Are you a fantastic restaurant with a fabulous menu?

Of course you want to show of all six hundred and fifty versions of your famous Samoan yak dumplings.

Let me give you one quick tip… PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t put your menu as a separate PDF!

Not only is this infuriating, but it’s also bad usability. In order for a hungry some one to decide what delicious item they want to order; they have to:
1) click the link,
2) leave the site (the PDF viewer in the browser auto launches, taking you away from the site),
3) wait for the PDF to load (depending on how many items listed and how many images there are, this can take a bit of time),
4) click the back arrow in the browser to go back and get your address, phone number or put in a web order (as the PDF viewer doesn’t have an integrated (“return” button, and you can’t put one in the PDF).

Imagin you go to a doctor’s office. The office is nice, clean, every thing looks good. But there is a xeroxed flyer for one of the doctors taped up to the wall outside. Is that the doctor you are going to go to? Probably not. It doesn’t inspire the most confidence or look the most professional. A separate PDF menu is the same thing.

I know it’s much easier, faster and probably cheaper to just host a pdf menu, but spend the money/time to code it up properly in HTML (or WordPress).

It will look better, be more consistent, you will avoid all those other problems… and it’s just more professional.

Now, I’ll have an extra large order of those yack dumplings please.