Otter Bar & Burger

Project Description

Custom Website for Restaurant in Seattle’s Eastlake Neighborhood

Otter Bar & Burger is run by a team of experienced restaurateurs based in the Seattle area. A recent expansion to their portfolio, Otter Bar is a family-friendly joint housed in a community-loved building in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood.

When they came to us about a website to launch this new endeavor, we were excited to get on board and watch their restaurant go from a few preliminary sketches to a highly successful grand opening (and beyond).

Project Objectives

The primary goals for the Otter Bar website included sharing restaurant information with curious onlookers—hours of operation, specials, events, menu offerings, etc.—and encouraging these viewers to visit the bar in person.

We also set out to create space for other marketing initiatives to take root. While we wanted to make the website a primary engine for the Otter team to share information, we also wanted to use it to promote the restaurant’s social media accounts, newsletter, and delivery services.

Website Design Inspirations

The Otter Bar website’s color story features two primary and boldly contrasting hues—a subdued gray green and a brilliant orange. Our design team featured these alongside a palette of modern neutrals, carefully incorporating the green and orange across each page to bring attention to calls to action and other important features.

When approaching the design, we focused on spotlighting the new brand’s primary inspiration—the Otter planes that occasionally still fly over Lake Union to this day. We used the interior sketches of the planned bar and Otter wall mural as inspiration for other design elements around the site, including textured wood-panel background images and playful cut-out accent graphics.

We also designed in large spaces on each page for the Otter team to share photos of their fare—the food, after all, is the star of any restaurant. Other fun design features include a “specials” bar tag (reminiscent of items seen in vintage diners) and a varied typography (you’ll find a number of font faces throughout this design, from script to sans-serif to serif). These elements add playfulness and a sense of sophistication to the design and work in tandem to make the branding feel at once modern and approachable.

Website Development Successes

Knowing that many users would land on Otter’s websites while using a smartphone, we ensured that mobile responsivity stayed at the top of our minds throughout the web design and development process. We developed the website so that every element stacks attractively and intuitively. All information is still easy to reach and read no matter the screen size, with the menu categories only a couple clicks away at any time. We also built a map pin icon that leads to the “Visit Us” page in the top right of the sticky mobile main navigation menu.

An easy-to-update blog area with a simple but attractive layout makes it easy for the Otter team to keep customers updated on the latest news and events. With user experience a priority for all our projects, we made sure to build a category filter directly below the blog overview masthead.

Otter Bar & Burger had its grand opening in the summer of 2017 and has been treating its neighbors to tasty and unique burgers at affordable prices ever since. We’re glad we were able to create a website to match the charm and distinctiveness of the restaurant itself.

This webite won a 2018 AVA Digital Award: Gold (Web-Based Production | Creativity (Web Design) | Website).