WARNING: This post is not for the faint of heart. In order to protect you, dear readers, from the horrors that I am about to depict I offer you this: a terrifying picture which will prepare you for the troubles ahead.
GASP! Thank goodness that is over. Unfortunately the worst is yet to come. So, to those brave few who are still with me, I will now delve into the meat of the question. It has been asked since the dawn of the internet: what is the more horrifying beast, poor web marketing or an alligator snapping turtle?
To start out I am sure there are many naysayers who would posit that web design cannot cause the same amount of bodily harm on a human than a terrifying snapper. Well, in a counter argument, BEHOLD! Now in case you did not have the intestinal fortitude to plunge yourself into that site, I have provided a blurred and difficult to see image to protect you.
Look at it! Does it fill you with rage? Can you feel your blood pressure rising? In the event that you have to drive after viewing this website, try to avoid road rage. So why is this awful?
First and foremost, that guy who appears drives me absolutely crazy. Never, EVER force a user to listen to you. Give them the option to hit play, but only if they want to. That man does not even have a mute button, also he is on repeat so just shoot me now. Next up, the site is a giant wall of text, if you can deal with the literally incessant droning of Mr. Bottles up top to get even a quarter of the way through the novel, then you deserve a medal (or trophy).
Now, completely related, compare that site to this:
Dear god… I am sorry to have done that to you readers. How could this turtle be more terrifying than Mr. Bottles? Well, for starters, they can take off a finger in a single chomp. Also, they are shaped like quadrapedal godzillas. They can grow to be absolutely humongous (about as large as your torso). Finally, they have a wormlike appendage where their tongues should be. They flicker this around to lure in fish. That’s so gross and terrifyingly cunning. Image how smart these could one day become. If they ever learn genetic engineering we could all be screwed.
All hail our new turtle masters! Let’s hope not.
On to the next example of bad web marketing. I hope you brought your campfire because here comes a spooky story. Back in 2008 an electronics company that starts with an M and ends in an otorola decided to start a special kind of campaign. They were doing whats called “astroturfing”, meaning they sent out employees to pretend to be consumers in a fake grassroots campaign. The consumers would have been none the wiser, but one employee did not get the memo and started to tell people on some forums that he was an employee. On others he did not announce that particular fact. Well, now this is the scary part, the internet knows everything and put two and two together. The company was violently attacked with the lead pipe of the anonymous internet. Sales dropped *gasp*, social sites popped up chronicling the blunder and discussing their hate for the company *whimper*, and the internet world will remember it forever *the humanity*. Oh! The horrors of a terrible web marketing idea. Moral of the story, never try to deceive the internet as they will catch you.
Finally, I leave you two final examples of bad web marketing and alligator snapping turtles. We will start with this terrifying site: Ling. It is just too much for me to even post an image, I wouldn’t know where to start. I shall describe to you my reaction to this in glorious special effects.
WARNING: terrifying video.
If I really need to explain to you what is wrong on Ling’s site then you might as well give me a call. But I will do it anyway. Clutter is the name of the game here. Believe me, I understand the desire to cram as much as possible into a small space. Some of us just have so much to say… Anyways, it is just not appropriate on a website designed to sell to make it nearly impossible to read. Also you can learn something from the color scheme here. Try not to blind your customers or they won’t be able to see what they are clicking on.
Now, possibly even scarier is this video. In the interest of brevity and not showing any real gore, I have included just a video of a baby. You can see how terrifying that thing would be at 85-150 lbs.
So I leave it to you readers, What is more terrifying? Bad web marketing or the Alligator Snapping Turtle?