It is no secret that websites are the backbone of every business. If you want your business to flourish in this COVID-19 era, you’ve got to have a well-designed and attractive website. Due to social distancing and the lockdown, more and more inherent customers are searching for products and services online via the company’s website and portals.
A well-made website or a web page can help you establish your business because faultless design creates a great impression on your potential customers induces them to take the desired action-wise versa due to a bad website design. Common web design or website development mistakes can quickly derail your business prospects even if you put in your best efforts. Websites are like a second home for a business. A website works as your online image and is judged harshly by your users. This is the reason that making a great design for your website is very important. And while you hear a lot about what to do when designing your website. But do you know what not to do?
As we are talking about bad website designs, we should have a look at what features make a website a bad one:
- Not following trends
- Be unresponsive
- Confuse mobile-friendliness
- Ignored usability
- Ditched accessibility
- Not optimized for SEO
- Neglected security
And now, to give you an idea, we have outlined 40 bad website design examples that hurt many businesses. Avoid them while designing your website, and you should have more success in converting leads into your loyal customers.
Here is a list of 40 bad website designs that will make you pull your hair:
This website has illogical and irrelevant reading areas which makes the readability and accessibility ratio quite low. Also, the UI is poorly designed, making it a bad website design in the eyes of the crawlers as well as visitors. It is also not very responsive, which increases the surfing time of the users without gaining any extra information to their requirements. And waiting is the most irritating factor when it comes to user experience.
2. The Glove Club:
This website looks okay but when it comes to web design, cinematographic elements are a costly affair. Unfortunately, the abundance of high-quality graphics slows down the loading, and users have to wait to see the content of the page. Slow download speed is a reason why users often refuse from browsing further. So it turns out that the use of expressive cinematographic elements doesn’t really help, another example of bad website design.
3. Adjust:
This website may have a modern design, excellent user experience, and well-thought-out usability, but the smallest bugs will ruin everything. Adjust is a case in point. The website is great and it looks good. However, what does make it a bad website design is a huge panel that informs about the cookies. It does not go away. It sticks all the time, destroying the entire impression and experience of the user. It is like a sore thumb that keeps hanging on your nerves and distracts attention from the first goal of this website.
4. Hagia Sophia:
The website is normal in looks but the problem is a pop-up. The huge pop-up on the very first page hides the primary information on the website. The website is designed for tourists and can be surfed in multiple languages, but the website is not well structured, which makes it difficult for users to navigate. This consumes a lot of time of the users as well as the crawlers, which in turn increases your crawling budget giving an extra load on your pockets.
5. Patimex:
Take a look at the website of the Polish household fuel manufacturer. The design and usability are quitedisturbing. So a little devil grilling a sausage is to the point here. A navigation menu at the top and another one under a strange picture, three links of different colors, and even an animated logo doesn’t really save this website. Overall, this UI is poorly designed which will definitely irritate a user because of the above bugs, another example of bad website design.
6. IBI:
IBI’s official website is very close to being called a bad website. However, some things keep it away from being the best. First and foremost, it is a video in the header. Although it instantly grabs attention due to its glitch effect, however, this effect ruins everything. It does not bear any information. It is just a fancy distraction. Secondly, there is no information hierarchy. To push users down the marketing funnel, you need to lead them. However, here users are left to themselves. There is no information onwhere to look next and where to go next?
7. MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:
This bad website is brightly colorful and informational, which makes it look shiny to the eyes of the users. The live update animation on the website hampers the usability and user experience of the visitors, making them divert to other platforms for the same information. If this is optimized in a good manner, the website is quite informative and can work wonders for website visitors.
8. Arvanitakis:
This bad website was already redesigned. Yet again, this didn’t improve its looks and usability. It has no information about the services or company and nothing about the advantages and characteristics of its products. Only its creators can probably understand what is the point of showing a menu with a stock photo, highlighting popular tags, and creating an additional catalog without a proper footer and header. We can move forward without the looks but usability here makes the difference.
Although this website is not from 2013, as the above-stated Tavern. It feels out of date and a bit lame. Even bright illustrations and animation do not make it better. Firstly, the header is too cartoonish and very much outdated. Even though it features a somewhat meaningful animation, it is still not convincing. Secondly, the web site’s theme and atmosphere do not align with the company’s services and brand image. It looks like this bad website is for children, not for people who need a loan. Else, there are issues with the mobile version, accessibility, usability, and performance as well.
10. Grace Fellowship:
Grace fellowship is a small one-page website based on the mission of helping the community in their motivational genes. The bad website has reduced content compared to other websites but has too much white space, which gives it a scattered and unprofessional look. The typography of the website is very poor as compared to the overall construction of the website. The lack of information on the page increases the bounce-back rate and hence, users will look for other options.
11. Toronto Cupcake:
What do you expect to see on a webpage that sells cupcakes? Usually, such websites are full of nice images, shining colors, and impressive design elements that lure users into buying some extra sweets. However, the owners of this bad website have decided to neglect the opportunity to attract new customers through their web resources. The main page of Toronto Cupcake is too pale and simple. It doesn’t contain any useful information about the company or the brand. The text in the footer is too small to read and in addition to that, there is a huge blank space at the bottom of the page. Users will definitely be irritated with the navigation of the website and the poor quality of images. If Toronto Cupcake wants to make its website really effective, it must definitely improve its design and usability.
12. Tavern:
One of the main reasons why online properties become bad websites is that they stay in the past, like this official webpage of a Colorado-based restaurant that is still living in 2013. The design is quiteoutdated. Even though it has some attractive features like the bold, charismatic typeface and some brutal textures, stillit produces an unfriendly impression. It does not build trust and credibility, which is a deal-breaker. Another major flaw is that the website is not responsive nor mobile-friendly. It may seem that this fixed boxy layout looks good on cellphonesbut it is not. The business loses a considerable share of the market just because of the above reasons.
The user interface of the website is smooth and exciting. Online users will be impressed by its looks. The only reason which brings this bad website here in the list is the long list of bread crumbs on the top of the page. It is good to provide useful information, but it is also advisable to cut it short into different sections, which will make it easy for the users to navigate. It has a call to action button at every stage, which makes it look like a little promoting kind of website instead of a simple e-commerce one.
14. Dom Perignon:
This iconic brand of luxury champagne also hasa lot of flaws. To be more precise, not the product itself but the website that promotes the vintage beverages Dom Perignon. This web resource has a stylish and elegant design, yet the main page only tells us about the face and creative director of the company, Lenny Kravitz. To check the information about vintage wines, users have to indicate their age and location. A key mistake is a form that provides access to a part of bad website content. The general information about the champagne is available without the age confirmation, Yet it is very unlikely that after learning about the brand, users will return to the main page to fill the mandatory form that gives access to products. This immensely complicates the user path.
15. Lingscars:
After landing on such a bad website, it is hard to understand whether its design was chosen intentionally or this is nothing but a fiasco. The colors, textures, animations, and fonts are overly discordant. Users are overwhelmed with numerous banners, videos, and links both in the sidebar and on the page itself. There is absolutely no logic behind the location of common elements like the icons of social media are in the middle of the main page, there is a lot of empty space between the content and footer, whereas the header is overloaded with graphic and textual information.
Content-loaded websites are complicated to manage. You need to strike a balance between being informative and being organized. As a common mistake, people overlook this. Consider Adam and Everywhere DDB and their bad website with visual overload. Although the web design is better, it still overwhelms. There is a whole bunch of vibrant images where each one commands attention, causing a constant shift in focus. Cells are too small that the front page looks dense and heavy. Also, not all of them are working. The masonry layout can be a life-saver, but it still requires cutting and polishing.
17. Travelocity:
It is a very great website, providing travel tips and packages to the customers who plan to travel around the world in the cheapest possible ways. The motive behind the website is good but is destroyed by the construction, looks, and layout of the website. The call to action menu occupies the entire front page space of this bad website, hiding the other relevant information. The icons used are too big and occupy most of the area for irrelevant details. This needs to be corrected in order to make a satisfying website.
18. The World’s Worst Website:
The World’s Worst Website – that’s the name of a pet project of designers who decided to point out the main design mistakes to website owners and creators around the world. Obviously, everything is exaggerated here, and you won’t come across similar websites. This bad web page collects all possible and impossible mistakes in one place which is really helpful. The combination of conflicting colors, incompatible fonts, unformatted and unstructured content, underlined links – this isn’t the full list of things that make this website the worst in the world. Not to mention a navigation menu in the middle of the page and primitive animations of different sizes blinking all over the page! This is the best example of features not to put into your website.
19. The Congress Movie:
The congress movie made our list of poorly designed websites due to a lot of errors. Even though WordPress proudly powers it, it still lacks so much to be called a good website. First and foremost, the website was created to get high ranks in search engines since we can see some unhidden SEO text right in the header. Secondly, the design is lame. There is no character, style, or theme. Third, there is not enough content. Finally, it does not have proper navigation or search. In nutshell, the website was created not for people but for search engines. Google considers such projects as bad websites, so do we.
20. My US:
This bad website has major white spacing issues which bring it to this very list of bad websites. It is full of information but is not segregated well, which makes it look all cluttered and nasty. The typography used on the website varies in size and shapes at every level, makings it confusing for the crawlers while indexing the important content. It is advisable to use heading tags at every stage to help the bots to crawl and index your website for ranking purposes.
21. The Big Ugly Website:
Designers deliberately created the Big Ugly Website to show all the horrors of obsolete design and poor usability. This is a brilliant example for those who believe that the rest of web resources aren’t ugly and inconvenient enough to be included in this overview. You will never find the navigation here whereas large and useful animations, unappealing fonts, underlined text, and banners are everywhere. To cut a long story short, this website is just a mess.
22. GAO:
This is another government website in our collection. This time we are going to focus on the official website of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It positions itself as a news portal. While the website works for desktop users, when it comes to mobile and tablet viewers, it fails since the team has forgotten to make it mobile-friendly. More often, it is not even responsive since the two-column structure stays the same regardless of the screen size. As a result, it is a real nightmare to browse this bad website on your cellphone. As for accessibility, there are missing alternative texts, empty links, low contrast, and even suspicious links.
Apptivation is one of the web companies that are developing applications for clients. The competition in this industry is tough therefore, you can’t afford to look old. However, this is not the case of Apptivation since it seems that the team does not follow the trends at all. The design is absolutely outdated. However, it is utterly unacceptable to use device mockups that are dated back to 2014 to promote your services. The first impression is ruined, so does the overall one. Ignoring modern trends can turn any online portfolio into a bad website.
24. Gates And Fences:
Gates and Fences were built by an over-enthusiastic person who wanted to infuse all the information of the world under one roof. It is a website that provides gate building and fence building services for homes and offices. It does not have a specified menu or page bread crumbs to help the users navigate on the website easily.The main reason for it being here on the bad websites list is the excessive content on the website. The contact details are displayed right on the top, which hides the name of the website.
25. Hipmunk:
Hipmunk is a short one-page website. It is a luxury travel and logistics company, providing deals for the best hotel, flights, and cars during travel sessions. The layout is not at par with the others in the market as it showcases the call to action form, as soon as the user enters the website, leaving no space for discovery and understanding the company and its services in a real sense. Also, it has a testimonial section in the middle of the website, which again makes it look like the website is just focusing on conversion and not on providing relevant information to the users.
26. Studiomix:
StudioMix is a medium-sized gym workout website with a forte in San Francisco. What brings it here in the list of bad websites is the cumbersome call to action as well as the tangled footer of the website. The design changes the entire purpose of the website as instead of showcasing it as a health knowledge-driven platform; it is entirely portrayed as an advertisement platform. Also, alter to Alt Tags, the content is displayed in the written form under the page bread crumbs, which makes it look awkward as well as takes away space for important information.
27. Stack Exchange:
Stack Exchange has an awful start. It states the Question and Answers of the community on the top of the homepage, which should actually be inside the expertise or specialty section under the page bread crumbs or menu. As soon as we scroll down, we see an entirely separate part of FAQS that long till the end of the website. This bad website has a slow loading speed compared to other websites, which makes the website bounce back rate very high.
28. Sport LED Panels:
The official website of the company that sells sport LED panels looks fairly updated. However, still, it can’t be called an ideal website for some real reasons. Firstly, there is too much interactivity. Every element is rotating, moving, and flipping. There are even sounds and, the parallax is overly done. The interface reminds a flash website technology that was popular 10 years ago. Secondly, the links do not work at once. Sometimes you need to click twice or thrice to activate them. Thirdly, there are irregularities in the layout. Even though the website looks and works well on small screens, some flaws make it a bad website.
29. MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies Special Collection:
Websites of universities and governments are notoriously famous for being outdated or using design solutions that nobody uses. The official website of the MIT center is a representative example bad websites. Although some eccentric people may find it awesome due to offbeat solutions, still, when it comes to the regular crowd with a short attention span and desire to locate information as quickly as possible, it can become a real challenge. The main flaw of this bad website lies in overdoing parallax. The latter is a powerful tool in terms of creating an engaging user experience. However, with great power comes great responsibility. And when you overdo it, you may end up with a bad website and poor user experience.
30. Industrial Painter:
Even though Joomla-inspired interfaces were popular a decade ago, today, they are mauvais ton. The real deal is, this outdated structure makes it challenging to work with websites not only on huge desktops but also on small screens such as cellphones and tablets. The layout stays the same all the time. The font size is not adjusted to small screens, and the contrast ratio is minimal. Although you can locate information, still this is not the quality you expect from a modern website.
Although this bad website feels like a huge improvement to the previous one, the truth is, it’s not. It is the same terrible website as featured before. Images hurt the eyes. Not only do they overwhelm right off the bat, but they also destroy readability making navigation hard. Coloring is too extreme. As for contrast, the majority of crucial elements like navigation and links lack it. To make matters worse, running animation makes it hard to concentrate on the content.
32. PNWX:
PNWX is an official website with a current catalog of Pacific Northwest X-Ray Inc. It is a real website, and it is pretty much alive. Even though it is dated back to 1997, that is a pretty solid age, but it does not summon any respect. The deal is if you have a bad website, no one can save your reputation, even you have the best developers in the World. Even though the homepage features a search input, categories, navigation, and some useful links, it still scares away users rather than luring them in. The only way out is to make a total makeover and improve user experience, SEO, and performance.
33. Gulla’s Arrestling:
With the world going crazy over police brutalities in certain countries, this bad website attracts in brutality in website design. It looks and feels far from professional, and the content is simply below standard. It is evident that except for the designer, everyone knows the importance of a “Title” tag in SEO. The worst issue is that the registration form for the upcoming conference is a PDF. So you cannot edit it online. You need to download it and mail it. And the website does not have an integrated payment pathway, which means you need to make the credit card payments over a call or using your phone.
34. University of Advancing Technology:
The moment you hear Advancing and Technology together, you expect a website that will inspire awe. Well, far from awe, this inspired fear thinking about the graduates that will be produced from the University. If you are accessing it from IE then it’s easy to question your internet connection speed. But in reality, it is pretty gruesome. You can hardly find any information you are looking for in this bad website and do not be surprised if the home page takes about 5 seconds to start loading.
35. Paradise with A View:
The photos on their home page are of various sizes, and the fonts become progressively smaller as you scroll down the page. The rainbow hues in each level of the content do not help much either. Flashing texts in strange fonts, non-responsive templates and squat navigation options placed in the middle of the home page will definitely make you rethink what Paradise is meant to look like. When you are about to book a vacation your body and mind are crying for some much-needed peace. But a single visit to the bad website is enough to rob you of your remaining bit of calmness.
36. Ugly Tub:
Well, at least the name of this website sums our views correctly about their layout. It’s provokingly random and annoying distribution of information will make you believe that a kindergarten kid can actually design a bad website like this. So irregular and amateur development can lead to failures.
37. Bolen Report:
There is a way here for you to learn how old newspapers were edited. Or better yet, what layout designs the news world beginners would have had rejected. Going black and white is also an art, even though black and white are not considered as colors. It is the old Bolen Report website built on Microsoft FrontPage. As it turns out some people really don’t learn from their old mistakes.
38. Rudgwick Steam Show:
This one can go down the course material of top graphics and web building institutes as a case study on what seriously should not be done. It’s an acute case of a language barrier, with the least amount of heed paid to all that meets the eye. Just like we have no idea what we are doing on their bad website, they have no idea what they are doing on the web either.
39. Cloud9 Walkers:
The worst example of creativity block can be seen right on this bad website. Adding a background image with a cloudy sky for a website called cloud 9 is simply brilliant. If at all adding one had been extremely important, as it appears, a smarter, pleasanter image would have changed the game for the better. Or not, like they say, a lot goes into building a structure and almost nothing into breaking one. And this one’s been long broken.
40. Great Dreams:
This one comes bearing as awful a design as one can imagine, only worse. It’s possible they experimented with ideas while developing the website and then left all those experiments- like a single image of a painting, then a small collage of pictures and paintings, followed by a big collage of ghastly images, ending in a series of solo images- when they got bored and dumped the idea on the internet for people to waste their time on after they couldn’t take back theirs.
In nutshell, after going through all the above mistakes, let us take a look at what features a good website should have:
- Well Designed and Functional
- Your site reflects your company, your products, your services, and ultimately your brand
- Easy to Use
- Optimized for Mobile
- Fresh, Original, Quality Content
- Readily accessible contact information and location
- Clear calls to action
- Optimized for SEO and the Social Web.
