http://www.gokoomarestaurant.com/

Websites today are a crucial medium that businesses utilize to advertise themselves directly to consumers. Because of a website’s excellent marketing capabilities, it is important that it reflect the business it is representing in the best possible way. However, when a website does not live up to the high standards of its business counterpart, it can be a negative asset. For example, if you solely looked at Kooma’s website, it would be hard to tell that it is one of the trendiest and most visited restaurants in West Chester, PA. Although the design and content of the popular Asian-Fusion restaurant’s website are functional, they lack some of the bells and whistles that could make it as good as the place it represents.
The purpose of Kooma’s website is to entice West Chester University students and the business people in the area to eat at Kooma Asian Fusion Sushi Bar. It tries to accomplish this by offering its website guests the ability to access their dinner and sushi menus, hours of operation, to view pictures of the restaurant and its staff, and to get directions to both its West Chester, PA and new Wilmington DE locations. All of the website’s content is organized into categories that are place to the right of the screen and remain there the entire time the website is in use. The website is successful regarding its basic content, but not so much when it comes to its photo gallery which has very few pictures and is poorly organized.
The content of the website is fairly easy to navigate except for Kooma’s photo gallery which is hindered by a disorganized design that consists of a mixture of random photos with no subcategories. The website states, “Take a look at our Photo Gallery to see the atmosphere of Kooma and some of the food we offer.” With no organization to the photos and with only two of them that feature food from their menu, Kooma does not offer an effective argument for why guests of the website should also become guests of the restaurant. The photo gallery design negatively affects the navigation of the website as well as its overall look.
The lime green and purple font of the website mixed with its gray background lend to a casual tone that tries to attract a young audience. With only one, poorly taken photo of the restaurant on the website’s homepage, small font and very few photos elsewhere besides the small photo gallery, the design proves to be a dead give away that it was not created by a professional web designer. Larger font, a photo slide show and music on the homepage could have vastly improved the website’s overall look and appeal.
Kooma is a trendy restaurant but its website’s design does not match its trendy quality. It lacks elements such as music and good quality photos that could have made the website look better. The website is successful when it comes to displaying content such as online menus, and contact information, but fails when it comes to displaying its poorly executed photo gallery. Instead of spending time viewing Kooma’s website, time would be better spent enjoying one of their California rolls.