Examples of Bad Websites

Often, bad websites are submitted for to us that turn out to be very small one or two-person companies.  We won't use those, it's not fair to point out website shortcomings of a company that may not have the funds to do any better.

Today's boogersite seemed to be one of those situations.  Surely.  The site is small, nearly bereft of content, and has a Flash element (how outdated!) on the landing page.  Checking a popular business directory that shows earnings gave us a shock - this company makes a LOT of money.  So what's with the crummy website?

Sometimes, a company doesn't want to portray themselves as too successful, or consumers think they already have it made, and they'll spend elsewhere.  The website actually says this company employs 550 people, which might be the most interesting piece of information we see.  Eh - maybe we're nitpicking.  If the company is doing well, and hasn't seen the need (obviously!) for a newer, more informative website...we'll just stand by for the next truly bad website.

This latest website is shockingly bad.  Just hover over the header, and you'll see.

There is so much wrong with this website, it's hard to know where to begin.  There's an ad crawl for completely irrelevant websites (50 Reasons Not To Vote for Bush, BadAssChick magazine, ENBI IS NOT DEAD); flashing animated gifs, outdated landing page content - a film premiere announcement from 2006 - and hundreds of links to interesting articles.  Seriously - they are horrid visually, but contain some fascinating information.

A very telling reminder of this website's age is the subscribe page.  You're to print out the form, fill it out, then mail it with a check.  A check!!  The 'webmaster' also has a prodigy.net email address.

Thanks for submitting it, alert internet user.  Keep 'em coming!

It's keyword guessing game time again!  What do these keywords imply that this website is about?  Women-owned, air-seperation (misspelled, btw), zero helium, el dorado, smackover, and stoody?   A bunch of nonsense, right?   No!   It's a welding supply company!   How did you not know that?   Hint:  'welding supplies' would've been a great term to make this landing page about instead of the nonsense stuffed in as "keywords" - when in fact, none of those terms are even present on the page. 

Other issues include the old-style small content box, wasting a lot of screen-space, and there's no sense trying to view it on a mobile device.  Blurry, low-res photos are also in heavy use.  Clicking on the logo from any of the product pages leads to an utterly blank page.

To sum up - it's odd that a company that claims to be the "The Largest Woman-Owned Industrial Gas and Welding Supply Distributor in the United States" (and presumably successful) hasn't paid much attention to their poor quality website.

Why would you want to waste your entire landing page user experience on an image?  In certain circles, a picture may be worth 1000 words. In web design, if there are no actual words, you've blown the opportunity to be found by anyone who may be searching for your product or service.  Search engines can't 'see' pictures.  They can see alt text, but in this case, there's nothing helpful.  images/homeimg.jpg" alt="home img"/> doesn't cut it.

Aside from that - this recently submitted bad website has other issues.  Besides not being mobile-friendly, the menu can't quite decide where it wants to be on sub-pages, Our Foods reads more like a cooking show description, not mentioning the company offering them even once - and because the banner with the company name in it is also a poorly titled image (design/images/banner00.png) it adds nothing to help search engines present the company in a search result. 

Although this website doesn't look comical as most that are submitted, it's got some underlying issues that make it a true boogersite.

Bad websites come in all shapes and sizes.  This beauty here is no exception.  Navy blue, jade green - not all bad.  However - when this was submitted - no one wanted to click on the url.  Why?

TAKE A LOOK AT IT.  Molestation Nursery?  No thanks!  But look closer.  No molestation here - just a fairly empty blog about a "Nuresery" with an unfortunate URL.

Give some thought to your website design - in fact, a lot of thought.  But please don't forget what your url may look like to people unfamiliar with your business.  Yikes.