(edit - after re-reading your post I may have gotten off topic. basically ask them where their pain is. Its a good and simple way of getting them to tell you where they are suffering and technology may be able to step in and assist. If they are unwilling to get into further detail, take one of their menus, get info and design ideas from that, bring in your own camera and take photos, sometimes people have a difficult time expressing their thoughts, sketch out a story board of how one would say, order delivery through the web site and show them the storyboard, then its a lot easier for them to say, "yes I like this, do that" or "no that doesn't meet our needs". Through various tactics of interacting with the clients, you will continue to develop a better idea of what they really want.)
I agree with John, understanding the business needs should be top on your list. I have designed user interfaces for web apps for about a decade now and I can tell you from experience that lack of a good graphical design may hamper your site but lack of a solid business solution will cripple it.
To put it simply, focus on solving the client's business issue as efficiently as possible and present it in the most useable way possible for the target audience. Everything else is secondary. Here's a list of some of the more detailed aspects that I could think of off the top of my head. A lot of this (and all design work for that matter) is personal preference so don't take it as law. There are a lot of good sites out there that have better listings than I of how to design a user interface. I'd try googling them and checking out what they have to say. Best of luck. Mike
- Compatibility - DNN takes care of most issues
- Check with various browsers
- Check with various internet speeds
- Check various text sizes
- Check various screen resolutions
- Design
- Branding - do they have their own color pallette? image/ icon/ or other artistry that you could play off of?
- Photos of Dishes (I love picture menus b/c I can never remember the difference between chow mein and lo mein :)
- Generally speaking, information based sites should have dark text on a white background, easy to read and print. More graphically pased sites tend to use alternate palettes (this may be more personal preference though - some would probably call me on this :)
- Stay away from splash pages and animated sequences, those sorts of things can be really cool when used in the right context (like a movie site) but ordering chinese I don't think is one of them. (again, may be more opinion than fact)
- Ultimately its the client's decision on what the site will look like, a web designer's role (as I see it) is to make that vision look professional
- so be mindful that page elements align with one another (the eye -or at least mine - can pick up misalignment by even a pixel or two)
- Photography should look professional and also personal
- Navigation
- make key areas obvious with simple uncluttered navigation.
- Go through the process of getting the site out there, register with google, microsoft, yahoo and other search engines. Get the chinese restaurant on google maps if not already.
- Functionality
- Generally speaking, don't put more than a regularly sized paragraph's worth of text under any topic or page. People won't read it and it detracts from your core messages.
- Order take out or delivery options?
- Easily being able to update the menu?