OpenTable.com has been around for a long time, and we’ve gotten great feedback about how the website is so simple and easy to use. But we also know that our product and the web overall have evolved a lot since we launched. One of the places where we knew could do some great new things to help our users get restaurant info and make good decisions was in our search results pages — the ones that people see after they click the big red “Find a Table” button.
So by popular demand, we’ve redesigned search results from the ground up and added some new content and features front and center. Now, if you come to us before you’ve actually decided where to eat tonight, you can choose to search around a specific neighborhood or address (or even select multiple locations). You can also narrow your results by times, prices, cuisines or 1,000-point slots (before you could only re-order these lists). If you need to see user reviews, you can now show our confirmed diners’ star ratings and compare your options that way. Even if you’re just here to make a reservation at a specific restaurant, we now show more information about the restaurant up-front, including photos and address info, in a lighter and easier-to-read page design. Here are the screenshots from before and after:
Old Search Results
New Search Results
Adding these features and still ‘keeping it simple’ was a challenge. After all, these pages are where your dining out experiences begin, and we wanted to make sure the unique, real-time table availability from our restaurants is always immediately obvious. Thus, we tested a bunch of prototypes with our users in person, through surveys, and live on the web, and we settled on a design that even our longest-tenured users have said does just about everything the old design did — and more. Even better, our data also show people are finding what they want faster and much more frequently. We hope you enjoy it, too, and if you have any feedback, we’d love you to share it with us on our search results user survey. Bon appétit!
Jack Shay is Senior Product Manager for www.OpenTable.com
My last meal would probably be cobbled together from a number of different restaurants. I might start with an ice-cold vodka Martini with 
