Nomi Thai Asian Dining · Hexham
The current site, and what a new one could do
A plain-English look at nomi.restaurant today, a list of what a new site could add, and three contrasting design routes to react to. Open each route on your phone as well as your desktop, and scroll slowly to see the animations.
The current site at a glance
nomi.restaurant is a single scrolling page. It has a “Now open” banner, the logo, two call buttons (bookings and takeaway), a tabbed menu, a service-status panel, opening hours, the address, a grid of 12 photos and a contact footer. There is also a hidden second page, /discover, which shows the most-ordered dishes from the till. It is built as a React app and served through Cloudflare.
- 1page in the sitemap (no separate menu, booking or contact pages)
- 152menu items across 4 menus, all hard-coded into the JavaScript
- 8.8 MBhomepage download on mobile, mostly unoptimised photos
- 7.1 sbefore the main content appears on a mid-range phone
What it does well
- The phone numbers for bookings and takeaway are the first thing you see, and both are tap-to-call.
- The full menu is on the page, with lunch, dine-in, takeaway and kids menus on tabs.
- Restaurant structured data (address, phone, hours) is already in place for Google.
- The /discover favourites page is genuinely original, well designed and scores 100 for accessibility.
- It is served over HTTPS through Cloudflare, and the old domain redirects properly.
What holds it back
- No online booking, ordering or vouchers. Everything is “call us” or “coming soon”.
- To Google it is one page, titled just “Nomi”, with an empty body until JavaScript runs.
- It is slow on phones: about 9 MB of photos, the largest 2.5 MB, all loaded straight away.
- “Open now” is hard-coded, so it shows even when the restaurant is closed.
- Every menu or price change needs a developer to rebuild and redeploy the site.
- The /discover data feed exposes raw sales volumes, and the full source code is publicly downloadable. See the technical overview.
What a new site could have
Ordered roughly by impact on covers and revenue. All three design routes already show the first five in action.
- Must have
Online table booking
The current site says “Online bookings – available soon” and the code shows a resOS widget waiting to be switched on. Bookings that come in overnight or while the phone is busy are currently lost.
- Must have
Real pages Google can read
Today the whole site is one JavaScript page. Without JavaScript, the HTML is an empty box titled “Nomi”. Separate, server-rendered pages for Menu, Lunch, Takeaway, Kids, Find us and Book give Google something to rank for searches like “Thai restaurant Hexham” or “takeaway Hexham”.
- Must have
Menus the team can edit
Prices and dishes are currently compiled into the code, so every price change needs a developer. A simple CMS (for example WordPress) lets Nomi update menus, specials and hours in minutes.
- Must have
Allergen & dietary information
There is only one line: “please inform your server”. Add allergen and dietary data (V, VG, GF, nuts, spice level) per dish, with a filter. Every route shows a working “veg options” filter as a first step.
- Must have
Honest “open now” status
“Now open” and “Dine-in: Open now” are hard-coded, so they show at 3am too. The previews work it out from the real hours in UK time.
- Should have
Online takeaway ordering
Takeaway is phone-only. Online ordering through a commission-light provider (or the till system’s own ordering, if it has one) takes pressure off the phone at peak times.
- Should have
Gift vouchers online
Vouchers are listed as “in-store purchase available soon”. Selling e-vouchers online is easy money at Christmas and for birthdays.
- Should have
More (and lighter) photography
The 12 dish photos are strong, but they weigh up to 2.5 MB each, have alt text like “Thai Cuisine 1”, and show no room, bar, team or shopfront. Those shots help first-time visitors. A half-day shoot would fill the gaps, and every image should be served at the right size, as the routes do.
- Should have
Google Business Profile & reviews
Link the site to Google Maps and reviews, use accurate opening hours in the structured data, and show a few recent reviews.
- Should have
Private dining, groups & Christmas
Add a page with an enquiry form for parties, set menus and seasonal menus. These are high-value bookings that currently have no route in apart from email.
- Nice to have
Favourites, done safely
The /discover page (“Nomi favourites, by the numbers”) is a great idea. Bring it onto the homepage as all three routes do, but serve only percentages through a cached endpoint. Today it shows raw sales volumes.
- Nice to have
Newsletter & Instagram
Capture emails for new menus and events, and show an Instagram feed. Right now the only social link is a Facebook profile ID.
- Nice to have
Legal & trust pages
Add a privacy policy, allergen statement, accessibility statement and a basic cookie notice if analytics are added. The current site has none of these, and no analytics either.
Three design routes
The three routes are deliberately different, so it is clear which direction feels right. All three use Nomi’s real menus, prices, hours, photography and elephant logo. Every photo has been re-encoded as AVIF/WebP at up to four sizes, so a phone downloads an 87 KB version instead of the 2.3 MB original.
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Route A · Evening, warm, editorial
Lantern
- #12100c
- #1b1812
- #e0bc64
- #f3ead8
This route builds on the black and gold Nomi already uses. Near-black, candle-gold and cream, with big Instrument Serif headlines and the gold elephant logo. Nomi’s food photography sits in an arched, candle-lit frame. It feels like walking in on a Friday night.
- Signature idea
- The chef’s signatures get their own numbered, editorial list beside sticky food photos, and a swipeable photo strip sits above Find us. A clear “three ways to eat” strip (dine in, lunch, takeaway) sits straight under the hero.
- Motion
- The hero photo settles with a slow zoom while lanterns glow behind it. Sections fade up as they scroll in, and the favourites bars fill as they appear.
-
Route B · Bright, playful, street-food
Soi
- #f7f0e3
- #b3261e
- #f2b134
- #1f5a38
Rice-paper cream with chilli red, turmeric and holy-basil green. It uses chunky Bricolage Grotesque type and bold outlined “sticker” shapes. Nomi’s pad thai fills a big outlined plate in the hero, and the dish photos become tilted polaroids. It’s louder and friendlier, and aimed at lunch trade, takeaway and families.
- Signature idea
- Lunch is sold as an offer (“Lunch, sorted” from £9.50). A moving ticker of best-selling dishes and a “What Hexham’s ordering” leaderboard come from Nomi’s own till data.
- Motion
- The chilli, lime and basil stickers bob around the hero plate, the dish ticker scrolls, polaroids straighten on hover, and cards pop up with a slight tilt as they scroll in.
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Route C · Calm, light, photo-led
Jasmine
- #f4f0e8
- #5b3a24
- #56664a
- #dfe5d3
Warm stone, teak and sage, with Fraunces serif headlines and plenty of space. Full-bleed photography does the talking: the hero is Nomi’s feast shot under a quiet white card. It is the most “modern restaurant” of the three, and suits couples, business lunches and private dining.
- Signature idea
- A “day at Nomi” timeline (lunch, dinner, takeaway with times and prices), a swipeable rail of favourite dishes with photos and prices, and a dark teak panel for the chef’s signatures.
- Motion
- The hero photo drifts slowly into place, the signatures photo unmasks upwards as it scrolls in, and cards and timeline steps fade up in sequence.
Built into all three routes
- Book, call and directions always to handA sticky header button on desktop and a thumb-friendly action bar on phones. Every button is a real link, so it still works if a script fails.
- Booking flow ready for a widget“Book a table” opens a booking panel where a provider such as resOS (already half-wired into the current code) would sit.
- Live “open now”The status is worked out from the opening hours in UK time, for example “Closed now · opens 5pm”.
- The whole menu as real HTMLAll 61 dine-in dishes, plus the lunch, takeaway and kids menus, are on the page without JavaScript. They use proper keyboard-friendly tabs, section jump links and a veg-options filter.
- Favourites from the tillThe best idea on the current site moves to the homepage, as percentages only.
- Fast, even with photosNomi’s own photos in AVIF/WebP at the right size for each screen, with only the hero loaded up front and everything else lazy-loaded. Two self-hosted fonts, inlined CSS and one small 3 KB script.
- AccessibleZero axe violations (WCAG 2.2 AA) at desktop and phone sizes. All three have a skip link, visible focus and AA contrast, and all motion switches off for visitors who prefer reduced motion.
- SEO readyAll three routes score 100 for SEO in Lighthouse. Each has a descriptive title and meta description, Open Graph and Twitter share tags with a real 1200px image, a canonical link, and crawlable links.
- Correct structured dataOpening hours in the schema now match the page, “££” replaces the invalid “GBP” price range, and the menu is linked.
Scores
Google Lighthouse, mobile profile (simulated slow 4G on a mid-range phone). The routes are measured on this preview server; the current site is measured live.
| Page | Performance | Accessibility | Best practices | SEO | LCP | CLS | Page weight | Requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current site – Home | 61 | 94 | 100 | 100 | 7.1 s | 0.283 | 8.8 MB | 25 |
| Current site – /discover | 66 | 100 | 96 | 92 | 3.2 s | 0.539 | 204 KiB | 21 |
| Route A – Lantern | 97 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 1.9 s | 0 | 350 KiB | 12 |
| Route B – Soi | 99 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 2.0 s | 0.001 | 330 KiB | 11 |
| Route C – Jasmine | 99 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 1.9 s | 0 | 671 KiB | 17 |
Read the technical overview of the current site for how it is built, what the numbers mean and a prioritised fix list.
To confirm with Nomi
- Sunday lunch: the page says Sunday–Thursday 12–2:30pm, but the Google structured data leaves out Sunday lunch. Which is right?
- Lunch box prices: the menu data lists eight lunch boxes at £12.50 and five at £9.50, but the live page shows every box as
£12.50£9.50. Is that a promotion? The routes show the data prices. - Booking provider: is resOS still the plan for online booking? Does the till system (which feeds /discover) offer online ordering or vouchers?
- Photography: two of the site’s photos (
3.jpegand4.jpeg) are 1024px images with a polished, stock-like look, unlike the others. Please confirm they show Nomi’s own dishes and that Nomi holds the rights. - Logo: the routes use the logo PNG from the current site, with a dark-lettering version made for Routes B and C.
- Dish photos: photos are matched to menu dishes by eye (for example the sizzling-seafood shot as Seafood Basil, the curry as Massaman). Please check each pairing. A vector (SVG or PDF) master would be sharper and easier to recolour.
- Veg labels: these were worked out from dish names and “veg & tofu” options. The kitchen needs to confirm them, especially where fish sauce or shrimp paste is used.