Market Research!

Original Restaurant: Ray’s

  • Ray's Current Website
  • Location: 1618 Corinth Ave, West LA 90025

    New Name: Al's


    Visual design: Not very impressive, Colors used are a light blue for their home page element & a white background. Black copy. There doesn’t seem to be a clear logo or consistent branding.


    Content: The website features “updates” (3 random updates on food items), “testimonials” (some quotes from happy customers), “gallery” (handfull of images), and “contact” (phone number, address, hours). All of this is on the same page.


    “Call to action” on home page: The closest thing to a call to action is what seems to be their slogan: “West L.A.'s last Mom and Pop neighborhood burger joint.”


    Navigation: There’s a hamburger navigation that features “updates”, “testimonials”, “gallery”, and “contact”. On the top right of the page there are “call now” & “directions” buttons. Note that there’s NO menu option whatsoever.


    Functionality: Technically it works, but it’s unorganized and feels very unfinished considering there’s no menu on the website. The URL is also pretty odd. It’s a website powered by Google.


    Community building (social media): There’s no mention of social media on the website, but I did find their instagram: @rays_westla. It’s mostly pictures of food but the captions make it feel like more of a personal instagram as opposed to a business instagram.


    Goals: Create clear branding, design a new logo, provide a comprehensive menu on the new website, weed out any unnecessary information from the website, research new content to add to the website to make it more interesting both informationally and visually.


    Target Audience: Any age, any gender, people residing in the West LA/sawtelle area, likes a good burger joint, non vegan/vegetarian, people who might call themselves “foodies” or “food influencers”, people who enjoy takeout/counter ordering (as opposed to sit down restaurant), people who like to walk around the neighborhood

    Competitive Analysis #1!

    Restaurant: The Apple Pan

  • The Apple Pan Website
  • Location: 10801 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles 90064


    Visual design: “Endearing little logo” is my first thought. The website is mainly black and white with some red accents. The photos are really cool looking and give that old time-y diner feel. The menu is easy to read, simple, and visually pleasing.


    Content: The website features a home page and the first thing you see is the covid hours with a nice b&w picture behind it. Below are some testimonials from articles that The Apple Pan is featured in. The bottom of the page features basic info like hours, contact info, and address.


    “Call to action” on home page: The second element you see on the homepage when you take your first scroll down is “Quality Forever” in big, diner-cursive font. Above it is a short message expanding on “Quality Forever” in what looks like Futura.


    Navigation: Features “home”, “menu”, “contact”, “gallery” across the top, very clear and concise.


    Functionality: Pretty solid user experience. I think it was visually exciting, easy to navigate, and had just the right amount of information.


    Community building (social media): Their gallery is directly linked to their instagram. They have a pretty solid following of 14.5k, and they consistently get over 300-500 likes on their posts. The pictures are fairly high quality & captions are curated.

    Competitive Analysis #2!

    Restaurant: Cafe 50’s

  • Cafe 50's Website
  • Location: 11623 Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles, 90025


    Visual design: I’m not crazy about the visual design. I think it might be because I’ve walked past the restaurant many times and it looks very red, whte & blue. The website has a mint green & coral color choice. Overall, it’s alright but I’m not very impressed.


    Content: The home page features a graphic that says “open daily 8 am-midnight, takeout, deliver, curbside”, it’s a pretty fun design and it’s probably the first thing you see. Next to it, there’s an “order now” button. Below, there’s a single testimonial as well as featured menu items, a map of the location, and typical business info (hours, phone #, etc..) There’s also a gift card page, a delivery page to order food online, & a most popular page that features a few dishes to look out for.


    “Call to action” on home page: There’s no clear call to action but the testimonial on the home page has a strong message: “I’ve loved this place since my kids were little and now their kids are little.”


    Navigation: Features “home”, “gift cards” (Links to an external page, feels kind of weird?), “delivery” (this is where you view the menu & you can order food online), “most popular” page, “order now”, search icon, and cart. This all spans across the top of the page.


    Functionality: It works but it’s not exciting. It feels cheaply made.


    Community building (social media): There’s nothing on the website about social media, but I found their instagram. Not very visually pleasing and not a lot of followers. Looks unorganized.

    Competitive Analysis #3!

    Restaurant: Canter’s Deli

  • Canter's Deli Website
  • Location: Multiple locations, flagship at 419 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles 90036


    Visual design: The visual design isn’t bad but it can definitely be better. I do think their logo is fitting to their ‘vibe’. I’m also a fan of the photography that they’ve provided. It’s very ‘old school cool’.


    Content: There’s quite a bit of content to be seen on this website (maybe a bit too much..?) The home page features a really fun image of the sign outside of the restaurant (assuming that’s what it is), very old timey. There’s a brief description of the deli and then some buttons that send you to an order online page depending on the location.Upon scrolling down there’s more imagery and then a section that says “Over the years, canter’s has sold over… 2 million lbs of lox”..etc. I think that’s really unique and genuinely enjoyed reading it. They obviously have a menu and it’s HUGE. Definitely needs work with the typographic hierarchy. There’s an order online page, a celebrity visitors page (kind of fun to look through), history page (love this!), media features page, bakery page (seems a bit unnecessary, not a lot of content there), a Kibitz room page (I guess it’s a cocktail lounge for live performances), and a social media page.


    “Call to action” on home page: They have a fairly word-y call to action on the home page that says “Canter's Deli offers an authentic deli-style experience unparalleled anywhere on the West Coast. Our endless menu is full of breakfast, lunch and dinner menu items available 24 hours a day. Fresh baked goods are available from our bakery. A full bar and Cocktail Lounge is open 10:30 am-1:40 am.”. I think it needs work.


    Navigation: Navigation is across the top of the page with the logo on the left hand side. It reads as follows: Home, Menu, Order Online, Celebrity Visitors, History, Media, Bakery, Kibitz Room, Social, and lastly Contact (hard to see because it drops down a line and goes all the way to the left?) As you can see, lots of content, can probably be condensed.


    Functionality: Website definitely works and I think you can find what you’re looking for, there’s just quite a lot of content and it can come off as overwhelming or intimidating.


    Community building (social media): They have a full page dedicated to social media as well as icons on the top right (facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest). I noticed that the social media page only really has tweets and the rest wouldn’t load properly.

    Competitive Analysis #4!

    Restaurant: Wexler's Deli

  • Wexler's Deli Website
  • Location: 616 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica 90401


    Visual design: Upon first look, I love it! I think it looks super polishes, professional, and well put together. The logo is great, the images are great, and solid choice of fonts. Really well done.


    Content: The home page opens up with a beautiful slide show of the food and below you can find a description about the deli. There’s also a menu (duh) and it’s really well designed, like I can’t emphasize enough how inviting the menu looks. There’s also a catering menu. There’s a whole separate page and section dedicated to passover, it’s well designed, has good hierarchy. They’ve also got a lox club membership page which is also readable and digestible (looks good too). They’ve also dedicated an entire page to “Mr. Knish” which is what they call their specialty knish that they sell. There’s also a section that is entirely dedicated to gift boxes containing caviar and other foods, it’s inviting and seems like it could make a good gift. There’s a gift card page which I think can be put together with the gift box page. Lastly, there’s a locations page that’s pretty self explanatory, a contact page (there’s a nice form there), and a press page featuring their media shoutouts.


    “Call to action” on home page: Over their slideshow they have type that says “Call us for curbside pickup!”. Other than that there’s a well written description of the deli.


    Navigation: Logo on the left and navigation across the top. The navigation does go onto a second line which isn’t very visually pleasing but can be fixed. Navigation is: Home, Menus, Catering Menu, Passover, Lox Club, Mr. Knish, Caviar & Gift Boxing, Gift Card, Location, Contact, Press. I think there’s a couple things that can be condensed together (Menus & Catering Menu, Caviar + Gift Boxing & Gift Card)


    Functionality: It works well and I got through it without any fuss. It was definitely and enjoyable user experience.


    Community building (social media): I didn’t come across any social media on the website but I did come across their instagram (@wexlersdeli), where they have 28k followers. The feed is beautiful with well curated captions.