Tuesday, August 04, 2009

RA Sushi - Unsolicited Website Critique

No, you didn't ask, but here's a website review I felt compelled to write about "RA Sushi", a sushi restaurant chain that appears to be located out of Scottsdale, AZ. that is opening up a new location in Kansas City.

I tripped across this website when I read that RA Sushi was opening up a location in Kansas City. I have just returned from a vacation in Lake Tahoe, where the sushi is served up like McDonald's cheeseburgers. I had eaten my share of delish sushi from Tahoe, so I was ready to commit to sushi more in my wonderful home town of Kansas City.

Problem is: Not too many sushi places here do a Happy Hour. We absolutely LIVED on sushi happy hours in Tahoe. Same delish sushi. Half-price. What's not to love?

Anyway...I found the website for "RA Sushi" - http://www.rasushi.com/ and pulled it up to take a look. And I looked. And I looked...and I couldn't find anything to click except for "Get a RA Gift Certificate".

Really, it's obvious what they want you to do on the site...buy gift certificates. That, or join their email list.

I wanted neither.

I wanted restaurant locations! Menu! What about a happy hour? I couldn't find this anywhere. Even when the cursor turned to a pointy-finger, I clicked and nothing came up.

The background music is very soothing, but where's the beef?! Er...sushi?!

I was cursing the web designer under my breath when....I saw it. Wrapped subtlely around the RA Sushi logo, THERE were the links I was looking for.

Yes! They had an happy hour. Yes! The menu was online.

But...

When I clicked on the menu, there was no option to PRINT. What?!

Memo to restaurants: PEOPLE WANT TO PRINT YOUR MENUS! It's awfully cute and visually-appealing to put your menu in a scrolling Flash area, but I CAN'T PRINT THIS!

Nor can I copy and paste this in an email to my sushi-loving friends.

Nor can I post this on my food blog.

Nor can I tweet about this on Twitter.

Really, RA, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It's all very pretty and cute, but inevitably UNUSABLE.

I really hope your sushi is better than your website.

3 comments:

Cagey (Kelli Oliver George) said...

This is exactly why Manoj created FoodieBytes.

Funny, I had no problem finding the menu button, but I have done a lot of testing for Manoj and we are used to STUPID restaurant sites and their unrelenting desire to try and be cool. So yes, I agree with you!!

The DLC said...

Oh, what a horrible site in almost every way. The printing thing is instersting, I haven't thought ot that. I typically hate the PDF menu, but that is an argument in its favor.

I have a ginormous stockpile of local craptacular sites garnered largely via Twitter. Some day I'll write the epic post.

lorib said...

Restaurants are definitely notorious for the cool/flashy yet unusable Web site. The amazing thing is most restaurants don't have a lot of money for marketing and they are probably spending way too much for all this flash and glam when their users just want a MENU and HOURS.

That said, Pineapple Cheese Wontons sound really yummy and I may have to check this place out.