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What three escape room websites get right (and wrong) when it comes to delivering a great online experience.
Escape rooms thrive on mystery, excitement, and novelty - but does that same energy translate to their websites? A well-designed escape room website should be just as engaging as the game itself, drawing visitors in with compelling storytelling, visuals, and ease of experience.
In this article, I’ll compare three escape room websites - Escape Room Herndon, Bond’s Escape Room, and Escape Room Loco - and break down what each site does well and where they could improve.
Escape Room Herndon’s landing page has elements of suspense and intrigue that raise my curiosity to explore more.
They also prominently tout themselves as TripAdvisor’s #1 ranked Escape Room in Virginia. That’s a great example of using awards as social proof to convince visitors that you offer one of the best escape room experiences.
However, let’s focus on the navigation menu. You’ll notice that there are 11 menu items. That’s way too many options to be effective and increases a visitor’s cognitive load.
Best practices for navigation bars (navbars) say to have no more than six or seven top-level links. You should determine whether all of them are really necessary or if there are practical ways of grouping some together as drop-down options.
Here are some considerations for improving Escape Room Herndon’s navbar:
Following these suggestions reduces the top-level links down to six, which is less overwhelming for users.
Another consideration is to use a sticky or partially stick navbar. This homepage is very lengthy, so users who have reached the bottom of the page will face a lot of tedious scrolling before they can get back to the menu at the top. There also aren’t any links to other site pages in the footer, so that adds to the inconvenience.
One alternative is a sticky navbar which is always visible. Another choice is a partially sticky navbar, such as what’s used on this site - it disappears when you scroll down but reappears when you begin to scroll up. Using this type of navbar can solve that problem of not having helpful links quickly accessible.
I’m glad they included an overview of their different escape rooms right on the homepage, because that’s the main selling point for many visitors.
The images are of good quality, and the room descriptions are well written too. This section also uses a fun parallax effect. Parallax creates an illusion of depth by making background elements move at a different speed than foreground elements as the user scrolls. This adds a visually appealing touch.
The one big issue is that the text is hard to read because it doesn’t stand out enough from the images. Sometimes this isn’t an issue when you’re overlaying text on top of an image with plain elements or simple textures. But for widely varied images with many bright colors, it’s very difficult to overlay text on top.
One option is to put a semi-transparent layer over the part of the background image that the text occupies. By blurring the background, you can make the text pop more. You could also just include the main info and have “Book Now” take you to a separate page dedicated to that room that has the room description. Regardless of what solution is chosen, it’s vital to make sure text is always legible especially when it’s on top of an image.
If you look at Bond’s Escape Room’s homepage, you can tell very quickly that the focus is heavily on the variety and thrill of their escape rooms. Right at the top, their value proposition is clearly stated as to what sets them apart from their competition - that they are the largest escape room venue on the East Coast.
Scrolling down, there’s a YouTube video that tells you more about what you can expect, explains the family-friendly and team building aspects, and dives into a short overview of their unique rooms.
The rest of the homepage is highlighted by images representing each of their rooms. As you hover over each one, details about the room including number of players and difficulty are shown. You can click on “View Room” to go to a separate page with a longer storyline, more images, and the ability to book that specific room.
This is also a good example of how to correctly add text on top of images while still maintaining readability. On hover, you can see that a darker filter is applied which allows the white text to stand out. Also, rather than including all of the room descriptions here which would be a lot to read, they wisely chose to have that on a different page.
It’s clear that their large variety of rooms is what they want to showcase, and they lean into that because it’s a selling point that distinguishes them from other escape rooms.
Another way to build credibility and trust is by highlighting your years of experience and the number of customers you've served.
When you see that over 300,000 people have tried out their rooms, you know that they must be doing something right. If your business has statistics that showcase an interesting edge or establishes longevity in an industry, then it can be worthwhile to include that as a form of social proof.
Another way they do this is by showing their customer ratings across four of the most popular review sites.
Customer reviews are typically presented in two ways: through direct quotes from satisfied customers or, as in this case, a high-level summary of overall sentiment. They want to clearly reinforce their broad appeal by letting you know that they’ve accumulated over 9,000 reviews and no lower than an average rating of 4.6/5.
If you’re a smaller business, relying on direct quotes is an excellent approach to building credibility. As you scale your business into something larger, having these impressive statistics may work better.
Escape Room LoCo uses a dark theme for their homepage which heightens the sense of mystery and intrigue. What stands out is the navigation bar and how it’s organized with a centered logo and links to the left and right of it.
I like the decision to put the logo front and center, and the naming of the links is also clear. This looks like a great navigation bar on desktop screens, but it starts to fall apart on phones and tablets. If you look under the hood, there are actually two menus that were used to build this.
They thought to use two menus to achieve that specific look on desktop views, but it’s quite confusing for other users who view the website from their phones or tablets. You should never have more than one main navigation menu on a website. The two menus here have different dropdowns which makes it confusing for a visitor to know where to look.
There are different ways to achieve this look such as setting up separate menus for different breakpoints or using custom CSS styling. But the main lesson here is not to break convention just to achieve a visual look.
It’s always important to consider how a user might think to interact with different elements on your site. As an example, the card layout can be found everywhere now. A card is a UI design component that displays content and actions about a single subject. If you see something like below, the common assumption is that these are a group of cards.
However, none of these images or headers are actually clickable links. It leaves the user wondering where they can go to learn more about the individual rooms. It’s unconventional to have this card-like layout on the homepage that’s not actually interactive because the homepage functions as a starting point from which you branch off to other pages.
It’s vital to recognize what your target audience is looking for when they land on your website. This directly impacts your messaging and sales pitch.
I like the typewriter effect they use in the header section, but I question the effectiveness of the messaging.
They’ve defined what an escape room is which might be helpful to some people. That said, most people probably already know what an escape room is or can infer that if they’re already searching for it in their browser.
It’s a missed opportunity because with this first opportunity to make a strong impression, they don’t make any case as to why someone show visit Escape Room LoCo instead of any competitor’s location. Instead of pitching something unique about their venue, they list generic benefits of escape rooms that don’t move the needle in their direction. Furthermore, choosing a stock image as the main background image doesn’t reveal anything about themselves, something that a real photo of a room or customers having fun would’ve done.
When designing a website, every detail matters—from how users navigate to how your brand builds trust. In this review of three escape room websites, we explored key design principles like crafting a user-friendly navbar, using text over images effectively, and clearly communicating your value proposition. By leveraging social proof, following standard user interaction patterns, and refining your messaging, businesses can create a more seamless experience.
If you're a business owner looking to refine your website this year, please fill out the contact form and mention that you'd like a website review in the project description. I'll personally evaluate your site and provide a consultation with tailored feedback and a plan of action.
