Recently I came across a Romanian website for discovering restaurants in NCR region. (Courtesy Sukrit)

So here’s a short review about it:

The site basically revolves around restaurants in the NCR region, also featuring some events, and discounts. Restaurants can simply be browsed, or can be searched. I can’t really comment on the search quality as I don’t know about the NCR region too well, but at the first glance it looks like the site doesn’t support proper search, i.e. search by category, or narrowing by price or cuisine. The ’show me more options to search on’ link is not highlighted, and calls for an extra user click. But it’s a bag of cookies once you click on it! It looks like they have very detailed information on restaurants, as one can narrow search results by both features (a lot of them) and cuisines(a lot of them too). I was disappointed to know that I couldn’t get results for a simple query like: Restaurants in Central Delhi with Indian cuisine, and a rooftop/garden setting.

The search for discounts is a little low on search features as well. You can find discounts only on restaurant names, and only when you book through aplacetodine.com. The good thing about discounts was that I finally got to a restaurant details page (which I attempted to go through the search, but had failed). The restaurant page really looks a menu card for a fine-dine restaurant, very different from the parent site. I think the designers had intended it to be that way, giving each restaurant a number of templates to choose from. They have detailed menus for each restaurant, a BIG bonus from my side if they can keep that data updated. Also, you can book a table online and order for home delivery. Each restaurant page lists all future events in that restaurant.

The user registration process is painful and disguised as being pretty simple. First, you just give your email address, then check your email to click the link they provide. Click on it to activate your profile, but you’re not done! Now comes the real registration. You have to provide details like state, city (why would you ask all that when you’re only an NCR based website?), locality, landmark, and guess what… your mobile number as well. And that’s not optional. So basically to write a review, you have to put at stake your email, mobile etc. They will be sold to the restaurants or not, can’t be guaranteed. Anyway, giving a bogus mobile number works fine, so I just did that The website has a concept of reward points, which I believe can be reimbursed or redeemed in some form later.

Coming to the implementation and UI of the website, I think they have done a decent job at it. Nice use of colours and a homogeneous user interface. They haven’t restricted themselves in using AJAX or flash wherever appropriate. A little more thought could have been given to make the site a little lighter on resources, i.e. the page size should be at least reduced by 100 kb, in my opinion. Their homepage gives about 90 HTML errors, which is unacceptable, as plenty of <div>, <td>, <tr>s are not closed.

Overall Rating for the website: 6/10 (Given that they will launch in at least 8 cities)