Examples of Bad Websites

Casanovasadventures.com

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 wen 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.

Sherwood, Logan & Associates, Inc.

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.

Jarke Corporation

Jarke's website is a colorful piece of crap resembling gaudy Victorian wallpaper. The logo looks more like an 80's hair band than a legitimate company selling industrial storage systems. The entire site is plagued by animated gifs. Seriously folks, the cheap animations are not fooling anyone. They are not cute and they make websites look like a bad porn site. If your website is representing a professional company, then the website should damn well look professional.

The information request page is a mess with fields all over the page. If you do not make an effort to make your forms attractive and easy to use, your users will not use them.

We will give them some credit for the kangaroo fact page because it is sooo cute and adorable, complete with more badly drawn kangaroos. We have never talked to a kangaroo, but would be willing to bet a pint of piss (Australian for beer) that a kangaroo would not endorse this website of its own volition.

Stop Alien Abductions

Alien abductions are bad mmm kay? Apparently we are prime targets for an alien mind control attack and most of the world is oblivious to the impending peril. Thankfully, Mr. Menkin has been protecting brains for the last ten years. The testimonials claim that an ugly hat has changed their lives. In fact, they have reached a whole new level on the social outcast scale. We would like to think that this is a joke and the author enjoys making fun of the real kooks that believe this sort of crap. The truth is that as you read through the pages, it is clear that this guy is certifiable.

With such a brilliant and essential tool, we were shocked that Mr. Menkin would have such a horrible website. Aliens probably abducted the real website. There is no color scheme, branding or visual interest to the pages and the only alien photo is the decades-old alien autopsy. Surely one of the many abductees has a more recent photo. The navigation is done with frames which makes bookmarking difficult. Also, search engines will not be able to properly index the site.

Keen Fighters

One of easiest yet overlooked improvements for a website is to let people know what the site is about. A user should not have to search for a meaning hidden somewhere in your pages. When it comes to Keen Fighters, the text is unreadable, the background is hideous and from the looks of it no one uses this website and why would they?

The author states that he has the web skillz that he needs. "I've been creating communities for a long time, but never had the experience I have now. I would always leach off of people to do my work; such as HTML, Image Designing, Lua Coding, Website setup. Lucky I've gotten past that, I now have all of those abilities and I can do it when I need it, and to the standards I requier." Even if this webmaster was blind, this site would be unacceptable. If you are going to design a website at least do us all the courtesy of spending five minutes on Google learning how to create a white background.

The good news is that you can get lifetime access (to what we still don't know) for only $10.

NetPipes

There should absolutely be an expiration date on websites. We worry about pollution and littering, yet we allow any yabo with a wysiwyg editor to pollute the internet with trash that they have no intention of cleaning up. NetPipes is a great example of a bad idea that has festered into a landfill over the years.

They start out by having you choose the entrance to their site. By now it should be common sense that an entrance page is bad mojo. So making the user choose between two intro pages is nefarious at this point. Normally the Flash intro would be considered the more heinous of the two options, but in this case the standard html version is far and away more offensive. These butt nuggets chose to recreate the Flash intro into pages with 'next' buttons. Mom must be proud.

The lesson here is to keep your website current. The NetPipes website is just too easy to make fun of.

Pavement Maintenance

Wow, this site sucks. There isn't even an easy way to tell what they are talking about. One could guess from the url that they do repairs on driveways or roads, but there is nothing to confirm that suspicion other than a list longer than an L. Ron Hubbard novel.

We are going out on a limb but it appears that this site is trying to help owners of paving companies find the right domain name for their website. I guess it would have been too easy to tell us the purpose of the page. The value of the information is questionable at best and even the author warns not to trust the copy. "Compiled over 6 years by many sources and is not accurate."

Visitors can learn more about the pavement industry by playing on the expressway. If your website has a purpose make sure that your web pages fulfill that purpose, or you're just wasting everyone's time including your own.

Hell's Belles Car Club

MySpace, Facebook and Twitter prove that the masses want their piece of the web. These sites also show that most of these people are horrible designers. At the same time, hobbyists using these tools can create a page that is useable and gets their message to the masses. With tools like these available, the average person should use them, instead of posing as web designers.

The Hell's Belles Car Club is an example of a site that means well and is aimed at a specific audience. This type of site is perfect for for a site like MySpace. They would still have the same control without alienating their audience. For example, they introduce the standard red color scheme, only to abandon it on all of the secondary pages. Likewise, they feature an icon-driven menu and then maroon users on all of the other pages. The only way to navigate through this site other than using the browser buttons is to use the "back the hell up" link that drops users back to the index.

Let's be honest, the Belles should stick to their passion of classic cars and let the pros do the web work.

The Fitness Club

Oftentimes it's the small things that can ruin a web site, like not having clear branding or annoying Flash banners. To make matters worse, the company logo is not present on any other page except for the home page. The name of your company and what you do should be the first things that someone sees when visiting your site.

Most of the pages have little to no visual interest. The home page has a feature of a trainer and a photo of Jack Black, but apparently they are not fans since they buried it at the bottom of the page. The photos they have on the other pages are limited to blurry or out of focus postage stamps.This website should be a tool to get people to the health clubs for a visit but the designer hasn't given visitors any reason to go. Digital photos are a cheap and easy way to show people what your business is about.

With two branches and a fitness trainer to the stars, you would think that The Fitness Club could afford a professional website that shows they are serious about their business.

Cinema-Scene.com

If you can remember Jellies, neon plastic, Cavaricci jeans, Wayfarer Sunglasses, Bolo ties and Skids - you are familiar with things that may have seemed like a good idea at the time but would be laughable today. Likewise, website design often falls victim to the peace-sign-wearing, hippie designer that forgets what decade they are in. This website dates back to 1990 and it looks like it. Just because you have a website that is 10 years old, it doesn't mean that it should be a time capsule.

Consistency on a website is important, it keeps your visitors from getting lost as they travel from one page to another. On this particular website that is as outdated as pea-green shag carpet, they just need an escape hatch that sends the user anywhere on the web other than Cinema Scene. The secondary pages switch design on a whim and in a lot of cases have no design or navigation at all.

There are a lot of good online resources for movie reviews. Our advice is to save your time on this one, it simply has no plot.

Micromedia Enterprises

This is most putrid thing that we have seen in about a week. Seriously, this belongs in the top ten for the worst websites of the year. If you happen to be visually impaired and you're hearing this text, feel free to laugh at all of us that have to look at this dung heap. There is no structure, common theme, navigation, header or even a real logo. The main logo vaguely resembles a half-assed attempt to create a vintage Vegas road sign that any preschooler could surpass. The only attempt at design is the white bars on the page which could induce a welcomed seizure.

With a little bit of searching we did manage to find an actual product here, but no one with an ounce of common sense would trust this site with their credit card number. The visual appeal and overall professionalism of a website can go a long way to establish or destroy trust. If a web designer does not have the skills to create a trustworthy website, then they should hire a company that knows how to create successful websites. It is better to admit your epic failure as a web designer than it is to flush money down the toilet on a website that no one trusts.

CONTRACT LABORATORY . COM

The design and layout of this website is BORING. There is no visual interest or anything that would indicate that the web designer even has a pulse. There are several dead links, broken graphics and an index page that is too long. We were originally thinking that this site wasn't too bad but as we began listing out the issues, it became clear that euthanasia is a great idea.

There is little contrast between the backgrounds and the text so it becomes difficult to tell what is text versus a link. The monochromatic design is still popular but having some color variety goes a long way toward making things easy to find and gives your visitors at least a little something to look at.

Then we have the navigation which should be one of the highest priorities for a web developer. It should be easy to use and have what the user is looking for. The navigation certainly has what you're looking for, assuming you're a lab rat, the problem is that you will need a map to find it. On some pages there are more navigation links than content. Seriously boys, stick to the Little Tykes' chemistry sets and leave the websites to the big boys.

Holidays on the Net

The first thing that we noticed here was a large banner ad at the top of the page. Next we noticed that long string of ads going down the page and then the second column that looks like it is supposed to be ads but it is empty. We can appreciate the fact that it is sometimes necessary to use a few well-placed ads to supplement revenue on a website. When the ads on your website look better or draw more attention than your own website, you're nothing more than a virtual kiosk for other businesses.

Choosing the proper type of navigation on a website can be tricky because users have biases on how they prefer to see menu items. The best approach is to choose the easiest navigation for your audience and if needed use a/b tests to determine if you have made the best choice. Only ignorant schizophrenics choose all of them. The menus are virtually the same in every case and did not need to be repeated 5 times! Contrary to what web developers may think, users are not all that stupid.

ESPN Sports Radio, Cedar Rapids (KGYM)

It is important for the front page of your website to be clean and professional. Having a page with no content is not professional because your visitors expect to find information relative to the website that they are on. So basically the web developers for this site are lazy or just don't give a damn about their visitors. More than likely the page just isn't finished but your users should never see a blank page. They could always post pictures of Tiger Woods' alleged lovers.

We have talked about color schemes as an important design element. The neutral color scheme here is pleasant and easy on the eyes but the background is so dark that the content doesn't pop off the page like it should. Having proper contrast in your color scheme is as important as choosing the right colors. Web developers should also be careful to choose colors that are not overpowered by the images on the page. The ad on this page is so desperate for attention that it could be mistaken for Chad Ochocinco Hachi Go Johnson.

Infonetics, Inc.

Background textures can be a wonderful tool for the web designer. They can also make your website look like a lounge singer's tuxedo if used poorly. When we looked at the Infonetics site the first thing that we noticed was the background. It's like watching an old guy at the beach when his pants fall down. The most important element on a webpage should be the first thing that a visitor's eye is drawn to. In most cases that should be the logo. The Infonetics logo looks cheap, old and ugly plus it is small and blends in with Vegas-style background.

Most of the secondary pages are poorly formatted and are rife with broken images. The secondary pages on your site are just as important as the main landing page. In some cases a user will go straight to one of your content pages and never see your index page, so it is important that all of the pages on your site make a good impression.

Elvis has left the building!

Direct From TV

Most of us have bought into the smarmy pitches of a late night infomercial ending up with a Snuggie, ShamWow or another useless piece of Chinese plastic that finds its way to a landfill within the month. This website is an emporium of TV crap just for our buying pleasure, unfortunately the design is crap as well.

The front page elements flash, blink and even fly around the screen but there are so many links and ads that visitors are likely to fall into a state of hypnosis before they find what they are looking for.

The overall design of the site looks like a puzzle theme that makes no sense given the "As Seen on Tv" context. Not only is the menu too long and difficult to read, a lot of the words are cut off.

Normally we would say something witty here like: "don't quit your day job" or "they look better on tv than they do on the web" but honestly we are all too smart to buy any of this stuff anyway, right?

Security News Portal

There are times when a monochromatic color scheme works well on a website, this is not one of them. Not only is red a harsh, jarring color, SNP chose to fill the screen with the same shade of red more evoking thoughts of an autopsy than of computer security. The logo is almost unreadable and is not helped by the strong red glow that allows it to blend into the bloody header.

The menu contains a wonderful naming scheme of page 1, page 2, page 3 etc...that is very helpful when looking for specific subject matter. The links on this site open a new window every time, which is a good strategy when you are linking to external sites. Opening new windows for pages on your own site is not only annoying, it can potentially lock visitors' browsers, especially if they are using a stellar browser like Internet Explorer.

Just because your target audience consists of geeks and nerds (err we mean IT professionals) doesn't mean that your website should be ugly and irritating.

Newts Playing Cards

Opening a retail store can be an expensive endeavor so it is logical that someone would want to rent a small space and then grow into a larger one. A retail website (e-commerce), on the other hand, is not limited by space, so many designers are bent on cramming as many products as possible onto the first page of the website. If your products are not displayed in an attractive and professional manner, how can you expect visitors to consider buying them?

The overall design of the site is not as clean and professional as it should be but trust us, we have seen worse. It is the little things that will make a bad impression - such as having the menus push outside of the page, it just looks sloppy.

The product detail pages are cluttered like the rest of the pages and it makes it difficult to focus on the specific product that was chosen. The goal of this site is to sell playing cards and accessories but we found adding items to the cart an impossible task.

Wallace Computers

Everything about this website makes us want to take a black marker to the screen to spare our eyes from any more torture. The interface is old and tired. They are still designing for 800 x 600 which makes the site look like a postage stamp on any modern screen. The most egregious offense is the Flash navigation that forces the user to chase the menu items around the screen.

Once a visitor does manage to select a menu item, they are presented with a small area of worthless text that does very little to promote Wallace Computers. Most of the sections are either blank or contain cryptic words with no point of reference. The background music is distracting and never a good idea unless you are selling music.

Any designer that is considering a web interface entirely in Flash should consider this simple question: Can the element that you want to do in Flash be done using JavaScript and html without losing functionality? Most of the time that answer will be yes and you can save yourself from creating embarrassing pages.

Rangers Canada: International Brotherhood of Rangers

Apparently no one informed the Rangers that Geocities died and that we no longer have to use the twinkle star background. Here, we find an exceptionally awful example of a website. If we had to guess, we would say that it is a site for retired members of the Canadian Rangers: Vancouver Chapter.

True to the Geocities model, there is no structure, form, design or menu, just a long list of links that all turn out to be photos or photo albums disguised as YouTube videos. They do seem to have an obsession for drunk dolls and a loose Barbie.

After some research we discovered that the Rangers are a division of the Canadian Army, yet this site seems to be focused on on airplanes and air shows. Maybe you have to be Canadian to understand the content here but everyone can agree that they do not know how to build a useable website.

Spartacus Educational

While we learned a long time ago that "We don't need no education", when surfing the web we do need sites that give us at least a hint as to what the site is about. Just as we came to a consensus that the site is loosely about war and the history of war, we discover links for football, Watergate and Martin Luther King. It should be common sense to design and provide content around a theme, you get bonus points for telling users what the theme is.

The author claims that he established the site to be a place for active learning, yet there is no interaction or discussion at all. The only thing that a user will find is seemingly unrelated subjects and articles that are more like an inferior version of Wikipedia.

Educational success largely depends on the curriculum of the classes that the student is taking. In this particular case, we have no idea what the class is even about. Mr. Bruner, next time publish a syllabus so we can at least make some sort of sense out of your endless ramblings.

Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis Historical and Technical Society, Inc.

Image and brand defines all businesses and organizations, but typically smaller groups like historical soecities use the lack of funds and resources as an excuse to create horrible websites.

With a little time and some research, anyone can create a decent website. However, not only has the TRAA not created a decent website, the image they are projecting only serves to drive people away from their organization.

The TRAA website has no structure, color scheme or anything else that would remind someone of a real webiste. Sometimes creating a bad website can do more damage than having no website at all.

Brackin Wholesale

Another brilliant example of a bad Flash introduction that is implemented poorly. They force you to suffer through it with no way to skip to the content and we are hoping that this was done as a part of a 3^rd grade project because that is about the only way they could have gotten a passing grade for this garbage.

We finally made it to the index page and immediately wanted to go back to the Flash intro. We realize that this is an old site but this was bad a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. There is no style or design in any shape or form. The logo floats in space and doesn't fit with anything on the page and most of the links result in 404 errors.

Kitchen Accessories one of the few pages that actually exists, looks like someone started a page but never finished. There are beginnings of a header and product title but nothing on the page looks finished. The secondary links merely list products and give users no real information other than part numbers.

Joby Saad Village Idiot Comedian

This site just plain sucks! It's no wonder that so many people hate Flash and looking at this guy's ugly mug (no offense) makes us want to puke. The interface elements are poorly done and there is no visual interest to the pages at all. Normally when designers use Flash it is well ...flashy.

If you do manage to make your way to one of the secondary pages (3 levels deep), you will find something that at least looks like a website. The light teal text is completely unreadable throughout the site and there is no cohesive color scheme. The entire thing feels rather schizophrenic.

The ticket area introduces yet another interface design and color scheme. Perhaps in keeping with his comedian roots Joby is trying to be wacky and funny. We are not laughing, Joby, and your visitors won't either!

Exhorder (band)

Musicians and bands rely heavily on sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter because they are cheap and easy like the tramps that hang out after every show. We make fun of bands for the lack of creativity, using the same cookie cutter design as every other band. We realize that some bands use this approach for one reason, they are boneheads!

Exhorder, which were a fairly popular metal band in the early '90s, decided to announce their triumphant return to music by using a Word doc that has been converted to html. The centered red text on a black background is a dead giveaway for bands that have spent all of their money on weed and can't afford a decent designer. Just a thought, if you want to sell more shirts try showing more cleavage.

Trendy Princess

Generally speaking, government regulation is not a good thing, but we are beginning to believe that that there should be a license for web design. This site is just terrible and to think that they expect people to give them money through their website!

The first page that you encounter is a splash page with a pathetic color scheme (if you can even call it that) and no branding whatsoever. Even if you only have a bad logo that was drawn on a napkin, it is better than your visitors wondering if they are on the right site. At the top of the page we find lots of little thumbnails which are supposed to be product links. They must be proud of these images since they took the trouble to google a script that protects their precious images, now if they could only find a way to keep us from disabling JavaScript. If it is really important to protect your product images, research better solutions.

The main site does not fit in any of the normal browser sizes and uses flashy, tacky animated gifs that we are sure that they paid for since they are so concerned about image theft.

Elk USA

The look and brand of your website is crucial. It is the first impression that you make on your visitors yet so many website designers take it for granted. ElkUSA tries to create a western theme but they fail to tell us who they are until we are half way down the first page and the attempt at a photo requires magnification to have any impact at all.

While it is important to make the links on your site stand out, it is not necessary to increase the font size by 5x to make your point. We encountered several coding errors while navigating the site and while it does not prevent you from viewing it will scare off any would-be buyers, who knows what elks might do with credit card numbers.

The main navigation on this site must have confused some of the visitors at some point because the site is careful to tell you when you are on "home base" and that if you are lost to "...always return to HOME".

Hosanna1.com

Holy atomic pile of crap, Batman! We have seen a lot of websites over the years but not many come close to being more of a mess than this.

Let’s look at the positive: there’s no pesky navigation menu to get in the way of Creepy Angel Dog. If you get bored trying to read all of the text and the flashing links, you can always watch the disappearing butterflies.

For the record, we will say that this site is an absolute mess, with no focus, direction or purpose. The only possible reason for the existence of this site is to annoy those that attempt to create a cohesive web page. Seriously, there is very little hope that this site could ever be salvaged. Delete the whole thing and buy Websites for Dummies before starting over.

Castle Events and Weddings

When you only have a few seconds to convince users to stay on your web page, the last thing you want is a JavaScript error as the first thing that users see. If you get past the error or use a browser that suppresses it, you will be greeted with a very sad attempt to rent out Castle LadyHawke for $6,000 a day. Don’t get us wrong, we're sure that it is a beautiful facility and $6K a day could possibly be a bargain. But when you have to search for photos and wade through a sea of unattractive colors, you may be tempted to give up and go with the competition which they conveniently advertise all over their site.

The menu almost blends into the background and the text links have very little contrast. Some of the links on the site go to other websites, which is fine but it is usually a good idea to open those links in a new window so your visitors can easily get back to your site.

While this site is not a complete mess, it doesn't do the castle justice that it is trying to promote.

X10

The submitter mentioned that the site looks like a porn site advertisement. We will take their word for it since none of us have ever accidentally clicked on a porn site. This is another great example of lack of focus due to every element screaming for attention.

Fortunately for eye doctors everywhere, the secondary pages have even larger flashing images, Only this time we have 44 pages of them. Think of your users, kids. If you can repeatedly hit the 'page down' button on your pages, consider breaking the information up into multiple pages or get rid of it altogether.

Mancow

The setup, design and maintenance of a website can be time consuming and expensive, especially when you figure in a hosting cost of $1.99 a month. So it is understandable that sites turn to advertising revenue to offset costs or make a little extra change. Mancow has more attention on ad space than on content. When you decide to run ads, take a look at the finished product and if you get a seizure from all of the flashing ads then rethink your ad strategy.

By the way, what exactly IS a Mancow? A steer? No, that's a bull that has been gelded. I think we'll just leave the definition alone - although a website should attempt to tell you what it's about at the very least.

Another issue with this self-appointed pseudo-political guru's site can be found on the station listings. Unless they only care about every other station, they may want to reconsider white text on a white background.

Keb Paper and More

We have no idea what this site is about. They claim to be the number-one source for professional service. From their name, we could assume that they are a paper company (and more) but good luck figuring anything else out on this random collection of pixels. When you decide to make a website, sit down and come up with a site map, outline or scribbles on a napkin - just make sure there is a clear purpose and focus for your site.

The other pages on the site appear to have the start of a design but at the risk of telling us any sort of useful information, the designer wisely stopped so that they could focus on the squiggly fire line graphics. By the way, touting “months of collective comprehensive knowledge and experience” doesn't’t go a long way toward establishing trust.

We maintain that no one reads text but even if you tried to read some of the copy on these pages, you are faced with statements such as "everythig is disposable equipment". To be fair this site is probably still under development, but at the same time if your page is not ready for the world to see it then don't leave the door open when your pants are down.

One Store 4 You

If you are compelled to write instructions on how to use your site, you’re doing it wrong! If people are emailing you and saying that they do not know how to find things, you’re doing it wrong! If Superman with his super-human eyes can not read your blue on black menu then (say it with us class) you are doing it wrong!

Everything on this site is weak at best, it's not a complete assault on the eyes but it is a sorry excuse for a shopping site even if it is just a collection of links to other stores. The sole purpose of this site is to get people to click on one or more of the banners on the hidden pages. Make things easy for your users! If you are selling products then show products on the front page. If you are a portal of links, (yep you guessed it) show links on the front page.

Big Daddy's Bail Bonds

We could say that this site suffers from a lack of branding because "Big Daddy" the logo is off the bottom of the page. Daddy must have noticed and he put his name at the top side and conveniently it is in the phone number too! Having your name on your website is important but clear concise branding is better than assaulting your visitors with your name. On second thought, most of the users here are probably in jail or getting someone out of jail.

The Most Wanted section is by far the best thing that we have seen today, who doesn't love looking at drunk reprobates showing off their tattoos on their very own wanted posters.

Chestnut Ridge Supply Gun Parts

Believe it or not, at one time this was probably considered a good e-commerce site. For the most part this site is a victim of time and it looks like this site has not seen a makeover in almost a decade. A lot of blogosphere experts will tell you that a site should be redesigned every year. The truth is, a website should be a living organism that should grow and change constantly. If your original design was flexible and sound then you can use a design for several years or until you get tired of it.

You should not have to welcome people to your site. A good design and layout will do that for you. Instead, describe your business. People will read about that, and so will the search engines.

Scrolling marquees are old relics that never seem to die. If you are hell-bent on using them, please make them readable! The seizure-inducing cadence in which these characters march across the screen is enough to make you want to buy a gun..

Warren County Kustoms

First off - what is a Warren County Kustom? Using a 'K' instead of a 'C'? As in, Warren Kounty has a spiffy Khamber of Kommerce? Glad we don't live there. Seriously - this site is listed here for obvious reasons. There are, however, some lessons to be learned from this shining gem of a boogersite.

Notice the pages are named page 1, page 2, page 3. Hurray, we can count! Titles are meant to give your viewers some clue about what the page is about, as well as helping you out with the search engines. The same can be said for the not-so-cleverly designed menu buttons. This is a great example of "mystery meat navigation".

On a general note, the home page has no focus and is littered with animated gifs. No one cares how many people have visited your site, what the weather is like in Franklin, Ohio and scrolling marquees instantly tell us these people have not seen a website in at least 10 years.

Chicken, Alaska

One of the first questions that we ask new web clients is the purpose of their website. E-commerce, corporate information, tourism, educational...you get the idea. Then you design around your purpose. If you have no purpose, then you create the Chicken, Alaska website. After you tire of the chickens chasing the cursor (which was never a good idea, not even when everyone still liked Bill Gates), you are left with a poorly executed attempt to be cute and no real idea of what the site is about.

The whimsical navigation may look good on a sign or poster but on a website it should be a tool to move from page to page. Evidently the fine folks of Chicken did not intend for you to go beyond the index page since they never got around to adding content to most of the interior pages.

We really wanted an official "I got laid in Chicken, Alaska shirt" but you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page just to add it to my cart. Once on the cart page we are faced with choosing between secure and unsecured checkout, just in case you do not believe in hackers.

South Sea Rattan and Wicker Furniture

Ok class, quiz time! The purpose of a store - you know, those buildings that you used to go to when you wanted to buy things? Before the internet? Ok, I'm losing you. The purpose of a STORE is to do what?.

Surprise!

The answer is to sell products, yet we run into sites like this all the time, where you have to hunt for something to buy. South Sea Rattan does not let you make any purchases online but you would think that they would want to at least SHOW you what they want you to buy right up front.

It sounds simple but a lot of websites fail to think of their users. Put yourself in their shoes! How easy is it for your customers to get the information, or this case, products that they need? Web users do not want to think, so we have to hit them over the head with what we want them to do on our websites. Just remember if you don't connect with your visitors, your competitors will.

Hochberg and Company, Inc.

Websites have about 3-4 seconds to grab the attention of visitors before they bounce to your competitor's site, so while this site may not seem "bad" on the surface, it is about as boring as we have seen. To be fair, they write chemical studies (egads) but even screenshots of their studies or a scientist or two would liven up this dead page.

The most recent information that we could find is from 2003, under heading verbiage indicating that these were the 'most recent studies'. Not a lot going on in lately, eh? Are you folks still in business? This is another death sentence for websites, especially one that by nature has a smaller audience. Often, companies forget that websites are living documents and they should be constantly changing and being updated.

The navigation is worth mentioning here as well since you might miss it if you have any trouble seeing variances of blue. When choosing color schemes, it is important to ensure that there is enough contrast in colors that will be overlapping each other.

HavenWorks.com

Wow! If we didn't know that there are a lot of sites like this, we would just dismiss this site as being a horrible assault on the eyes. We will admit that this is way over the top and the web designer almost had to be trying to create this Masterpiece of Disaster.

One of the things that everyone can learn here is that more is usually NOT better and that the newspaper classified section is not a good web design standard, and surely not if your web hosting company is charging you by the pixel.

When building a website it is not necessary to copy your competitors down to every detail but it is a good idea to have at least seen some of the websites that you are competing against. We highly doubt that Haven Works has ever seen another news site and even wonder if they have ever looked at their own site when not under the influence.

BWA Slot Car Parts

You have created a beautiful logo and want the whole world to stop everything and take a gander at it. At least the page is clean. Splash pages (pages with nothing on them but a Speed Buggy tire logo) serve absolutely no purpose other than making your visitors go away. Seriously, this page gives us no reason or desire to want to know anything more about this site. If you do decide to venture forward, you will need to guess where the link is because the cursor does not change to indicate a link. Tsk tsk!

As a general rule of thumb, designing around a shape or image is a bad idea. We have seen a few sites over the years that have been able to pull this off, but you should avoid it if you can. For one thing, you designed this menu around a giant image for the home page, what about the secondary pages? Remember consistency is king for any websites, don't make your users relearn your navigation just because you have a new version of Photoshop and a digital camera.

Anyway Computer Company

This site obviously uses a template, you don't have to look at the source code to tell. You know we couldn't resist, so we looked because it is so much fun to peek under the hood and find nasty code! We won't pick on them for using a Microsoft Office theme other than to point out that if you are going to use a theme, use a good one.

The first rule of branding is well, to identify who you are. We had to look at the url to determine the name of this company. Can YOU read the logo? We're not even a bunch of prune-juice-drinking old farts and we couldn't decipher it. The identity of your site is important, so it makes sense to make it readable.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see that this page has been under construction for 2 years. At first we didn't see any evidence of unfinished work until we visited the site map. Do us all (and yourself) a favor, just remove unfinished links until they are really ready to be seen.

If you look at the Contact Us email link for Anyway Computer, you will see that they were nice enough to prefill the subject line with "Potential New Client". Maybe just a little presumptuous?

Kalona General Store

Backgrounds and even textured backgrounds can add some visual interest and drama to your page, this is not it! When you have a really strong background you need content on top of it that is strong enough to compete with the background. If you are going to throw images and text on top of bricks, at least make an attempt to make it look like they belong there! We've also never seen a street address in feet and inches! 121 5'th ST on the corner of 5"th and B Ave. Weird.

Let's talk about page titles, this site is a good example of what NOT to do. What is worse than having bad titles for your pages or even no titles? Using "Blank" for the title of the page. Titles, while a seemingly minor issue, are really helpful for visitors and search engines.

The wooden buttons are ugly but I would worry more that the text on them is difficult to read. Simply bolding the text would have helped here.

The pages on your website should all look similar. It is called consistency, folks! There are only three pages to this site and that is being generous since they did not even make an attempt at the About Us page. Maybe they used up all the content on the eerily similar "History" page, which lacks a way to get back Home.

Ability Consultants

Some old guy wrote that a picture is worth a thousand words. Actually, that saying is from a Chinese proverb but that's not the point here. So this page says nothing unless you bother to read the text and no one wants to do that. Minimalism and pink space can be very effective (somehow? somewhere?) and we are a big fan but this web designer didn't even attempt a design.

Web designers love to experiment with color, which is fine as long as you can read it. putting text that does not stand out on a colored page is useless. The black text here is not terrible but the contrast is not as high as it should be when you have a lot of text.

He did attempt a logo but it appears to be broken. However - as this company calls itself "Practitioners of Knowledgism" (I think they made that word up, stand by - I'm going to check) it should go without saying, but please LOOK at your pages, if you have a broken image then fix it dear Henry!

News bulletin: the word 'knowledgism' seems to exist, but only on websites of 'knowledgists' that are trying to sell you their services. The (ahem) 'definition' is: Knowledgists are aware of what they know, what they do not know and even that they know they do not know. My brain hurts.

Ohio Steel

The landing page here is intended to be a page linking to pages, no wait, it links to other sites, oh no maybe they are just other divisions or sub sites. Wouldn't it just be easier to have a real menu with link to pages that tell us what we are looking at?

The sub pages have a completely different look and it doesn't matter if it was on purpose or not, it is confusing and it was a mistake because it will confuse users. We also have a custom background that probably took a designer all day to create but the dumb content keeps getting in the way, maybe they need a splash page so we can really enjoy it!

The menu buttons are nice and big and easy to see, only one problem, they don't match anything else on the page so we end up with these steel looking boxes floating in space that look like they were stolen from another steel site.