Mizuna is a renowned Denver restaurant that creates truly inspired French cuisine. Combining the closeness of a warm neighborhood restaurant and the expertise of classically trained chefs, Mizuna is celebrated for its seasonal menus, nuanced flavor combinations, and incredibly fresh ingredients. One of chef Frank Bonanno’s beloved creations, Mizuna’s online presence didn’t match the modern approach that Bonanno and his chefs take in the kitchen. Mizuna was ready to update their website and trusted Bigfoot Web to infuse the new site with the contemporary look and feel that would resonate with food lovers and critics alike. 

The new site needed to include several key elements and go live with a quick turnaround. The Bigfoot design team conducted a thorough needs assessment in order to understand Mizuna’s business and website objectives. Implementing research and analysis of the restaurant industry, competitors, audience, and more, Bigfoot crafted a strategy for the direction of the project. Bigfoot designers chose a layout and site map that would be intuitive for Mizuna’s audience, making the menus easy to access and the reservation process streamlined. The placement of content on each page was determined to create an attractive, contemporary look. Bigfoot developers designed a contact form feature that would allow guests to reach out and Mizuna staff to easily gather feedback. Integrating OpenTable to allow website visitors to make online reservations was another important feature of the new site design. 

Using Squarespace as the content management system and hosting service, Mizuna’s new site can be quickly updated and maintained by the Mizuna team. The easy to use interface allows for text, images, and video to be changed without hassle and in a matter of clicks. Social media can be easily highlighted on any page or a blog can be added to chronicle long form content. The Bigfoot design team used high quality images of the Mizuna dining room, chefs, and elegant dishes to give the site a bright and inviting appeal. Squarespace supports editing and switching out images with a resizing feature that makes every photo look its best. Each page of the Mizuna site was crafted to be SEO friendly, using captions and descriptions to help users find the information that they search for online. All of the analytics of the website are built into the backend of the CMS so that Mizuna can access robust metrics on the site’s performance and visitation traffic. This built in tracking allows the Mizuna team to understand more about their online audience and make changes to the site based on rich data.

The Bigfoot Web team designed and developed Mizuna’s new website to parallel the modern cuisine of the restaurant. The streamlined contact feature and reservation process allows the website to serve as an extension of the restaurant’s host stand. Within the two week turnaround the Bigfoot Web team developed and launched Mizuna’s inspired, new site. The clean design and user-focused layout make the customer’s experience with Mizuna online as memorable as an evening in the intimate dining room.