Examples of Bad Websites

Musicians and bands rely heavily on sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter because they are cheap and easy like the tramps that hang out after every show. We make fun of bands for the lack of creativity, using the same cookie cutter design as every other band. We realize that some bands use this approach for one reason, they are boneheads!

Exhorder, which were a fairly popular metal band in the early '90s, decided to announce their triumphant return to music by using a Word doc that has been converted to html. The centered red text on a black background is a dead giveaway for bands that have spent all of their money on weed and can't afford a decent designer. Just a thought, if you want to sell more shirts try showing more cleavage.

Generally speaking, government regulation is not a good thing, but we are beginning to believe that that there should be a license for web design. This site is just terrible and to think that they expect people to give them money through their website!

The first page that you encounter is a splash page with a pathetic color scheme (if you can even call it that) and no branding whatsoever. Even if you only have a bad logo that was drawn on a napkin, it is better than your visitors wondering if they are on the right site. At the top of the page we find lots of little thumbnails which are supposed to be product links. They must be proud of these images since they took the trouble to google a script that protects their precious images, now if they could only find a way to keep us from disabling JavaScript. If it is really important to protect your product images, research better solutions.

The main site does not fit in any of the normal browser sizes and uses flashy, tacky animated gifs that we are sure that they paid for since they are so concerned about image theft.

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.