A look at the offline and online offering of Vbites
I popped down to the opening of Heather Mills Vegan cafe ‘Vbites‘ on Saturday as Iâ??d heard whispers of its opening for a few months and fancied seeing what she had done with the old fish eatery that used to be there before. Another think that I wanted to see was how ‘Vbites’ was promoting itself, being interested in media and the way ethical ventures make that leap from hippy idealism (something I have struggled with myself) to cool rich media and an understanding of social capitol.
The opening itself was as my actor friend pointed out “a little frayed around its vegan edges”, with a very loud Glenn Miller band for the old folks, a dodgy microphone for Heathers opening speech and more ‘old media’ journalists that you could shake a stick at.
Heather however looks superb and I was at the front cheering her on as she appeared on top of the building relaxing against the ‘Vbites’ diner style sign. I’ve been an admirer of Heather for years, ever since she appeared on the Big Breakfast and described how she lost her leg by being hit by a police motorcycle. The fact that she was married to a pop star bla bla, doesnâ??t really interest me and I much prefer to read about her animal welfare exploits.
As I was leaving I collared one of their PR girls and said that Iâ??d like her to guest blog and that she needed some advice on her website. I was tempted to grab Heather as she popped out the back of Vbites and beg her to get a new developer, but she was on the phone so I thought Iâ??d leave it.
Now, the Vbites website:
Vbites website
Whatâ??s wrong with the website:
- The menu does not contain keywords specific to the campaign
- The content has not real direction on any of the pages
- No specific menu pages
- Their are no social networking links on the homepage
- No RSS feed for subscriptions to the newsletter
- No real calls to action
- No SEO across the site based on the lack on title tags, keyword inclusion etc
- Lack of pages on the site, if the sitemap is to be trusted
- The press and media page has no rich media or any real content
- The lack of humanity on the site is frightening - add some images of the place, the workers, heather, kids eating lunches, the skaters outside
- There are so many opportunities here for some great social media, so many aspects to the cafe that can be drawn upon to make it both an on and offline success.
- No internal linking
- More inbound links from relevant sources
I do find it unfortunate that allot of vegan and ethical sites are missing the basics of good design and SEO, it doesnâ??t seam important in the grand scheme of things but it does make a profound difference as to how users see you. Any site, no matter what it is saying needs to be making a media statement about its efforts, services or products… it is the fundamentals of it being a website and with all the competition out there, sites like Vbites need to stand out from the crowd or risk just becoming a dead weight online page that tarnishes the offline appeal of a great concept.
I’ll think of a few nice little ideas for Vbites social media and see if we canâ??t get it moving.
One last thing that I think would be nice for Vbites to is to add ‘deliveries’ to its offerings, swift deliveries of ‘Mrs. swirly’ vegan ice cream for example. 
I did have difficulty finding any articles to add below this, as it seams most of the press that turned up were only there to slag her off, a bit pathetic on a sunny day to head down there just for that, but … who am i to judge.
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