Website development for a restaurant on Lake Como
NewVisibility was commissioned to create the website for the Comocafé restaurant to strengthen the venue’s online presence. Our agency designed an easy-to-browse website built on the restaurant’s own images and brand colours.
The location determined the most important choice. Being right in the centre of Como, just a few steps from the lake, the venue welcomes a significant share of foreign customers every day: that is why the website was created in two languages, Italian and English. For a restaurant in a tourist city this is not an optional extra; it is the difference between being chosen and being passed over by people looking for somewhere to eat with their phone in hand.
The structure is deliberately pared down to the essentials, because people looking for a restaurant online want three things: to understand what kind of food is served, to see the menu and to know where the venue is. The website presents the pizza and steakhouse identity, dedicates two separate sections to the kitchen menu and the pizza menu, and keeps the contacts immediately to hand.
During the health emergency the website also hosted the digital menu system viewable via QR code from the tables, developed by our agency: a feature that turned the website from a showcase into an operational tool for table service, and which has remained useful since, because it allows the menu to be updated without reprinting.
For a restaurant, the website is won or lost in thirty seconds
A restaurant website is almost always viewed on a smartphone, often in the street, by someone who has to decide where to eat in the next few minutes. Every element that slows down reading the menu or finding the address works against the venue. That is why with Comocafé we kept the structure to the essentials instead of adding sections.
The choice of a bilingual website was just as practical: the venue is in the centre of Como, a few steps from the lake, and a large share of its customers are foreign. In that context, a menu that can only be read in Italian is a customer walking into another restaurant. When the health emergency arrived, the same website then hosted the digital menu via QR code.
NewVisibility was founded in 2013 from an idea by Andrea and Luca, lifelong friends who had already been building websites for several years before giving themselves a name. Since then we have worked with more than three hundred clients. We are a team on a human scale: you speak directly with the people working on your project, with no intermediaries, even after launch.
Read our manifesto
NewVisibility, a communication agency in the province of Como, which designed the restaurant’s bilingual website and later the digital menu system via QR code.
Because the venue is in the centre of Como, a few steps from the lake, and welcomes many foreign customers. A menu readable only in Italian loses those customers.
The type of food, the menu and the location. People looking for somewhere to eat decide within minutes on their smartphone: anything that slows down these three pieces of information is counterproductive.
Because they are different offers with different audiences. People looking for a pizzeria and people looking for a steakhouse arrive with distinct expectations and must find their menu straight away.
Yes, and that is the main way it is used. Restaurant searches almost always happen on mobile, often on the move, so the layout is designed first and foremost for that screen.
It came later, during the health emergency, building on the same website: the QR code on the tables opens the menu pages without requiring any app.
Yes, we work with several restaurants in the Como and Cantù area, designing essential websites whose menus and opening hours are easy to update.