Examples of Bad Websites
There are countless examples of embarrassing website designs and development out there. These are the latest examples we have discovered. For each site below we provide a brief analysis to assist you in avoiding the same pitfalls.
After looking at the websites and critiques below, please visit our free advice area.
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Atari - Best Electronics
Fact: It takes 40 'page downs' to get to the bottom of the landing page. No wonder, this site is like a time capsule.
There are gems such as:
"are you having problems saving data to your floppy disks?"
How to get the Atari Jaguar Tempest 2000 audio CD
See a Demo of an Atari BBS
and "Having trouble connecting up the your old Atari to your Cable Ready TV and think your Atari is Bad?"
This website is so quaint, it could be a masterpiece with some indexing and styling.
Maverick Industries
Copyright 2006 doesn't seem old enough, yet that's what's on today's bad website. If a company hasn't updated their website in 14 years (as of this writing) it's a sign that things aren't going very well.
There looks to be links in the upper left-hand corner, but they do nothing. Hey - "News" is the first navigation option, let's try that. Nope - nothing. And no wonder, there isn't anything from 2006 that could rightly be termed 'news'.
As it turns out, the site map is the only place where links actually work. Weird old website, maybe it's time to quietly fade away.
Infor POS
As someone said "this bad website has too much going on" and they're right. An 'accept cookies' bar blocking the top, a giant video that thankfully isn't autoplaying, and an intrusive chatbot already pestering us even though we haven't had a chance to click anything yet.
Chatbots are like a pushy store clerk that accosts you the moment you walk into a store, asking "is there anything I can help you with?" Just calm down! Give people a chance to look around before you - ALL OF YOU - pop up a dang chatbot. It feels like we're being watched.
Makana Design
A website was submitted that was pretty bad - so we decided to see who was responsible for it. Jackpot. The 'designer's' website is worse. From pages with nothing but lorem ipsum text to a portfolio full of no-longer-live websites, this isn't a company you'd hire if you wanted a professional website.
Grammar and puncuation errors are everywhere. "When business is not running nothing moves. to the high profile to the low budget trying to get on their feet, one thing is for sure we all need a little help." or "The Logos the business colors come into play when you went to high school."
Does this make sense to you?
Roadside America
Riddled with ads, today's bad website is presumably a resource for those wanting to take a road trip. Sounds good - but this disorganized site has us already wanting to stay home. The advertisements for mortgage rates get in the way, as do ones for Oral Care, and Spectrum. Seriously! Tone it down, we can't tell the ads from the content. Well actually - the site's text and arrangement is so old, that the ads stand out as modern, colorful, and appealing.
"The World's Largest Ball of Twine" is such a cliche when speaking of out-of-the-way places, yet there it is on the landing page slideshow.
The tiny search box doesn't work (very) well, we tried "Dollywood" and it came up as the THIRD result behind a bridge in Colorado, and Lorretta Lynn's childhood home. Weird.