Wherein I am revealed as a force for positive change.

omfgco:

We noticed an interesting discussion over on Portland Food & Drink that we’ve had many times ourselves: horrible restaurant websites. Dan Wineman has summed up the frustration really well: either you’re listening to some electro-beat trying to find a menu (leading you to a huge, outdated PDF) or you’re on a mobile device and you get that sad flashplayer icon leaving you up shit creek.

So when it came time to do olympicprovisions.com, we had a huge list of what not to do. It’s not a mind-blower of a website by any means, and intentionally so: first and foremost, we wanted users to find the address, hours, and phone number easily. Being built with Wordpress, the folks at OP can update the menus daily if need be, add announcements or change the hours of operation themselves.

The other important thing we implemented is a mobile-specific style, which at this point in time should be mandatory for every restaurant’s online presence. We’re really happy with how the whole project turned out, and hopefully more restaurants get caught up to speed with how potential consumers are engaging them.

When I was growing up, every morning as I stared into the mirror, waxing my prepubescent ’stache and checking and rechecking my scalp for burrowing parasites, I would repeat to myself: “If I can write one blog post which convinces one designer employed by one restaurant owner to build one website which, on just one mobile platform, isn’t total shit, then my time on this earth shall not have been wasted. Also, buy AAPL at one and seven eighths.”

I only remembered some of that advice, but you know what? Totally worth it.

(link by way of Peter Vidani)