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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When Minimalism Doesn't Work

This is the website. All of it.

Printing, Web Design, & Consulting.

There are no examples, or further descriptions. There's no navigation, but there are also no other pages.

If this website has nothing more to say, neither do we.

Progressive Oil

The keyword game never gets old, does it? Today's old/bad website has Pump Off Bit Sub and Landing Nipples among its keywords. Go ahead and snicker, we did.

What's not funny is that this website was created using FrontPage 4. That particular version came out around 1998. 1998! Websites made from FrontPage are still supported by a limited number of web hosts who have the necessary extensions installed on Windows servers. For now. But that shouldn't be reason for complacency - get your website into the 21st century. And if you have an ISO cert, display it. Just putting the words on there proves nothing.

If the word 'Progressive' is in your company name, your products, services and your WEBSITE should reflect that.

Casino Parties

We haven't played the keyword game in a while, so let's do! What would you guess a website with the following keywords might be about?

pig races, adult, disco, surprise, military formal

Sounds like a pretty weird business, right? It's actually a website for a company that provides casino-style entertainment. It's a colossal waste of time to stuff 634 keywords into your meta information, just a few would have gotten your point across.

Making your website about what you do and offer is essential, and this website actually does that. Not in the most attractive manner, applying design and a consistent style would vastly improve this site.

Grandma's Remedies

Grandmas are great, can we all agree? Has there ever been a bad one? They're known for sneaking candy to you, for being awesome cooks, and generally for spoiling you rotten. Speaking of rotten - what in the pill-popping world is this website doing with Grandma's name on it?

We don't believe, for one second, that any real 'grandma' came up with the pill formulations being sold here. Men's nutrients? A detox program? Sure, Grandma has some home remedies, but we're pretty sure she wasn't into detox formulations.

So - leaving "Grandma" out of it - this confusing website has a bad layout, and inconsistent fontage. The search feature doesn't work. It's also 2008.

If your website is meant to sell products, it needs to have an appealing design, a working search feature, and be current. Everything this bad website doesn't have.

V-Twin

Show of hands, please. Who likes colors? Everyone? Of course you do. But when colors are combined with no consideration for the vomitacious result that is today's bad website - well - you see what can happen.

PURPLE AND ORANGE? There's a reason that no English word rhymes with either of those color names. It's a sign that they're not meant to be combined. There are also some design gimmicks here that remind us of the old days, where a 'scene' would be presented, and you could click on the various items and they would react. Kind of like a shooting gallery at an amusement park. Not on this old left-justified website - not even on the door's sign which says 'over 30,000 parts inside.' We were kind of hoping that clicking on that door would cause it to swing open.

Colors can be used effectively to produce certain feelings in a target audience. The wrong colors, however, can be obnoxious and off-putting.