Examples of Poorly Designed Websites

Poorly designed websites are instructive because they illustrate what NOT to do. They are also lots of fun to look at!

• A.R.H.A.T. Publications: From a barely legible logo to an overpowering background color, this site is a real challenge to even read.
• Online Learning & Teaching Technology from Bishop's University's Information Technology Services: What happens when you don't check your font sizes? Some of it may be too small to read.
• Jill Kirby's Astrology and BodyTalk: When creativity and navigational fundamentals collide.
• Steven Segal: An incredible amount of effort and extensive use of Flash results in a frustrating user experience due to poor navigation and brown text on a brown background.
• Hotbot search: Odd colors and poorly aligned elements make for a childish appearance.
• West Texas A & M University Instructional Technology Master's Program: Use of frames, poor font choice and size, odd background result in a less-than enticing choice for those wanting to study Instructional Technology from them.
• Northern Arizona Wind & Sun: multiple font sizes and colors, multiple sub sections, and poor navigation result in a challenging experience for the visitor.
• Sam's Publishing: They publish great books, but their color choice on their website doesn't reflect it.
• Science of Being: Should be called "Science of Going Blind".
• Creepy Crawlies: Perhaps the most unreadable site on the Internet.
• Sprite Computers: An example of when bullet points for quick scanning should be used.
• UFC membership form: Do you really want to fill all of this out?
• Takara Toys: Do you find this website distracting?
• The Register: Great news, poor readability.
• Cleveland State University: An example of too much navigation!
• Rense.com: example of website with many different font colours and long pages. And yet this website gets over 7 million visitors a month!
• Atic computer store: example of slow-loading website that is difficult to navigate. Site changes to frames after front page, navigation switches from one side to the other. Computer cases page illustrates optimized and non-optimized images.
• AMD board: can you read this website easily?
• Programs of Excellence at University of Wyoming: this is what can happen if you choose the wrong colors for your text, links, and background. Note the lack of title for the page at the top left of the browser.
• Voided Warranty: cool graphics but can you find what you want?
• Tom's Hardware Guide: this website is very popular. What do you think of the moving graphics and amount of information on the page?
•  Make sure your speakers aren't up too loud for this one....
• This is what happens when you don't optimize the thumbnails of your site: Mensa's party pictures.
• Joke bad website.

Well designed websites

HTML: Basic tutorial