TheSantaClausParade.com Stays Sucky

Published November 15, 2007 @ 17:05 in Toronto News ~ Toronto Focus

santa This year's Santa Claus Parade will be hitting out streets on Sunday. I'll be there, for the fourth year in a row.

I just hit up the official parade site to see if they updated it. Even though they added an iPhone to the home page to give it a 2007 flavour, it's still a laughably bad site with one of the worst designed FAQ pages in the history of the World Wide Web.

At least they got rid of that scary elf. It always gave me the creeps.

10 Responses to "TheSantaClausParade.com Stays Sucky"

Brett
November 16, 2007 / 12:45

Anyone know if EZ Rock will be doing the all-Xmas music during the holiday's again this year?

Jason | GetYourOJ.com
November 17, 2007 / 10:41

how is it that of all the places in the world, toronto got that domain name? and what's so bad about the site?

Toronto Mike
November 17, 2007 / 10:55

1. The navigation is brutal. You have to wait for a section to come around on some carousel or hope you can nail the right balloon with the right question. Finding what you're looking for is a nightmare before christmas.

2. The aesthetics were bad in 1998. That noise, that busyness, that sensory overload.

3. It uses frames, so you're forced to use the front page, which still uses a splash page like it's 1999. Splash pages died because everything was at least two clicks away. On this site, everything is three clicks away, assuming you can find the links.

4. Some page don't load... at least they don't load in my browser. Try and access that sponsor page.

5. When you click that damn rotating carousel, how do you know where you are? Seriously, you're in a frame so the URL didn't change in the address field of your browser, and there's no textual heading. I was trying to click sponsors and got to this page: http://www.thesantaclausparade.ca/Clowns.html

6. Can anyone tell me what that heck http://www.thesantaclausparade.ca/Clowns.html is supposed to be? That's a laughably bad page to begins with. Yikes... do they know it's 2007?

7. I'll close with that FAQ page, because 90% of those going to this site want to know when it starts, when it finishes and when they should get down there to secure a spot in front. It's hell on earth learning the answers to any two of those simple questions on this site. In a nutshell, that's why it's the worst site I've seen in a very long time.

This might be an entry unto itself. Does anyone else wonder what's so bad about the site? You're just lucky the evil elf has been removed...

Annemarie
November 17, 2007 / 14:39

Why don't you offer to do their site?

Toronto Mike
November 17, 2007 / 15:04

I'd totally do that - and I'd answer the big three questions right on the home page. ;-)

Annemarie
November 19, 2007 / 12:17

Do it then!

Toronto Mike
November 19, 2007 / 12:35

Who the hell do you contact? I can't find a contact for this thing...

Annemarie
November 19, 2007 / 14:22

Well that was easy:

Santa Claus Parade
139 Wendell Avenue, North York, ON M9N 3K9
416-249-7833