South Africa’s ugliest websites

Designing a website that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional is not an easy task.

If you are a small business owner or one-man-band, you may not be able to afford a decent web developer. Or perhaps you simply have no sense of what looks good, and use MS paint to design your red on black company logo.

Either way, this results is that a lot of ugly sites making their way onto the Internet – including the .co.za domain – and we decided to share some of them with you.

To find and assess every South African website would be time consuming to say the least, and while do acknowledge that we may have missed a few gems, we are certain these will be pointed out to us by our friendly readers.

Screenshots of the offending websites were captured in Google Chrome on a 1920 x 1080 laptop screen. They have been embedded below for your viewing displeasure.

To get a better view of the screenshots, click on the images to enlarge them.

PackRat

It’s green, so very green.

AWB

Red on black is never a good look. Surprising lack of whiteness on this website.

Eastwood Safaris

This website’s “super-zoomed elephant hide” theme does not do its logo any justice.

Solomons Lifestyle

Lime green is never a good background colour. Ever.

Elinem Engineering

Let’s hope the technology they use to manufacture is better than what they used to build their website.

Motorcycle Spares

The small volcanic eruption in the background only aids in burning the site’s users’ eyes.

Wildman Hunting

They went for the “sunset look” – maybe they’ll get it right next time.

Mechanics on Call

Mechanics on call need a web developer on call.

Shelf Warehouse

Red on black strikes once again.

Dirco

Green background strikes again.

Not-so-ugly websites which almost made it

While they won’t make you want to scratch your eyes out, these websites aren’t the best pieces of design we’ve ever seen.

Durban Church of Christ

There’s a lot of real estate not being taken advantage of on this page – let’s hope for some divine design intervention.

Eastern Cape Government

The best way to keep users coming back to your site is to post PDF thumbnails and 160 x 60 logos of Eskom, according to the Eastern Cape Government. Oh, and make most of it beige.

In case you were wondering, the title of world’s worst website has been awarded to, well, check out the World’s Worst Website.

Special thanks to the forum members who submitted links to some of the above sites. Also: MyBroadband contacted the websites listed in this article, and offered to assist with improving these websites free of charge.