Eastside Cafe

Eastsidecafeaustin.com

Intended Audience
People interested dining at Eastside Cafe or in their newsletter or classes on cooking or gardening.

Usefulness of Content
They make probably the most obvious information very easy to find. Location, phone numbers, and hours of operation are right on the front page. It is amazing how many businesses forget this. They also provide all the past newsletters, a way to reserve rooms, order a limited number of items from their store, and class information (upcoming and past) on their site. Overall, most everything you could want from a restaurant website.

Consistency of Design
Very colorful, lots of pictures of food as section separators. Front page with primary links switches to a different (still colorful and useful, but different) layout for the rest of the site.

Ease of Navigation
Front page covers all the main topics with two menus - a simple one with what you would expect - food and wine menus, contact & directions, information about the restaurant and their garden, and their store (but you would need to know that their store was named Pitchforks & Tablespoons or you wouldn't know what that link was). They have a more colorful menu with icons for items they are obviously promoting (their email list, online store, workshops and catering). Once past the front page they go to a straightforward format with the primary topics (menus, etc) as a continuous menu and an additional menu for items specific to that page. One issue, on their page for renting out private dining rooms for events they have let making the site look pretty trump clarity. Until I read the page and looked at the page for a minute I didn't realize the scripted type "Brunch, Lunch, Dinner" were actually links to pricing for reserving rooms for those meals.