Examples of Bad Websites

The look and brand of your website is crucial. It is the first impression that you make on your visitors yet so many website designers take it for granted. ElkUSA tries to create a western theme but they fail to tell us who they are until we are half way down the first page and the attempt at a photo requires magnification to have any impact at all.

While it is important to make the links on your site stand out, it is not nessasary to increase the font size by 5x to make your point. We encountered several coding errors while navigating the site and while it does not prevent you from viewing it will scare off any would-be buyers, who knows what elks might do with credit card numbers.

The main navigation on this site must have confused some of the visitors at some point because the site is careful to tell you when you are on "home base" and that if you are lost to "...always return to HOME".

Holy atomic pile of crap, Batman! We have seen a lot of websites over the years but not many come close to being more of a mess than this.

Let’s look at the positive: there’s no pesky navigation menu to get in the way of Creepy Angel Dog. If you get bored trying to read all of the text and the flashing links, you can always watch the disappearing butterflies.

For the record, we will say that this site is an absolute mess, with no focus, direction or purpose. The only possible reason for the existence of this site is to annoy those that attempt to create a cohesive web page. Seriously, there is very little hope that this site could ever be salvaged. Delete the whole thing and buy Websites for Dummies before starting over.

When you only have a few seconds to convince users to stay on your web page, the last thing you want is a JavaScript error as the first thing that users see. If you get past the error or use a browser that suppresses it, you will be greeted with a very sad attempt to rent out Castle LadyHawke for $6,000 a day. Don’t get us wrong, we're sure that it is a beautiful facility and $6K a day could possibly be a bargain. But when you have to search for photos and wade through a sea of unattractive colors, you may be tempted to give up and go with the competition which they conveniently advertise all over their site.

The menu almost blends into the background and the text links have very little contrast. Some of the links on the site go to other websites, which is fine but it is usually a good idea to open those links in a new window so your visitors can easily get back to your site.

While this site is not a complete mess, it doesn't do the castle justice that it is trying to promote.

The submitter mentioned that the site looks like a porn site advertisement. We will take their word for it since none of us have ever accidentally clicked on a porn site. This is another great example of lack of focus due to every element screaming for attention.

Fortunately for eye doctors everywhere, the secondary pages have even larger flashing images, Only this time we have 44 pages of them.Think of your users, kids. If you can repeatedly hit the 'page down' button on your pages, consider breaking the information up into mulitple pages or get rid of it altogether.

The setup, design and maintenance of a website can be time consuming and expensive, especially when you figure in a hosting cost of $1.99 a month. So it is understandable that sites turn to advertising revenue to offset costs or make a little extra change. Mancow has more attention on adspace than on content. When you decide to run ads, take a look at the finished product and if you get a seizure from all of the flashing ads then rethink your ad strategy.

By the way, what exactly IS a Mancow? A steer? No, that's a bull that has been gelded. I think we'll just leave the definition alone - although a website should attempt to tell you what it's about at the very least.

Another issue with this self-appointed psuedo-political guru's site can be found on the station listings. Unless they only care about every other station, they may want to reconsider white text on a white background.