Web Pages That Suck - learn good web design by looking at bad web design

Site: Ellis Island Casino and Brewery

Submitter’s comments: I was browsing potential dining experiences in Las Vegas, and I came across this fiercely awful site for the Ellis Island Casino and Brewery – it’s truly appalling.

The site looks as though it stepped fresh from 1996 with clip art, photographs with bezels, at least one HUGE image, bad, broken, table-based design. It’s just a general train wreck. I thought you and your regular readers might like to share in the suffering I had to deal with.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Like yesterday’s Daily Sucker, this site is an excellent example of bad web design.

1. The look of the casino site reminds me of the screenshot of five web sites — four which “borrowed” the look of one of the fifth site (I never knew who was the original). Those curves went out a long, long time ago.
2. Most web sites try to cram everything on the home page and there isn’t enough white space. This site has too much white space (on my monitor). I’ve uploaded a screen capture that I’ve annotated with other comments.
3. On the home page, 2 sections of underscored text are links, but 2 are not. See the screenshot above.
4. The Casino News page looks like it’s one big image map.
5. The Calendar Page is also one big image map that takes forever to load.
6. The menu on the Restaurant page is a PDF file, but it’s not marked as such.

That’s a good start.

Ellis Island Casino and Brewery