Is it possible for a web site to be so bad, it damages the brand? I asked around for some examples of brand-damaging web sites...
Nobody home: Don't start publicizing your web site if you don't even have a holding page up. One woman told me she went to a bridal show and received a promotional pen from one of the exhibitors. Although the pen featured their web site, it was still not up six months later!
No content hierarchy: Judy Pokras, the founder of Raw Foods News Magazine offered her own web site as an example of a brand-damaging site. There is no organization to the content, so the user doesn't even know where to start. In fact, I don't even know where to start to help this one! My best advice would be to employ an information architect and start from scratch.
User unfriendly: Another person said she was frustrated by a volunteer web site "people go there to find volunteer opportunities yet trying to find where to find them isn’t that obvious and then when you look, there aren't many searchable parameters and those that they do have don’t seem to work well so in the end, you really don’t find what you are looking for and are too frustrated to bother."
Outsourcing gone wrong: Hari Karam Singh said Carry On Clothing's web site damages an otherwise fine brand. "They have fantastic macs of the utmost style and quality, but the most tacky web site I’ve ever seen. Including a ridiculous
introduction with script and animations that could only be the result of an excessive budget combined with third-world outsourcing."
Too flashy: A pretty well-known "don't" when it comes to SEO is to build a site in Flash.
But one person I asked thinks that "any 100% Flash-built site, especially those with an 'intro' and music that I'm forced to sit through" can damage the brand.
"Don't you dare use your 'back' button on a Flash site or the whole darn thing will start over. Flash is what I call 'animation masturbation' because all it does is satisfy the ego of the animator. It does nothing to help visitors get to what they want quickly and easily.
Worse yet, Flash is a beast for Google because their spiders cannot read and catalogue the content. So there you have it. A terrible user experience ... and a terrible Google rank. What a disaster for any business."
If you recognize your web site in any of these scenarios, do yourself a favor -- take down your web site until you have the budget to do it properly. Put up a well-designed holding page in the meantime.
