Removing the friction from seasonal dining menus forms
Day to day with seasonal dining menus, corrections take seconds because the form names them. Visitors finish; staff stop troubleshooting a form they did not build.
- Client
- Indian restaurant with private dining
- Region
- Lexington, Kentucky
- Size
- 12 staff, one locally managed operation
- Timeline
- 15 working days
How it went, course by course
Four stages, in the order they happened, in the words the project was recorded in.
01 · Where they started
The seasonal dining menus form relied on disappearing placeholders and vague errors. Nothing indicated which field had caused the problem.
02 · What was going wrong
For seasonal dining menus, one missed field could void the whole attempt. Staff heard about the form's behavior from frustrated callers, weekly.
03 · What we built
Each field keeps its label, each error sits next to its cause, and completed answers are preserved when submission fails. The form requests visit date, party size and menu interest, with optional items explicitly marked.
04 · What changed
Day to day with seasonal dining menus, corrections take seconds because the form names them. Visitors finish; staff stop troubleshooting a form they did not build.
What went into it
- Persistent labels
- Inline errors
- Retained field values
- Keyboard focus
- Optional-field labels
15working days
The time it took
After content approval, including staff review and handover. A new site goes live in 7 days on The Folio; work like this runs through your monthly revisions or alongside the build.
Book a demoI deliberately left a field blank on the seasonal dining menus form as a test. It told me what to fix and kept everything else I had typed. That is exactly how it should behave.
Questions about this project
How long did this project take?
15 working days after content approval, including staff review and handover. The clock starts once the restaurant has approved the content, so the time is spent building and checking rather than waiting on copy.
Which parts of the offer did it use?
Persistent labels, Inline errors, Retained field values, Keyboard focus, Optional-field labels. On this site that work sits under reservations and enquiries land where you already work, which is included on every plan from The Folio up.
Why is the restaurant not named?
We describe each client by the kind of restaurant it is and where it is: here, a indian restaurant with private dining in Lexington, Kentucky, 12 staff; one locally managed operation. The quote is credited to Arthur Marchmont, general manager. We never publish a trading name, address, logo or photograph.
Could the same work fit our restaurant?
If guests read your pages or send you inquiries before they visit, most likely. Nothing here was a custom add-on: plans start at $117 a month, the $647 build fee is invoiced only after launch, and a walk-through on your own menu shows what the equivalent would look like for you.
See what this would look like on your menu
A live walk-through of the site you would get, in about 30 minutes. Plans from $117 a month, the $647 build fee invoiced only after launch, domain and hosting included.
Or compare the plans and pricing first.