Proving Good Web Design is Not Only for Mega Chains

Traditionally, restaurant websites are synonymous with bad web design. Ugly layouts, poor image quality, and worst of all, music. Ugh. A tiny Dallas deli shows the big guys that simple and good is better than flash overload.

Jimmy’s food store is one of those neigh­bor­hood places that only the locals know about. One of those places that has been in the same loca­tion for 40 years (43 to be exact). While most things in Dallas get bull­dozed and rebuilt into the next shiny thing, Jimmy’s has remained. When big box gro­cery stores replaced all the indi­vid­u­ally owned stores, Jimmy’s remained. It’s one of those places serves the com­mu­nity rather than makes buck­ets of cash. That’s why I was aston­ished at their beau­ti­ful new web­site www.​jim​mys​food​store.com.

For those that don’t know me per­son­ally, I’m an usu­ally hard critic when it comes to web­sites. I believe that 99% of what’s out there is crap. Badly designed. Badly writ­ten. Badly coded crap. Going online to me is like going to the DMV. It’s nec­es­sary, but one of the least enjoy­able things a person can do. So when I run across excel­lence, I do a little dance of joy and share it with my friends.

Here’s what makes I really like about this site:

• The site cen­ters on the prod­uct. Jimmy’s sells food and you can tell that instantly. This site gives me no idea.
• Under­stand­ing this from the begin­ning, money was spent on pho­tog­ra­phy of the most impor­tant things, the food. The family pics are a great touch, but less impor­tant. In eco­nomic times like this, it’s great to see focus and priority.
• As a result, the menu pho­tog­ra­phy is beau­ti­ful. You have a great under­stand­ing of tit rather than the typ­i­cal PDF ver­sion most places have.
• The site reflects the family-​centric nature of the store. The store has been in the family for gen­er­a­tions, all of which you can see online. Even if you’d never been there, you can rec­og­nize that family is impor­tant at Jimmy’s.
• You know what you don’t see? Pages and pages of text. It’s not nec­es­sary. Even the his­tory of the store is done in bullet points.

Now, I would have chosen some­thing other than the stan­dard Ital­ian color palette, but my guess is that it was dictated to the designer and they did the best they could with it. A fan­tas­tic thumbs up to Rhonda Warren at Col­or­Box Design - www.​color-​box-​design.com for the work. Great job.