Last night my wife and I decided to venture out of suburbia San Diego and head south into North Park/Hillcrest to check out a new restaurant that was recommended by some friends called Urban Solace. I can go on forever about what great food we had, the unique menu selection, the chic decor, the uniqueness – all that was there and then some, you just have to check the place out – but as soon as I saw their website I knew the experience was going to be great.
Why?
You can tell there was great thought put into the site. Easy to navigate, clean design, style matches the restaurant (once I visited), but the coolest thing? It’s built in Joomla 1.5. Yes, they probably dumped some coin in the design and build-out of the site, but now that it’s up they are able to completely manage their own restaurant page themselves. Joomla means it’s open-source so they don’t have to pay anything for the actual software (CMS). So many restaurant websites resort to flash so they can be “fancy” or something. But here is a great example of a high-quality website with clean design and movement on the home page that THEY CAN MANAGE ALL THEMSELVES!
I don’t know much about restaurants, but I do know they never have enough money. This is a great example of not compromising on marketing efforts, but also how to stay competitive on a budget.
Kudos, Urban Solace! All other restaurants looking for an affordable website solution should take note…
