Examples of Bad Websites

 

Baby Oxide is an absolute mastery of awfulness! It makes us remember the good ol' days of GeoCities (R.I.P.) with its rippling water java applets, animated dripping blood horizontal rules and who could forget the flickering candles. Granted, the site has not changed in 7 years but for Pete's sake man, it is time to bury this thing.

As an experiment in all things terrible, Henry is certainly entitled to create as many crappy .gifs as he wants. After further inspection, we noticed Baby Oxide offers computer and web design services. As a business, this website is truly offensive.

Prospective clients must be able to trust a web designer and be confident in their skills to create a professional presence on the web. If you're creating animated Scotty dogs, you're probably not in any danger of getting many new projects.

 

This website is so beastly and atrocious that the death in the family is more than likely a heart attack by the webmaster. We are not really sure what the name of the company is because there is no logo and the url is a giant puzzle of words. Notice they do not sell patterns.

The order form consists of a page that you must print and mail in with your payment. You will have to do some research to find the product you want and then you have to double the price and the shipping because they are just too busy to do that for you. Businesses can expand their customer base by selling products online, however in this case they would be better off selling door to door. Notice they do not sell patterns.

There is no navigation on this site at all and every page is different. We discover new pages every time we are there and each one is shockingly dreadful. One more thing we should mention, they do not sell patterns.

Houston Jewelry has been in business for over a century and judging by their store, they have been very successful. If we judge them by their website, they are a complete and utter failure. If your love for the Better Business Bureau makes your heart go pitter-patter to the point that you must feature them above your own company logo - then for the love of Pete, create a decent version of their logo that matches the background of your website. All of the design elements on this page are floating in space with no anchor or connection to anything else. There is no color contrast to hold the elements together. The secondary pages look like they were thrown together. The menu changes from page to page and at times the links are unreadable. The one call to action (contact form), doesn't even identify the website and is simply a blank page with form fields. Over 3 1/2 years after this posting, Houston Jewelry has finally replaced their website.  Good job, Freddy.

 

It took us a few minutes but we have determined that this is indeed an ecommerce website. However, buying something from them would require some fortitude. The website is inconsistent in look and feel, which is a bad thing when you want visitors to buy things from your website. It is akin to giving $500 to a homeless man smelling like Cold Duck and expecting him to give you a brand new Swiss Army knife.

There are numerous examples of images that look like links and links that aren't links. The visitors to your site should be able to navigate and use your website after just a few seconds. If you keep moving elements or navigation, the smart users will leave. Shopping on the web is all about confidence and trust. If your customers are worried about the walls of the store falling down, they are not likely to spend an hour browsing your products.

This wholesale plumbing website looks like it was done by a plumber in his mom's basement. This company is trying to convince their visitors that they should buy plumbing equipment from a company that doesn't care enough about their own company to present an acceptable image of itself. It's like a 300lb man showing up for a job interview in nothing but a wife beater and a g-string.

There is no branding, yet they felt the need to include an animated bar of color that serves no purpose. Next we have a list of items that look like a menu. They aren't. Most of the sub-pages feature incredible animated artwork including money going into a toilet.

Sherwood-Logan & Associates, Inc. has been in the wholesale plumbing business for 31 years and their website is related to the products that they sell - something that came out of the toilet.