Examples of Bad Websites

When this boogersite was submitted, we thought it sounded like a drainage company.  Not so!  This website is for an electronic system that replaces the good ol' "Next, please!" human interface.

To illustrate this, there is animation on the landing page of identical lime green figures that move in supposed efficiency to the head of the line, and then get served.  Watch more closely. When the greenie at the head of the line moves forward toward an illuminated light, the rest of the greenies in line disappear.  Now, we don't know about you - but what we'd like to see is a system that makes everyone in FRONT of us in line disappear.

What can we say about the design?  It's old.  The subpages don't retain the nav, the colors/style is not consistent, and there is no way to order the product online. 

If this company is still in business, it seems to be time to invest in a new website and some new product photos.

There's not a lot to pick on here, other than the fact that this site was submitted months ago - and is still under construction.  Why put it out there if it's not finished?

Your company website needs to portray an image of quality and reliability.  Consider your choices as a consumer  - if you searched for a particular product or service, and began clicking on the search results one by one...would you linger on a website that was under construction?  Probably not. 

If your company has a website - go take a look at it.  Before you do, try to let go of your familiarity with it.  If you were a stranger to your business - would you find your website appealing and up-to-date?  Would you be able to find what you were looking for without getting frustrated?  Would you recommend the site to others?  If the answer to any of these questions is an uncomfortable 'not really', contact our sponsor.

Here's a question for you:  Would a good psychic know their website was going to appear on boogersite?  We think so, which makes it puzzling why this boogersite has not already been redone.

Aside from the obvious issue with the logo, there is a crazy mix of text with text-as-image here.  Why do people do that?  If you've got some designy oddball font, you need to publish it as an image so it can be displayed in all browsers, that's why.  It doesn't seem to have been necessary here.  Also note that the menu options change depending upon which page you are on.  As this is the Psychic Temple Online, I'd have expected some online activity, maybe an interactive Tarot reading or something.  Or - should the website have greeted us by name?!

This place has won 3 Psychic Awards...but they probably already knew that.

Okay class, what year was FP6 from...1998 maybe?  Whether you know the answer or not, you will definitely realize it's time to update a website that was created using this very old tool when you visit the recently submitted craigstewartelectrical.com. 

Firefox refuses to display many of the old-school 'design' elements, such as the WordArt 'Hot Specials', only one of many design fouls to be seen on this site.  Animated gifs, animated menu flyouts that you have to see to believe using IE, and a wavy-bouncy scrolling banner.

The Specials page invites us to 'see our web page' for further details.  I thought we already ARE on the 'web page'?  However, there is an interesting background image of a woman joyfully holding what looks to be a garage door opener.  She may or may not be standing in front of a waterfall.  What this has to do with an electrical company is not clear.  Water + electricity = all bad, right? 

Almost every 'click here for more information' leads to a broken link.  The two links we found that DO work don't open a new window, as they should.  Instead, you're taken to another company's website, which is obviously counter-productive to having visitors stay on your site and hire YOU.

Go ahead, blink a few times.  Your first impression that this is an interactive map of a subway system is incorrect.  Well, no wonder!  "you need to download Flash 8 to view this site properly".  Come on, everyone, hop into the time machine and go back to 2005 with us!  (we should buy some Google stock while we're there...)

IF you can see the horizontal nav choices, 'Who We Are' seems to be a historical montage of unreadable business cards.  'Resources' offers a free download that won't, and 'Contact Us' is pretty unfriendly. 
A basic best practice of having your logo always link to your home page was also ignored here.  Seriously, for a company that offers "Web Sites" as one of their 'solutions', you'd think they'd have a better one of their own.