Top 10 Worst Websites You’ll Wish You Hadn’t Seen

by Patrick Altoft on October 31, 2007

Do you ever open up a really badly designed website and wish you hadn’t? I’ve had the misfortune to visit a few shocking sites recently and here is a list of the very worst. If you are a designer feel free to send them an email offering your services.

If your website is on this list please don’t be offended, although you may wish to consider a redesign.

Top of our list and probably the worst of the bunch is this UK insurance company. Not content with using yellow and pale green on the same page they have made the page refresh every single second just so you don’t miss it. Also check out the quality pages such as this one with more html errors (check the title tag) than you can count. Extra points granted due to the waste of a good domain name.

dinghyinsurance.com

Its not really clear what (or who) Franz is but you won’t miss that “Home” button. The title is nice and descriptive as well.

frnz.de

MSY is an Australian technology company boasting “more than 10 years in the computer industry”. Unfortunately their definition of “computer industry” clearly doesn’t encompass web design as pages such as this one selling Flash memory and other assorted products demonstrates.

msy.com.au

Seriously this is painful to watch. Would you hire VF Designer?

vfdesigner

This online ministry website seems to think that making people blind will help spread the faith. They even helpfully provide a series of well designed banners for you to use when you link to them.

dokimos.org

This image heavy Norwegian gadget site has more pictures than flickr and takes an age to load thanks to the html image resizing. It didn’t seem to render properly in any of my browsers.

arngren.net

Another site wasting a great domain name is 00.com which utilises the least user friendly Flash navigation system we have had the pleasure to use.

00.com

Web Wizz have been given the dubious honour of having designed two sites on the list. Lets hope www.posture.co.uk is suitably pleased with the design work. Helpfully Web Wizz will register a domain name for just £89.99 initially, plus £2 per month.

webwizz.net
posture.co.uk

Ling’s Cars was featured recently on the BBC’s Dragons Den program and really tries hard to provide a personal touch to her car leasing website. Unfortunately this means ignoring a few of the user friendly features on more conventional sites. Just try navigating round a few pages and you will see that the mass of information at the top isn’t just on the homepage, its on all the pages.

Helpfully Ling has created a nice guide on how you should be building your site:

Most business make mistake of paying a company to build page, without learning. Learn! Modify, change. Don’t pay the idiots to do this, do it yourself. Treat webpage like business office or shop. If you want to move a desk in office you move it. Put calendar on wall, you put. Do the same on website. Do every day. So simple. All your customers can see this. They get “feeling” from it.

lingscars.com

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.

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Caroline Middlebrook 31 Oct 2007 at 1:22 pm

Aww now that just makes me feel so much better about my own sites! Though I owe it all to those talented Wordpress theme designers.

Dave 31 Oct 2007 at 2:10 pm

You forgot Aaron Wall’s first site http://www.newnavy.us.Smile

Roy 31 Oct 2007 at 2:54 pm

the worst

Vincent Chow 31 Oct 2007 at 3:56 pm

Why people are still paying to host such websites? One of the mentioned site is offering site design and have whole load of explanation about websites, it has hint there the website was there at around 1998. Gosh..

sirjorge 31 Oct 2007 at 4:27 pm

this is a great post, and the best list i’ve ever heard.

B10G 31 Oct 2007 at 5:41 pm

Great list, I’ve been looking round trying to find a site which would beat these 10 but im not sure it’s possible!

Chris 31 Oct 2007 at 7:04 pm

£89.99 to register a domain name AND £2 a month?

Don’t use them, I can do all that for a one-off charge of £100 ;-)

It annoys me to think that they may actually con someone into paying that….

David Bradley 31 Oct 2007 at 7:09 pm

Ling’s is a p*sstake, shurely?

db

Paradoxical Entity 31 Oct 2007 at 7:27 pm

That image heavy Norwegian one isn’t bad. I guess the loading could prove an irritation, but I wouldn’t call it ugly.

Wiep 31 Oct 2007 at 8:03 pm

Wow, flashback!
How about this banner:
http://www.aanmelden.com/images/banners/aan468a.gif

(submit your website to 70,000 search engines)

Jordan Levy 31 Oct 2007 at 8:58 pm

I’m going to have nightmares about these websites tonight.

Nate 31 Oct 2007 at 9:01 pm

Some good finds. Here is another good one. plywoodstormclip.com

Adam Taylor 31 Oct 2007 at 10:34 pm

Are you serious? That Norwegian site is dog..

Steven Snell 31 Oct 2007 at 11:30 pm

Thanks for not including me on your list.

Danny Lister 01 Nov 2007 at 12:13 am

Loving your post. I’m too afraid to look at the mentioned websites. Danny.

Dale Hay 01 Nov 2007 at 4:46 am

Ewww. They are hideous! That jesus one is hell to the eyes, why use a horizontal scrolling background image of rainbow colours. Yuk.

Andrew L. 01 Nov 2007 at 10:34 am

Wow. Just… wow.

I especially like the one offering to design your page for you.

It makes my brain hurt just to think about it.

Best one was the first. Look at the source; that’s why MS Word should never be used for design…

AucklandSeo 01 Nov 2007 at 10:48 am

I don’t actually understand that, is it really so hard to redesign site? Smile

emil 01 Nov 2007 at 11:25 am

i love them !

James Omdahl 01 Nov 2007 at 6:38 pm

WOW! I’ve always wanted to write a post like this but I’ve never seen sites THIS bad. Amazing job!

James S 01 Nov 2007 at 6:49 pm

I suppose they work well as some weird form of linkbait. I cant see how anyone would get a car off Ling even if its cheap would you ever trust anything from a website like that!

Exaakax 01 Nov 2007 at 6:51 pm

This page is gold!
My company had a site like those before I got hired and insisted on changing it.

Thanks God I insisted, or the whole Diggsphere could have been digging my company’s lameness.

Recone Helmut 02 Nov 2007 at 7:28 am

I worked for this company! They sucked!

http://www.computer-physicians.com/

markowe 02 Nov 2007 at 11:21 am

It is hard to grasp, but there are people out there with NO concept of design or aesthetics. Couple that with the attitude, “Why should we pay someone a fortune to design our site? It’s easy, John in IT can do that”, and some bright spark, John, who knows how to use 5 basic HTML tags and there is your result!

Jordan 02 Nov 2007 at 7:04 pm

These are really awful, and I think the Jesus and VF Designer sites are vying for worst of the worst. Ling is kinda cute, though.

eurekan 02 Nov 2007 at 11:13 pm

ok-you guys gotta see this one:

note: these guys SELL COMPUTERS!

http://cbm-eureka.com/

Scott 03 Nov 2007 at 5:08 am

It would really take some effort to beat this list, nice job.

Pjay 03 Nov 2007 at 6:02 am

I, too, tried the http://www.arngren.net site in multiple browsers and I can only say, “I think they meant it to look that way.” Firefox, Opera, and Safari all rendered it the same way for me, and IE slightly differently. Neither looked good.

I disagree about the spinning rainbow Jesus site, though. It’s definately the worst. I think I had a seizure just looking at it.

I am a bit embarrased to admit that I could have designed the blue-green and yellow insurance site, though. My taste is that bad. It’s why I don’t do web design, no matter how much someone asks. I’m addicted to the blink tag.

markowe 03 Nov 2007 at 9:08 am

That Franz one – laugh all you like, but he apparently has over half a million visits, and a Pagerank of 4..! That’s more than I have, that’s for sure! Hmmm, how does it go again..? , {font-color: garish;}…

(P.S. Weird, your blog has me as having posted a blank comment…)

Minterest 04 Nov 2007 at 3:37 am

Good find…. but most of them have a good PR…

Jake 04 Nov 2007 at 1:17 pm

There are some great tips for making pages almost as great as these at:
link

Caribwebdev 04 Nov 2007 at 4:00 pm

whew!…mine didn’t make it ^_^

Angela 04 Nov 2007 at 4:11 pm

If only I could show you the website my boss put up for our paper instead of paying me to do it. He takes the “bite off his nose to spite his face” to a new level.

shy guy 05 Nov 2007 at 11:53 am

Hey my blog not include?? It is quite surprised..

Drew Bennett 06 Nov 2007 at 8:04 pm

LOL. Man, this crap is the biggest joke i’ve ever seen.

John Candy 07 Nov 2007 at 2:15 am

The worst website I’ve ever seen is http://www.populationpaste.com

Carly 08 Nov 2007 at 12:07 pm

Some of the sites on there are offensive to me! Especially Web Wizz. I hope that is a joke, I really do.

Jonk : Bargains 08 Nov 2007 at 7:06 pm

Haha awesome post.

Re: MSY, you wouldn’t believe how popular they are. Often when you go to the stores, the line stretches right out the door.

The stock is just a mess everywhere so when you get to the front of the line you just tell the staff what you want. Crappy design but cheap prices = loyal customers.

Montoya 08 Nov 2007 at 10:30 pm

That Ling has been spraying Whitespace Remover all over her site.

Quotes 08 Nov 2007 at 11:28 pm

I’m just glad that the websites I did back in the 20th century were on free hosts and have vanished by now (I think). I’m sure they were similar. I’m thinking that somebody just left these up since then and forgot about them.

Ling Valentine 09 Nov 2007 at 8:16 am

Hey, everyone, it’s fantastic to be on this list. I will be promoting my position soon on my site. Just to let you know that my website will move well over £25 million UKP of new cars at retail prices in 2008 (as I write this Nov 9th, I’m up to £23 million). That’s ALL from my website, I have no physical sales point. Goes to show, not everyone likes clean, cool design Smile Websites should give a warm feeling of individuality, I think. You can tell there are real people behind these sites, not just some corporate body paying £25k to a web-design company for the usual corporate rubbish.

See you online Smile LOADS of visitors to my site from here, btw.

Glad to see there are so many web-experts out there (you are funny onions Smile) – if anyone can beat my web sales (total income 2008 £250,000UKP – that’s over $1/2 million USD,) let me know and I’ll listen to your expertise. Hehehehe.

I’m based in Gateshead, UK.

Ling
LINGsCARS

pz 09 Nov 2007 at 5:14 pm
Matthew 11 Nov 2007 at 5:47 pm

You forgot goatse

ben 12 Nov 2007 at 1:38 am

Honestly there is way too much stuff on ling cars. It hurts my eyes and doesn’t look at all professional. The fact that she has made so many sales is mind blowing to me. All I can say is congrats!

Ling Valentine 12 Nov 2007 at 8:25 pm

Ben, I know this is not the place to get into a discussion (maybe it is), but I will explain my reasoning, just so you don’t think I’m completely bonkers.

I work in an environment (new cars, UK) where the franchised dealer rules. They have posh brick and mortar premises but generally poor (no emotion) websites. Plus there are lots of companies doing what I do, new car brokering – of various flavours. They tend to have poor, non-dynamic or wrist-slashingly boring websites. ABC Leasing, that sort of name. All these websites built to a price and rarely updated, and with cars as content.

I am a Chinese bird moving new cars in the UK. Do I stand a chance? No. So… I decided to make my uniqueness my USP. Me. Now, I need traffic, for that I need lots of content. Natural Google searches account for more than 60% of all site traffic. I do not buy adwords. I go off on tangents and get publicity instead, like with my nuclear missile truck (really). When people arrive on my site, I need them to stick around, as I need to infect them with enthusiasm and emotion. Or else they will buy somewhere else, somewhere more professional. So… I make the site really rewarding. I don’t want to list the stuff on there, but for example I post 10 free lunches a day (dry noodles), plus I have had over 130,000 views of my viral, funny youTube vids. I have to be different, so I am. Some people stay for hours. Live chat. Webcams. Accurate info, loads of entertainment, much mockery. “I cannot do miracles, I am Chinese not Catholic”.

I cannot earn money being “professional” in the trad way, so I just provide the best service and publish over 700 customer letters. Fun sells, sex sells, emotion sells. These are all things cars have, so I use them. Professionalism rarely sells (maybe doctors and lawyers excepted). I don’t analyse my results as well as I could, I just count the UKP’s.

I do have the most environmental info, all the NCAP crash tests, all the car cc’s, worthy stuff like that.

The UK motor trade, in general, hate me for doing it like this. Mazda blacklist me, BMW complain I distress their “brand”, a finance company banned me for saying their service was “poor”. However, they can’t ignore me. I want to be the car customer’s champion.

Hope this helps, if not, take a big aspirin Smile. Sorry about the migraine my site can induce.

Kristoffer 15 Nov 2007 at 9:03 pm

The only acceptable use of the blink-tag is:
Schrodinger’s cat is not dead.

Guy Fuller 19 Nov 2007 at 4:20 am

I have to agree with Ling. What’s up front is what counts in the internet web business game. Lets face it, you only have approximately 30 seconds to convince a possible customer to your site that they need to stick around and look at what you have to offer. The best way to do that is to stick the product right in there face along with the price and more than likely they will buy it or leave it. Unfortunately with my site Best Jewelry Boutique I couldn’t get to a “one click sell” which is what you really want to achieve on any e commerce web site.

whit 21 Nov 2007 at 5:04 pm

i think i’m going to be sick… o_0

Christopher 04 Jan 2008 at 1:09 pm

What I noticed about Ling’s site, is it’s colourful, not the boring run of the mill, like the corporates sometimes have.

Thing is, corporates try to be ‘the professional’ – the ego gets the better of them and so they must display their expertise. The mind set is that a bunch of exams means they are better than the rest out there, well, Ling has 2 degrees, yet her site speaks more and does more for her than her qualifications ever could.

My argument is I couldn’t care less what someone’s exam results are. But can they do the job better…. It’s rare that a website ‘protects’ people, and that’s what people need.

PS — I have no connection with LingsCars.com

patrick 13 Jan 2008 at 4:25 am

Ling site is fowl is suck big time considering im a ict student training to be a web designer i can see how god awful that site is. I contains far to much information and half of it is completely of subject they go on to the website for insurance not stupid of key information quote being “i eat dragon for breakfast” that has nothing to do with car insurance her site is horrendous it breaks every rule i learned about making website it the worst way possible so here what i think of that site and you can quote me on this. I would rather chew glass than go on that site again

Chetan 15 Jan 2008 at 10:27 pm

ha ha..
00.com a great domain name with such a cheap design.

Atleast now they have changed it!

Rick Blears 16 Jan 2008 at 1:19 am

As it happens, I used to lecture on Graphic Design on a degree course. It’s a highly subjective business. There are no hard and fast rules. Uncluttered swiss railway signage is not necessarily ‘better’ than the front page of ‘The Sun’. It’s a question of taste, appropriateness for function and what works.

Lingscars.com is a brilliantly successful website around which Ling is building an extremely valuable business. It is highly distinctive, memorable and effective. It is beating the pants of its sparser, more restrained (and more boring) competitors’ sites every day. Her level of virtually viral site traffic is truly phenomenal. She is neither stupid nor ill-informed. The site became chaotic due to market forces and commercial evolution, like ‘The Sun’.

The deliberate cluttered ‘look’ is it’s unique point of difference.

Arty, spacious, stereotypically precious typography has got nothing to bring to the party!

lisa 09 Feb 2008 at 7:04 am

Even without a Wordpress/Blogger theme I can design a better looking site than these!

I can do it in Frontpage better than these!

claire stokoe 15 Feb 2008 at 12:53 am

The jesus one, shut down my mozilla. Otherwise it was very funny. I think our agency should take some tips, they are soooo damn colourful.

Thanks for sharing :)

Vulpine Mobile 06 Mar 2008 at 2:08 am

Even using both sides of my brain I couldn’t process all the information on Lings site.
Tables and tables and tables and also some tables and not a summary, caption, colgroup or table header in sight.
I’d like to watch the reaction of a blind person listening to Lings site being read.
Guess blind people don’t drive cars then…
See, in everything there are little blessings. ;-)

alexander batista 08 Mar 2008 at 4:04 am

I hope you didn’t just stumble upon these sites hay what you gonnna do if they make money great for them

Shaun 08 Mar 2008 at 4:29 pm

I just through up a little in my mouth. ;-)

Kelvin Lai 09 Mar 2008 at 12:30 am

OH man I wish I can have a site with that kind of STYLE. SEO it and promote my product successfully with this crappy funky look. lol

ajfiel 09 Mar 2008 at 9:47 am

Amazing…now i’ll sleep better.

tyna 10 Mar 2008 at 4:05 pm

Those sites should get a web designer,am glad i didn’t stumble on any of them.First impression matters alot especially in online adverts.Thanks for showing us these sites.

Web Design Lincolnshire 02 Apr 2008 at 9:46 am

These are the people that usually get more work than the pros. This is the case in my area, it is obvious these sites are poorly designed.

People will pay for a cheap website likes those above shown, just to save money. But later on these are the same people that are complaining that may site is not getting any visitors or traffic.

kianoosh 26 Apr 2008 at 5:25 pm

oh my god!these sites are the worst websites i’ve ever seen they’re just waste of space….

Andrea Smith 08 May 2008 at 2:25 pm

this is a bad website that you people heve and you guy need to fix it and make it better then it is areadly

Chinese SEO Expert 21 May 2008 at 12:33 am

These website owners must be very surprised that they suddenly get traffic boost since this blog post talked about it. It is good thing for become worst website. :)

Vince Delmonte Nonsense 29 May 2008 at 10:08 pm

There’s poor old me agonizing about colour schemes and font sizes for my websites and then I get to see some of the most garish, eye-searing,fit-inducing ‘websites’(I use that term loosely) and I suddenly realize that the worst of my sites is like the jewel in the crown in comparison.

Ling seems to be doing very well despite her comic-book of a website. The dinghy insurance one should be insuring hewed-out log canoes – it’s that ancient looking.

Most of the rest are like an explosion in a paint factory.

Darlehen 01 Jun 2008 at 12:22 am

It is nice to see Germany already being presented ;-) I could send in 100 most awful German list and you would be even more shocked by the .BMP artist we have here!

Dave 23 Jun 2008 at 2:40 pm

And for lack of all creativity and thought try this one I saw guys!

http://www.strategycom.co.uk/

Speedteach 19 Jul 2008 at 6:34 am

Wow, I have not seen such websites already long time

Sunshine 23 Jul 2008 at 6:34 pm

Sunglasses on for this one …

http://www.mccormickrecovery.co.uk/index.htm

It will give you a hernia.

Alan 10 Aug 2008 at 2:02 am

Check out this one. http://www.becomewebhistory.com/ Wow! Bad idea. Worse site.

Matrix 11 Aug 2008 at 8:50 pm

This just cracks me up. i havnt stopped laughing yet after i read about Web wizz.

My sides hurt so much from laughing, the best line i have found on their site is this:

“We’ve struggled to get to grips with new technology ourselves”

Talk about how to sell yourself

Matrix 11 Aug 2008 at 8:56 pm

I think frontpage is to blame for all this ;)

James 13 Aug 2008 at 12:36 am

http://WWW.BECOMEWEBHISTORY.com IS ACTUALLY A GOOD IDEA A INTERNET TIME capsule as well as huge cheap marketing for businesses so i think its overall a good idea just site needs a bit better look

Alan 13 Aug 2008 at 9:52 pm

James, don’t review your own site!

Mahesh 05 Sep 2008 at 10:21 am
Ashok 14 Sep 2008 at 8:54 pm

ya really these sites are worst. i don’t like these site.

Ross 17 Sep 2008 at 1:18 pm

That was painful, but great post!

Melanie Prough 19 Sep 2008 at 1:44 pm

Wow… I thought I had seen some bad ones recently, but no comparison at all =P

Jim 22 Sep 2008 at 4:00 am

Don’t forget http://www.hernia.org Just click around if you don’t take my word for it…

David A 25 Sep 2008 at 9:34 pm

Ow the migraine !

You should put a health warning on http://www.frnz.de/

:-) )

Is Free 26 Sep 2008 at 10:50 am

I guess their web master already forgotten all of these website. They rarely update their site.
I think the colour theme do drive people away but the worst thing about these websites have useless contents.
This post brings back lots of traffic to those website I guess.

Muurtegel 29 Sep 2008 at 9:18 am

Omg lol!
I thought my website was bad xD

Chaitanya 03 Oct 2008 at 4:36 pm

Wow Worst websites of the world…..
You know what even worst websites are useful sometimes. Like this list now…
I have to select a bad website and do a Heuristic analysis on it.
This list helped me a lot….LOL

David A 03 Oct 2008 at 5:37 pm

Hi I’ve commented above but after taking a closer look you know I have a sneaking admiration for Ling’s site
You have to admire the sheer amount of effort that has gone into that site and it’s in Ling’s own unique style.

The world is a better place on account of people like Ling and being in the top 10 is a little harsh.

that’s said Lings Cars Website has exactly achieved it’s reason d’etre we didn’t know about Lings Cars we do now and do you know we won’t forget.

Best of Luck Ling
All the Best

Dave

Judy 06 Oct 2008 at 8:30 am

Thanks for providing information and prices of different variety of shopping product. I need this info because i am using online shopping services.
Thanks

webhosting 20 Oct 2008 at 4:02 am

Thanks for sharing it

kevin seo 14 Nov 2008 at 9:09 am

lol, those website owner will thank you for your ad for them

Robert Hopkins 08 Dec 2008 at 6:59 pm

Thois is the Web site for the Birmingham Amateur Football Association and I challenge anyone to contact any of the named officers of the organisation

John 10 Dec 2008 at 2:59 pm

These are pretty bad i have to admit, but i found one that can turn anyones stomach. Have a look at what bad is, http://renegaderebels.com/. Colors don’t match, pictures are stretched, too much content all over the place. This one should be added to your list for sure…

David 10 Dec 2008 at 7:18 pm

I agree John, when I was checking out more of their site, I noticed a lot of spam, misspelled words, but mostly from a person name Skull. I can’t look at the site anymore. I wonder what kind of person made that website. This should be put in the best of the worst.

Kevin 10 Dec 2008 at 11:19 pm

I came across this site when I was looking for patio furniture http://www.paradisesungarden.com. The cheesy gifs and just plain hideous layout, the stuff they are selling is really expensive — which makes it even more laughable.

Alvin 21 Dec 2008 at 7:56 pm

Look a bit deeper at Lings site and you will see some excellent content.

I can guarantee the site will be a major player in the world of car sites.

Alvin

usenet nut 11 Jan 2009 at 10:55 pm

Looks like first year test webpages infact i think school kids have a better command of html than these sites. They should stick to buying from site flippers

Courtney 24 Jan 2009 at 8:08 pm

One of the worst on the web….for men and women. http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com The site states that all users have full control of their posts to edit and delete…. hit that post button and your in BIG trouble if you thought you had some type of control on the forum boards. The webmasters are nasty too. Don’t dare ask to have something removed because then they will make sure it stays and gets Googled too. If you read many of the posts, people are begging and pleading because the site doesn’t work. Really sad and has my vote as the very worst site on the web. Hope it goes away soon.

MMM HMMMM 28 Jan 2009 at 8:39 pm

Hey, everyone, it’s fantastic to be on this list. I will be promoting my position soon on my site. Just to let you know that my website will move well over £25 million UKP of new cars at retail prices in 2008 (as I write this Nov 9th, I’m up to £23 million). That’s ALL from my website, I have no physical sales point. Goes to show, not everyone likes clean, cool design Websites should give a warm feeling of individuality, I think. You can tell there are real people behind these sites, not just some corporate body paying £25k to a web-design company for the usual corporate rubbish.

See you online LOADS of visitors to my site from here, btw.

Glad to see there are so many web-experts out there (you are funny onions ) – if anyone can beat my web sales (total income 2008 £250,000UKP – that’s over $1/2 million USD,) let me know and I’ll listen to your expertise. Hehehehe.

I’m based in Gateshead, UK.

Ling
LINGsCARS

Yeah, sure.. okay. Maybe you could post a picture of your webs stats?

Madman 07 Feb 2009 at 3:06 pm

I’d have to disagree that Ling throwing all the information in the end-user’s face is a good thing. If you’re going to do it, at least give it a little structure.
As an example, I’ll take one of the most popular websites around: a website so popular that there’s probably not a soul that hasn’t heard of it and lives 50 miles from a computer. A site so popular that it has other websites built around it, and a site so popular that the name of the site is used as a verb instead of a noun: Google.

One of the biggest reasons Google is so immensely popular isn’t because of the information it displays, but HOW it displays it. It displays the most relevant information at the top, with sufficient space between lines to make it easy to read: it doesn’t have flash adverts everywhere, preferring text adverts (that only relate to the search terms, meaning you only get advertisements that might interest you to boot), and clearly separates the advertisements from the main text using a very discrete colour change and a consistent structure: adverts at the top and right, search terms in the largest space in the bottom-left. The website gets out of the user’s way in order to deliver the user the information they went to the website to get. The search page is incredibly simple, giving the user what they want and nothing else. Even when they click on iGoogle, the default is a simple blue at the top and bottom, with all the information you want in the white space and clearly visible. Even if you change the theme, the white space remains white space, diverting your eyes from the website itself and to the information you wanted the website to display. The links at the top are deliberately discrete: the user doesn’t physically see them or pay any attention to them unless they’re looking for them, in which case they seem to jump to the user’s attention as they are at the top of the screen.

“Vandelay Design” (Steven Snell, the big red “V” above) has a similar design feature: you barely notice the links at the top as you read the information about the company, until you don’t want information about the company any more but instead want information about hiring the company to design a website for you, or how to contact the company, in which case the links at the top seem to jump out at you. On the main page, information about the company and information about the company’s works are clearly separated, diverting the potential customer’s eyes to exactly what they’re looking for almost instantly. It’s very well designed, with a feeling of warmth to it (due to the darker-then-pure-white colour scheme, the nearly-black-but-still-red background colour and the gentle gradient behind the very simple and easy-to-remember logo). Though it is a warm and welcoming page, again it gets out of the way of the user, giving them only what they’re interested in. I’d like to congratulate Steven for his excellent website design (checking the portfolio here can show that this philosophy carries through the company’s works to the customers), and announce my sheer envy at not being able to do something similar or better :p

djnforce9 12 Feb 2009 at 8:58 pm

I’m surprised http://www.cwol.com wasn’t mentioned. It’s an e-commerce site with everything all blended onto one big ugly (primarily red, yellow, and white) page.

drew 07 Mar 2009 at 2:42 am

Awesome. Love the “accept jesus” one with the rainbow background.

Tim Hawkins 11 Mar 2009 at 3:38 pm

Isn’t Ling a client of yours??? Not sure why then your pointing it out as one of the worst websites you’ve ever seen???

Patrick Altoft 11 Mar 2009 at 8:04 pm
Find me on Twitter

Tim you raise a good point – she wasn’t a client until she read this post and then she emailed and we got talking. :)

More comments from Patrick Altoft
P.Burton 18 Mar 2009 at 4:28 pm

Hah, very funny. Check out: http://www.pinkcad.com for another one

Brian S. 19 Mar 2009 at 2:37 am

I have seen some horrible websites in the past but I have to admit this guy WEB KING takes the cake! I have never in my life seen such a poor excuse for web design. And he calls himself a WEB DESIGNER!! Take a look at HIS site and then check out some of his CLIENT SITES!! You can bill WEB KING for the Pepto-Bismol! UN FREAKING BELIEVABLE!

http://www.webking.com/computer-services/index.html

Jerkin' me beanstalk 19 Mar 2009 at 9:27 am

P. Burton -

Did you notice these “Neon Dork” leggings?

http://www.pinkcad.com/html/leggings_pink.html

Pic 10 Apr 2009 at 3:39 pm

Why people are still paying to host such websites? One of the mentioned site is offering site design and have whole load of explanation about websites, it has hint there the website was there at around 1998. Gosh..

Jason 22 Apr 2009 at 2:26 am

They look like a 3rd grader made them.

fhaye 04 May 2009 at 8:55 am

she sure was mad to be on that list. but if the site got a lot of traffic, then why dont hire a professional web designer? who knows that might also increase more traffic.

Ecommerce Help - Tyrone Shum 09 May 2009 at 11:23 am

Okay, that was, well, somewhat enlightening. Enlightening in a way that as an online marketer, it made me really realize the importance of desogn whenever you are creating a site since this will serve as your clients’ first impression about it. However, putting too much color or pictures to the point that it already looks like a collage makes it a bit unprofessional and a sure way to ward of readers. Sometimes, if we want to get intact with our creative side, we should make sure that we are utterly balanced with everything else.

Joseph Mwanhaqualugai 01 Jun 2009 at 5:54 pm

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
I Had Nightmares About Those Ones!
If Those Websites Were Films They Would Be 18s

Erin 05 Jun 2009 at 8:26 pm

Ling’s is the best website ever! The way she climbs down off of the blue crayon smiley and then just stands there with her hands in her pockets will haunt my dreams. It’s like a tiny grown up Samara Morgan.

Nikola Ovcharski 08 Jun 2009 at 9:52 pm

My eyes… Nooo

halima nd' amina 20 Jun 2009 at 4:15 am

some on please call the ambulous! i think i’m going to pass out !!!!!!!
thank god i’m not on there!!! wwh…

mIKE83 21 Jun 2009 at 12:11 am

Ive made far worse back in my AOL new to PC days. Luckily for me I had a brother whos a master of computers and programming. Not that I am now, im just not as bad as I was.

Paul 07 Jul 2009 at 12:00 pm

Some haven’t heard about not using scrolling text:

http://www.westkilbridevillagehall.com/

Aj 21 Jul 2009 at 9:03 am

this one give it a look

http://www.yousef.com

Paid Survey Sites 28 Jul 2009 at 6:05 pm
Find me on Facebook | Twitter

I don’t understand why people do this. If your website is going to look tacky, cluttered, and unorganized, then what’s the point of even having one.

More comments from Paid Survey Sites
ranyah 03 Aug 2009 at 2:51 am

wtf??? these websites suck. get a life! they’re pain the eyes!

canethrasher 05 Aug 2009 at 2:32 am

The worst I’ve come across, this is one is actually kind of cool in the way it almost celebrates its atrociousness:

http://www.rivercountry.net/august/index.html

Rambo 07 Aug 2009 at 9:53 am

Heres another one for you: http://www.davesworlduk.com/

This guy actually offers website design! CRIMINAL!

jake 21 Aug 2009 at 1:29 am

u focking idiots

dheminsley 21 Aug 2009 at 10:43 pm
Find me on Facebook | Twitter

In reference to rambo’s post if you post anything like that on another messageboard again I will find out who you are and where you are and sue your little backside for defermation of character

More comments from dheminsley
RadioGaGa 01 Sep 2009 at 12:56 am

@DH

obviously your site!

That is SHIT buddy.

Anyone who uses your services is fucking MAD!

You should be in jail!

dheminsley 01 Sep 2009 at 9:39 am
Find me on Facebook | Twitter

Well you would say that wouldnt ya, Jealousy eats you up my friend

More comments from dheminsley
Clayton Y Thornton 15 Sep 2009 at 10:12 pm

And I thought mine was bad……..www.uswebworx.com

Rambo 17 Sep 2009 at 10:35 am

Miss that post Dave — we’ve decided to make it a mission of ours to pass on your excellent work and blog about it!

You should be pleased!

HelenPR 18 Sep 2009 at 9:20 am

Ling you may be a web-designers nightmare but you’re a PR person’s dream! Keep up with the self-promotion and you can’t fail.

Best wishes

Helen

Eko Widodo 21 Sep 2009 at 4:09 pm

Please check this following url http://leleonday.blogspot.com/

Leasebam 23 Sep 2009 at 9:33 pm

I had visited Lings website about 3 times before I got it. At first it was like an awful record that did not make sense, but after a while it grew on me and now I think it is sopt on. I can’t help thinking there are some serious business owners who keep away though.

steve 27 Sep 2009 at 11:45 am

just to add to the list of bad sites, have a look at this website http://www.starydreamer.co.uk

Lol Duck 07 Oct 2009 at 2:36 pm

The Church one is crazy. I cannot believe they allowed that on the web. It’s all lie’s. Wow. That’s really sad. =/

Lol Duck 07 Oct 2009 at 2:39 pm

omg. that one’s terrible. :O

Chelle Cordero 08 Oct 2009 at 12:01 am

Oh my…

jake 08 Oct 2009 at 11:51 pm

suck my dick dheminsley faget

Gromit 14 Oct 2009 at 12:04 pm

DavesWorldUK may have changed, but it is still crap and offers full website design for poor buggers who take his offer up. Still, he has no portfolio examples, so here’s hoping no-one has.

His website is designed in FrontPage, and he offers logo design for £75 when he has clearly downloaded a rotating .gif from some free crappy gif website!

Man this guy is off his head.

John 11 Nov 2009 at 10:15 am

That “Accept Jesus, Forever Forgiven” website is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Too bad the developer didn’t intend for it to be a joke. The funniest thing of all is that that piece of crap has a PR of 5 and has thousands of sites linking to it. If only my website could do that well. Hmm, maybe I should add that scrolling rainbow effect to my site. Hmm…

Christine 15 Nov 2009 at 7:19 pm

you think you’ve seen the worst? check this out:
http://www.themostamazingwebsiteontheinternet.com/

loyalty 28 Nov 2009 at 10:54 pm

you have to see this one!

http://yvettesbridalformal.com/

Johnny B 02 Dec 2009 at 11:26 am

No nav, just everything on 1 page

http://www.aspartamekills.com/

jlawac 09 Dec 2009 at 1:00 pm

I agree completely with myspace as number one, the site is hard enough to navigate without the random spikes of blaring music and flood of high resolution pictures.

Vera from Bucharest 13 Dec 2009 at 10:09 pm

here is a grotesque site of an angelically brilliant band: KEANE:
http://www.keanemusic.com/

what happened with the previous design which was quite nice? I have no clue.
But this new version is a disaster, talking also into account the quality of the band and hence the discrepancy between that loose design and their divine music.

Smeghead 22 Dec 2009 at 5:18 pm
tim franklin 24 Dec 2009 at 6:47 pm

looks like there are a lot of jealous people /salespeople mad at ling

[OvO]wl 18 Jan 2010 at 8:41 pm

Fuck me. I’ll have nightmares now for weeks.

ipixel 19 Jan 2010 at 9:59 am
Find me on Twitter

My alltime favorite http://www.useit.com/
The guy all webdesigners LOVE to hate, but should partly listen to.

More comments from ipixel
Ling Valentine 19 Jan 2010 at 4:03 pm

This thread just refuses to die!!

Two and a half years on from the blog post…

Following advice from Patrick in 08 and last year, I incorporated some tabs and better navigation. I’ve done lots more work, and menus, but increased the “flashing gif rate”, too. Added loads more fun stuff.

My monthly visits have now rocketed to well over 100,000 per month (more than doubled) and the predicted £25 million of cars in 2008 (see early replies) jumped to over £35 million!

I have been selected as the NatWest/BT Business woman of the year in 2009 in the EveryWoman Awards, for IT and Communications. Presented by the Prime Minister’s wife at the Dorchester.

I have won many other awards, notably the Worst Business Website of 2009 by Vincent Flander’s Web Pages That Suck. I am particularly proud of that award. What does he know? Look at HIS website! hahaha!

Web Designer magazine had to do a Humble Pie Eating news item this month when one month after proclaiming me the WORST site, they noticed my NatWest/BT Award and made a massive retraction and apology in the next issue. Hahahaha (again!).

Computer Shopper (Zygote) said: “The leading evangelist of treating website customers with intelligence and collaboration is Ling Valentine”, and Retail Week sandwiched me between Apple (really!), Amazon, eBay and Ikea as one of “50 Retail Websites you have to Visit”. Respect!

I now publish 1,500 customer letters, fully attributed (and now paginated to 56 pages, that’s a whole ream of A4 paper if you print it out).

So, thanks to people who “gettit” and BRING IT ON to those myopic nits who just can’t see why people l-i-k-e my website.

It is certainly not rocket science, it is human interaction (see my LIVE visitor sitemap – unique in the World), but it seems there are too many Rocket Scientists reading this blog. Easy answer: Make stuff colourful and flashing!

Ling
LINGsCARS

straightryder 21 Jan 2010 at 10:27 am

Seriously, i’ve created better things in the bottom of my toilet after eating nachos with extra salsa.

BUT THIS WAS — the best post ever.

ken 21 Jan 2010 at 11:14 am

Here is another giant pile of crap WKC Wales, I think the home page says it all . Its currently number 1 on http://www.britainsworstwebsite.com

tom 27 Jan 2010 at 12:56 pm

ling, stop trying to trick everyone here into thinking you have a good website, its ugly and tacky and appeals to the nations unintelligent

[OvO]wl 27 Jan 2010 at 7:24 pm

Stop acting like a ginger Tom.

Oli 05 Feb 2010 at 3:37 pm

That first one reminds me of a 1980s computer game! Hehe.. I know a worse one though. Check out the site that the company I’ve just started working for was using (www.uk-parts.net) – so bad! I’ve already got a better one online at http://www.uk-parts.eu which will replace it soon….. but still the boss keeps ’steering’ me towards making a poo one again!

Ben Baptist 17 Feb 2010 at 8:14 pm

You need to see http://www.fudgeirc.com/

HORRIBLE

Josh 22 Feb 2010 at 1:07 pm

OMG crowded or what at least u can buy lots of stuff on it so you decide

Canon 7D 02 Mar 2010 at 9:26 pm

Awful :D

Jules 20 Mar 2010 at 5:09 am

Heh heh some of them are even worse than my original website…

Poor Student 21 Mar 2010 at 1:38 pm

Oh nO! where is my eyes?)) i look through this sites and lose my eyes)) help me!!!

LOL xDDD

Dave 'tha' Slave 21 Mar 2010 at 5:46 pm

Hi all, I must be the least creative person I’ve ever met and even I cannot find words to describe some of these sites. Have a shuffty at this one
http://www.drivingyoucrazy.com/ (went all wobbly when this popped up!)its a prime example of why people like me should let those who know what their doing, do it!.

RaulJones 22 Mar 2010 at 1:48 am

Ling website still up. Big wonder in brain…why sucky site not pulled as a public health menace? Customer letters mean caca. Get neighbor kids much candy for make fake letters. Ream of paper probably found at goodwill. Website bad enough to cause cancer.

call me Roy 29 Mar 2010 at 9:00 pm

The website “Funny or Die” changed my information after I registered with it. I noticed the change and contacted them asking what had happened? They emailed back saying “Yea, we changed something, we thought it would be funny. I am now checking if they broke any laws. What a bunch of pudknockers.

MariAlice 03 Apr 2010 at 8:08 pm

you forgot iscribble.net :) worst website ever bunch of dipshits with no life :)

Jason 11 Apr 2010 at 8:46 am

Another one for you -
http://www.eliteinstallations.co.uk/

ken 22 Apr 2010 at 8:59 pm

These just get worse

ken 22 Apr 2010 at 9:06 pm

just take a look at this pile of crap

http://www.bathroom-fitters-wales.co.uk

Ecommerce web design 30 Apr 2010 at 11:54 pm

Some classic websites there even our first sites launched 10 years ago when I was at school don’t match

Nicchan 06 May 2010 at 5:22 pm

Thank you for posting this, really help for my assignment reference^^

Btw, where’s the link to the original site for the very first web shown on this post?? The insurance’s page has changed & I can said it’s going better

bambam 27 May 2010 at 1:35 am

…my first web page ever …looked like that..lol!
…mmm…maybe not…

Video Character 31 May 2010 at 2:16 am

I have to agree that these are sites that need an extreme makeover haha. If they were a real company they can hire a designer, do offshoring, it’s cheaper. Maybe they should consider making their sites simpler to make it clean.

helenmiles 04 Jun 2010 at 9:08 am

http://www.yvettesbridalformal.com/

go on…try and make sense of it….

Fahmid 09 Jun 2010 at 5:03 pm

shuuuu….now i fell like my website isn't the worst….

janni 11 Jun 2010 at 4:04 am

WOW they were bad

rambo 24 Jun 2010 at 10:09 pm

LOL Fantastic – Bus in a lake!

Marvin Telona 08 Jul 2010 at 3:01 pm

Wow, these are indeed terrible!
In UK, if you type car leasing, you can find a VERY BAD site on the first page of Google that seems to be selling like crazy.
That's insane how sometimes totaly confusion can work on conversions.

carleasingmadesimpleuk 28 Jul 2010 at 9:45 am

This is a great list!!! Kudos to the people that compiled it. They should learn from good websites like http://carleasingmadesimple.com when designing website for commercial and business purposes.

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