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.

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MBLDesigns

"Are your hens going bald?" Do you need "coverage for those bald shoulders?"

It is hard to believe that as a company with a knowledgeable and educated staff, none of us had ever heard of or envisioned something called a 'chicken saddle.' Right? And no, they are not for riding chickens. Let us all thank the alert interwebs user who sent us this awful yet fascinating website.

Website design "fowls" aside - and there are plenty - let us at least credit this business for relying on PayPal instead of asking for credit card information in a non-secure manner. But back to the subject! There are even designs for you Packer fans. However, after Monday night you many want to strap these on a replacement referee instead of your chickens.

Blue Moon Mfg.

This evening, there will be a blue moon. For those of you not familiar with this astrological phenomenon, the term refers to a second full moon in one calendar month. What does this have to do with the featured website in question? We could lie and tell you that this same website was submitted twice in the same month, which would be a cool coincidence. However, that is not true.

What IS true is that this website is a rarity. How many websites have over 1300 keywords associated with them? How many websites mention The Malburian Wars? How many people have actually heard of the Malburian Wars? (No one here, by the way...)

Seriously, if you can find what you're looking for on this site, purchase it, and have your transaction completed securely...who cares if it looks dated? We do. Please note, however, the warning that the products here "contain lead and are not suitable for children under 14". There must be something magical about turning fifteen that also makes you immune to the dangers of lead.

Prestige Legal Services

It's time to play the keyword game again. If we found the following keywords associated with a website, what would you logically think the website was for? Elderly, nursing home, hospital, software, translations. Go ahead, guess. Assisted living for foreign senior citizen programmers? THAT would be logical. Instead, you have a private investigation firm.

What is more surprising is that this old-looking website has a copyright date of only 5 years ago. It looks much older - and when you're trying to convince potential customers that you have the most high tech equipment and services, your web presence should be as current as possible.

We tried to view this website on a Blackberry, and it's still loading.

Welcome to Goodrich Jumps!

Problem #1: Can't tell where they are
Problem #2: No indication of what their service area is
Problem #3: No SEO

If you were searching online for a company that rents bounce houses, you might eventually come across this website if you went through page after page after page of results. We encounted bounce house rental companies in Buffalo, Reno, Chicago, Sacramento and all over the country in the 13 pages of results we paged through - yet didn't come across this website. Even if we had - you can't tell where this company IS! We're also doubting the statement "For Any Occasion". It's pretty obvious that there are many occasions where a bounce house would be totally inappropriate.

A good web developer would've insisted on text that made sense to the traffic you were trying to attract.

ART School

It's time for another keyword guessing game! If we gave you the keywords "Bear Paw Fur Dressing, skull work, and asian taxidermy school", what kind of website would you think they were from? A restaurant? A Norman Bates fan page? Nope - the website being 'keyworded' is (or was) for a taxidermy school in Montana, USA.

Taxidermy is considered by many to be an art, as is website design. However, no art was involved in the creation of this website that we can see. We're not even sure this place is still open, judging from the invitation to 'click here for 2009 registration form'.

Maybe it's just us...but the photo of the 'academy' here looks more like a crematorium from a horror movie. The kind of building where you try to warn the characters to stay away from by yelling at the TV? Just sayin'...

Anyway - to our designers' minds - if your website is really about a taxidermy school, examples of the handiwork to be learned should be prominently featured. Unless...it's not deer heads and trophy fish being stuffed here.