Sneaky Menu design

I read this article, unfortunately, right after I got back from lunch where I bought the curly fries that were highlighted in the bright yellow box on the menu. Now I feel like a sucker! They highlighted a few best (most devious?) practices:

• Make the dollar amounts appear visually smaller by rounding up and omitting cents
• Make the dish titles scannable, but not the prices (i.e. don’t right-align the price column)
• Put the highest margin menu items on the right hand first page with a a box to draw attention to them, as that’s what you see as soon as you open the menu
• In the rest of the menu categories (other than the attention getting first right page), front load the most expensive items. If you’re familiar with order of presentation and memory retention, this is the Primacy effect. You remember the expensive stuff and everything else then seems cheaper by comparison.

Interesting analysis on this particular design challenge. They are either trying to hide the price from you (the cynical view) or they are selling you an experience and are trying to improve it by getting you to focus on the food instead of the price (the apologists view :). Call it what you want, I’m only ordering from the bottom left of the last page of the menu from now on!

http://www.salon.com/food/francis_lam/2010/02/22/how_menus_manipulate_diners