Today I’m working on a website for a nice Italian restaurant in San Diego. I love working on menu pages for restaurant websites because it’s a good example of well organized content that is easy to format.
I come across a lot of restaurants that use PDF’s or even straight images ( ack!) to display their menus on their websites and it makes me want to poke my eyes out. This great content should be in well formatted HTML so search engines can easily process it and put the search results in your favor. It takes a little more time and a little more expense. but it’s so worth it.
Another strike against the PDF method is the rise in mobile device use. Many people use their phones to decide where they are going to eat lunch. If the menu is done well, and the site is responsive, it is much easier to read on a phone vs. a PDF duplicate of a menu printed on A5 sheets of paper.
So, take the time to put your menus in a truly web friendly format and make it easier for potential customers to see what you’re all about. They’ll thank you for it. Well, maybe they won’t thank you, but they’ll know if you have what they want.