I recently saw your link over on Keith Byrd’s San Luis Obispo Real Estate website.  I actually tried one of your pizza’s recently and was quite impressed.  It was very good and although a bit more expensive than I’d like for a pizza different enough to warrant me buying a second one sometime soon.  However this isn’t about your food, it’s about your website.I’d like to make you aware of some issues with an all Flash (that’s the animation and multimedia technology used to deliver your current website) website:

• Having to “load” your website.  Since the website is done entirely in Flash, I have to wait for the content to load.  This is bad.  Most users have a very brief attention span an making them wait for information they could just as easily get from another Mediterranean restaurant’s website is not a good idea.  I’m on a pretty fast DSL connection and it took me about 40 seconds to load.  As a website you have about 1/20th of a second to impress someone with your design, and about 4 seconds max for their attention span.  That means that more than likely no one will ever wait for your website to load and will most likely go somewhere else to find the information they’re looking for.
• Playing music in the background while relaxing in a restaurant is not kosher on a website.  Let me explain why.  As a potential customer on my computer I have probably found your website either by a referral (like Keith, me or Yelp) or by typing in your web address (petraslo.com).  I likely have the ability to listen to my own music and for the sake of this example we’ll say it’s Andy McKee (because it is  at the moment).  I’m listening to my music, bobbing my head and enjoying it thoroughly…  Until I come to your website.  My once melodic and relaxing Andy McKee has now been mixed inadvertently and without my permission with your background music embedded in Flash.  I’m surprised, confused and a bit frustrated and now scrambling to either turn off my music (something I’m not happy about doing) or trying to figure out where this new music is coming from.  I realize it’s coming from your website and immediately am a bit irked that someone would force their music on me.  I finally find the pause button on the website and stop your music.  I might even do one of the following things: close the website and vow never to eat at your store again, be mildly ticked and still search for your phone number or address, or if you’re lucky I didn’t have any music playing and I enjoy your music and happily browse your menu and order something.  I’d like to ask you as a business owner: Is it worth the first two scenario’s to have a few of the third?
• Not being able to link to your menu.  Since the website is done in Flash and does not utilize HTML to link to different pages I cannot (and neither can search engines) link to any of your interior pages.  Nor can they most likely read any of them.  If I want to send my friend the menu page, or your contact information my friend will need to sit through your flash introduction and then I’ll talk them through which buttons to click and how to turn off your music before they can get to the information I want to share with them. Not good business.  It should be very easy and second nature for me to use and share your website, not painful.  This is also true for search engines.
• Minimal search engine indexing.  Flash isn’t as easily indexed as HTML and is much harder to optimize for search engines thus as a web site built entirely in Flash you aren’t as visible or highly ranked as you probably should be.  Being found in search engines is like free business referrals, why are you making this more difficult for yourself?
• Not playing well with browsers.  This might sound odd but Flash is not inherently installed on browsers and isn’t supported by them as standard HTML is.  An example will probably clear this up a bit: Try right clicking on this page.  You’ll get your standard right click menu from a website including possibly the options to go back, view source, copy, paste, etc.  This is what you expect, right?  Try right clicking on any Flash website.  You will not be prompted to copy or paste, or go back, or anything else you are used too.  Instead you can most likely “play” or “loop”.  This is because your website is essentially one big movie that has hot spots that can be clicked on to play other “movies”.  It’s not content, it’s a movie.  Do you play your menu’s as movies for customers when they come into your store?  Probably not because it would be frustrating for them to pause, rewind or wait to read the menu or point out things to their friends.  It would also be very expensive to “print” them to put in your shop.  So why do it on the web?
• The back button is now broken.  Yes, your website has effectively broken my back button on my browser.  If I click on any menu item and then hit the back button I actually leave your website.  Not a good thing.

It’s in your best interest to make things very simple and easy for your users and give them exactly what they want from a restaurant website: A menu, a phone number, an address and possibly a nice logo and easy to read text.  You don’t really need anything else. If you have any questions give me a call or better yet contact your web designer and get this all sorted out.  Ask for a simple one page informational website.  It will help your business rather than hurt it.  You’ll thank me later.

And stop torturing your customers!  I know you’re one of the most personable restaurants I’ve ever had the joy of eating in, that should show up in spades through your website too.