Because websites are increasingly important for hotels, we evaluated the websites of some leading restaurants. Hotels can learn from these websites, which included: Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Panera Bread, Rare Hospitality, Legal Sea Foods, Harry’s Savoy Grill & Ballroom, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine bar, Ted’s Montana Grill, and Great American Restaurants. We used over 400 criteria to evaluate the websites under seven major categories including:

• Technical specifications
• Technology used
• Site attractiveness
• Ease of navigation
• Ease of contact
• Marketing effectiveness & e-commerce solutions
• Legal compliance

The maximum score a restaurant could get was 304. Olive Garden led with 230 points (75.6 percent), followed by Red Lobster with 222 points (73.0 percent). Third place went to Panera Bread with 213 points (70.0 percent). The others scored the following: Rare Hospitality 211 points (69.4 percent), Legal Sea Foods 209 points (68.7 percent), Harry’s Savoy Grill & Ballroom 196 points (64.4 percent), Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine bar 190 points (62.5 percent), Ted’s Montana Grill 168 points (55.2 percent), and Great American Restaurants 153 points (50.3 percent).

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
We used netmechanic.com and looked at speed and bandwidth sensitivity, breadth of browser compatibility, HTML quality, link integrity, spell check, page titles, descriptions, keywords, tags, plain text/HTML alternate entry paths, and last updated. For breadth of browser compatibility, www.tedsmontanagrill.com received five out of five points, indicating their website can be viewed in Internet Explorer, Netscape, America Online, and WebTV. We measured the loading time of the restaurant homepage in 14.4K, 28.8K, 33.6K, 56K, ISDN, T1, and average download time was calculated. If the website loaded between 1 and 10 seconds, it got five points from this criterion. We have lower points for higher average loading times. (i.e., three points for 21–30 seconds, four points for 11–20 seconds, five points for 1–10 seconds). In this category, www.redlobster.com and www.tedsmontanagrill.com received five out of five points; www.thecapitalgrill.com received two points. In terms of link integrity, most websites did fine.

SITE ATTRACTIVENESS
We looked at: ease of use, clarity and simplicity, elegant core design, typography and font styles, originality of components, visual appeal, contrast between background and text, unified design, general layout and use of space, complexity and quality of tables, use of borders, dividers and rules, and length of scrolling pages. This section was evaluated on a purely subjective basis. Points were awarded as follows: excellent = five points, good = four points, average = three points, fair = two points, poor = one point. For attractiveness, www.olivegarden.com came in with 60 out of 60 points, with www.panerabread.com and www.redlobster.com coming close with 58 points. All three sites were well thought out and sophisticated in design. On the other hand, www.greatamericanrestaurants.com came in with 46 points for their functional but very basic site.

WHAT’S NEXT?
What was once a novelty is now a crucial marketing tool in the restaurant industry. Many consumers search the web for a restaurant before going on vacation or out for a night on the town. It is important to develop and maintain high-quality, userfriendly, and entertaining websites that provide information and foster a sense of community. Consumer expectations force the industry to continually innovate, update, and expand their current sites. Every website showed room for improvement. However, those sites at the top of their respective lists provide a benchmark for which others can take insight and inspiration. For more information, please contact: Andrew Moreo, Cihan Cobanoglu (cihan@udel.edu), Fred J. DeMicco (fdemicco@udel.edu), and Andrew Moreo (Andrew Moreo1@Hotmail.com).

Frederick J. DeMicco, Ph.D, is professor and ARAMARK chair of Hotel & Restaurant Management, the University of Delaware. Contact Dr. DeMicco at fdemicco@udel.edu.