Momo

Momo is an award-winning restaurant on Patrick Street in Waterford. Its website already looked and sounded like Momo: the yellow-dot logo, warm food photography, copy with personality and a wall of awards.

Underneath, ten years of add-ons and quick fixes had built up. On a phone the homepage took close to 15 seconds to show its main photo, every menu was a PDF, and keeping hours and notices up to date meant editing several pages by hand.

The ask was a refit, not a redesign. Keep everything that makes the site feel like Momo. Fix everything a customer should never have to notice.

• The brand. The logo, the colours, the photography and the mural stay exactly as people know them.
• The voice. The homepage wording sounds like the restaurant, so we kept it and only fixed the spelling.
• The awards. Every badge is still on show, and each one now links to the award itself.
• Ten years of links. 41 old web addresses forward to the right new pages, so nothing other sites point to is lost.

Every menu used to be a PDF. Google couldn’t read a single dish, people on phones had to pinch and zoom, and allergens were hidden inside the file.

Now every menu is real text on the page: about 180 dishes, with allergen icons on every one and 74 labelled vegan, vegetarian or gluten-free. Diners can show only the dishes that suit them, or leave out any of the 14 allergens. The page opens on whichever menu is being served right now.

• A clean rebuild. Current software throughout, with the unused plugins and old systems taken out.
• Faster pages. Photos in a modern, lighter format. The booking form and reviews load only as you reach them, and nothing jumps around while a page loads.
• Hours in one place. Opening times are entered once and update everywhere, with an “Open now” label and special dates for bank holidays.
• Clear to Google. The address, phone, hours, menu, booking link and awards are built into every page, with a proper title and description for each.
• Easy for everyone. Darker text, dark text on yellow buttons, a description on every photo, and animation that switches off for anyone who asks for less motion.
• Privacy, done properly. Privacy and cookie policies, and a cookie banner in Momo’s own style.
• Easy to run. The team changes text, photos, prices and hours themselves, without calling a developer.

The same Momo, without the weight. Every new page scores 100 out of 100 on a computer in all four of Google’s checks: speed, accessibility, best practices and search. On a phone, speed scores between 94 and 97.

The new site is live now at momorestaurant.ie. Every score here comes from the live site, running on Momo’s own hosting.