows to show the "popup" content?

Originally Posted by php.allstar

Also you seem to be using pop windows throughout the site.

Many users nowadays employ popup blockers which will prevent these windows from showing. Norton Internet security, Google Toolbar, and Yahoo toolbar for Firefox will block these popups from what I can remember, but I don't use any of these so I can't test.

Why not try something like jQuery modal windows to show the "popup" content?

i dont think our pop-ups will be blocked by these.
I have tested on several setups and they open without any warnings.
I take your point though.
TKs

http://www.restaurants.ie/script/jquery.js is being loaded in twice.

This could save your page a few milliseconds on load!