Examples of Bad Websites

First of all, apologies for the unusually cropped thumbnail image of the website.  It's actually the 'designer' who should be apologizing for creating a website in unresponsive landscape format!  That's just the first sin of this bad website.

The landing page is made with mostly static Flash, weird spinny nav choices, blurry photos, inconsistent style from page to page, misspelled words...what ISN'T wrong with it?

These days, mobile device accessibility is not a convenience, it's a must.  If your website can't be viewed and used effectively on a smartphone, you might as well cancel your hosting, close the doors of your business, and sit down in your recliner to read your set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas.

The website being reviewed today is a statistical anomaly.  It's pretty old, made with FrontPage, still working, and is kind of cute.  IF you like little animated gifs,  blinky lights, and white text on a black background, that is.  WE don't.

A mishmash of "styles" and fonts is common on poorly-designed websites. Your eyes just don't know quite know where to focus.  The broken/missing video is a giant red flag.  If you're going to use prime, middle of the website real estate it would be great to make sure your featured video actually exists.

At least the information on the website seems to be up-to-date.  One feature that needs to come into present-day would be the Map and Directions page.  Yes, there's a map and typed-out directions - but being able to put your starting address into the common Google maps utility would allow you to get exact directions and drive-time. 

Judging books by their covers is a natural habit.  It might not be fair, but it's what we all do.  Judging bad websites by their poorly designed landing pages is also something we all do.  It doesn't matter if your content is accurate, up-to-date, and awesome - if the website uses an outdated design, a very weird color scheme, and looks like it was developed by an amateur, people are going to move on to the next search result.

Sometimes poor design is a result of a very low budget, but today's boogersite is the public face of a company doing very well, if reported earnings are to be believed.  A low budget is not even a valid excuse anymore, there are templates out there that are FREE - and used by many small businesses for a 'starter' website.

As long as you're on this odd website, check out the jokes page, and enjoy the names of the different 'webmasters' listed at the bottom of most pages - including (and we're not kidding) "spank-a-lank-a-ding-dong."

"Design" - or lack of it - is obvious on today's bad website but that's the least of its troubles. This website says "our business is built on honesty, integrity, and hard work."  The business, maybe.  The website?  FOR SHAME.   Ever heard of keyword stuffing?  Just highlight the white area below the content, and you will see the worst, most egregious abuse of keyword stuffing this reviewer has ever seen.  EVER.  It's a world-record 4133 keywords.  It's not 'illegal'...but it is embarrassing for whoever made this website.  Never mind that the About Us and Capabilities buttons don't even work.

By 2005, many invisible text techniques were easily detected by major search engines.  These days, keyword stuffing may lead to a website being banned or penalized in search ranking on major search engines either temporarily or permanently.  

DON'T DO IT. It's not worth it, and very hard to recover from.

If you hire a company to develop a website for your business, please make sure they know what they are doing.  Otherwise, you could end up on boogersite.com, just like this bad website.

A basic and sensible rule of website design is to tell visitors what you do or sell.  This should be obvious immediately upon viewing a website.  Can you guess what today's bad website is selling?  If you are nodding 'yes', you are lying.

There is NOTHING on the landing page to indicate what this company does.  The name - GYMTEK - implies that gym equipment, maybe even high-tech gym equipment could be the product being made here.  Nope!  Let's check the navigation choices for a clue.  Nope!  None are about Products or Services.  It isn't until you view the Company Profile that we learn that GYMTEK is a screw machine job shop.  If you don't know what that is, and we don't either, pictures of machinery or before and after images of finished products would help immensely.

The strange email address and underlying "technology" of FrontPage 4 are other indicators that this website is in serious need of professional help.