There is a well-established pizza place near us that we just love called Labella’s. They’re very old school, but they make an awesome pizza.
When I say “old school”, I mean that you just need to call if you want to order something. There is no online ordering, no app, and they don’t even take credit cards over the phone. Call in what you want and go pick it up.
They recently rebuilt their website, and it’s an improvement over the mostly broken site they had before. However, they’re trying way too hard.
Too hard?
This is coming from someone whose company takes 4-6 months to build amazing websites, because that’s what many businesses need. In the case of Labella’s and others, though, that’s way overkill.
I say that Labella’s overthought their website based largely on their new page for their menu. A menu page is critical for a restaurant, but it can be pretty simple. In the case of a pizza place, just list what kind of pizzas you offer, what kinds of starters if you have, if you have salads, etc. It doesn’t need to be fancy. In their case, though, they started with a hugely complex ecommerce template and they’re working to simplify it down.
Most of the items don’t even work correctly, but those that do are not what’s needed. I’ll share a screenshot below in case it (hopefully!) changes in the future, but here is their “salami with provolone“:
There are a few good things on there (price and toppings being the big two), and then a whole bunch of rubbish:
- Broken image of the pizza
- “Free global shipping”
- “Guaranteed Safe Checkout”
- “Add to cart”, which you can successfully do, but you can never check out (and never will)
- The description is all Lorem Ipsum
- The reviews are clearly stock (and somehow all 7 years old)
It didn’t have to be this way. Just set up a text page, drop the menu on it, and call it a day. There are certainly ways to improve beyond that, but for what they’re doing that’s all they need.
I’m certainly not advocating for you to be lazy, but trying to hard can be equally problematic (as I shared a while ago here about elementary school artwork and some local car dealers).
Labella’s is awesome and if you live near me you should try them out, but their website would be so much better if they only put less effort into it.
