Examples of Bad Websites

We don't know about you, but he last time we heard the name "Malachi" it was in the horror movie Children of the Corn.  It doesn't seem to be the name of any employee here, so....weird.

Today's bad website is not simply old.  A big problem is that many of the links to Recent Projects show a website much newer and done by a different company.  The clients have moved on!  And so, it seems, have the business partners.  There is a list of four - only one of which leads to a working (maybe?) website just as plain and old as this one.

The company could be out of business.  If so - why leave this site hanging around?

You can see what's wrong here at a glance - not only is today's bad website non-responsive, it's not even left-justified so you have to go driving around just to see the content.  Secondly...is that a yahoo email address in the header?  Seriously??

Clicking on the generically named Catalog One does show results, but Catalog Two is nothing but an error page denying its own existence.

The landing page text you see is repeated throughout the site (WHY?).  The copywriter seems to be allerigic to hyphens and addicted to commas.  Let's hope they do great design.

Deemed unsafe by our browser, we forged ahead on behalf of the alert Internet user who advised us of this bad website.

It sure doesn't look like much, perhaps the nearly blank website is hiding some predators.  Hmmm.  Looks like a harmless list of clickable Management personnel, and a Downloads page.  Let's see.  the Go to files link does nothing, the Download free FTP software here starts an instant download of Core FTP Lite, and the instructions for using it were created 11 years ago.

That's literally it, folks.  Not even one photo, or shred of design.  Shrug.  Maybe simple is best, but they really ought to take care of that 'unsafe' problem.

Pop Quiz, class:  What's the number one purpose of the landing page of a website?  If you answered "To showcase what you do or sell", you are correct and may be dismissed, because this bad website doesn't do that.

Let's dig in:  The topic sentence announces the death of the company founder, in 2013.  Our condolences.  However, we'll also offer condolences to the utter lack of design whatsoever.  There's nothing to lure you in or make you want to stay, unless your hobby is to search for meaning among random paragraphs of unorganized information.  And wow is there a LOT.

The last line on the landing page says "Welcome and enjoy!"  Enjoy??

What you probably can't see from the thumbnail to the left is what caused someone to turn this bad website in to us.  The text being very small and light gray is a bad idea for any website, but for a design company it's unforgivable.  What you can't see are these lines interspersed with the 'content':

[vc_column width=”1/2″ el_position=”first”] [vc_column_text width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]

[/vc_column_text] [/vc_column] [vc_column width=”1/2″ el_position=”first”] [vc_column_text width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]

and so on.  Seriously - if you can't manage your OWN website, who would pay you to make one for a business??