The worst sites in the world.

Slate tries to answer the question, "why are restaurant web sites so bad?"

"… I haven't ever seen an explanation for why this industry's online presence is so singularly bruising. The rest of the Web long ago did away with auto-playing music, Flash buttons and menus, and elaborate intro pages, but restaurant sites seem stuck in 1999."

"Say you're a designer and you've got to demo a site you've spent two months creating," Bohan explains. "Your client is someone in their 50s who runs a restaurant but is not very in tune with technology. What's going to impress them more: Something with music and moving images, something that looks very fancy to someone who doesn't know about optimizing the Web for consumer use, or if you show them a bare-bones site that just lists all the information? I bet it would be the former—they would think it's great and money well spent."

I've often asked myself this very question. Restaurant sites (and to a similar extent, band sites) are a morass of shoddy design, poor load times, and clunky navigation. Some of these sites are absolutely beautiful to look at but a complete failure as a functional web site. What many restaurant owners don't seem to realize is that their web site is often the front door to their business. Superdoop's philosophy, the simplest solution is often the best solution, might be a good foundation to build your front door upon.