I’ve recently been on a lot of Humane Society and dog rescue websites, looking for a home for a pair of Australian cattle dogs in Kansas City. (Don’t ask.)

Most of the larger organizations – the Humane Societies, for example – had decent, if busy, websites.

Most of the smaller organizations’ websites took me on a trip through time to 1989 or so.

I needed these sites. The Humane Societies can’t take these dogs. If anyone would have them, it would be a small group that specializes in rescuing Australian cattle dogs.

So I persevered despite incompetence that would have sent me running if I hadn’t been desperate. In the process, I compiled the following Five Signs of a 1980s Website:

  1. Un-google-ability. I found these sites through links from the Humane Societies or national Australian cattle dog sites. Before Google, when search engines were unreliable on a good day, that’s how we found stuff, remember? We followed links from authoritative sites.
  2. Backgrounds. Busy backgrounds, textured backgrounds, backgrounds with doggy faces or heart shapes… We don’t use backgrounds any more, for good reason – they make site content difficult to read.
  3. Clipart substituting for a logotype. It’s OK for a tiny organization to substitute a handsome display of its name for a professional logo. Clipart – even clipart of endearing puppies – is not OK.
  4. One endless homepage.
    Bonus points if all the content is centered.
    Extra bonus points if links in the content area substitute for a navigation menu.
    Extra EXTRA bonus points if those links are animated buttons.
  5. Dead links and emails. (Everyone’s pet peeve.) I was struck by the fact that the sites displayed email addresses at all. We don’t do that any more. Got spam?

A few of these sites are orphans, like my Australian cattle dogs – no one is taking care of them. Several, though, had fresh content. That made me wonder if the site owners just didn’t care what their site looked like.

I realize that’s probably not the case, and I’m not linking to any of these sites to show you what I mean because I don’t want to embarrass their owners. Most dog rescue groups aren’t organizations at all, in the proper sense. They consist of a few volunteers who love dogs. They have a website because one of those volunteers knew some HTML. They have no staff, no budget, no infrastructure.

And that’s the only excuse I can think of for having a website that looks dated and uses technology from a decade ago.

A decent website doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. A world-class website – yes, that costs. But goodness, look at all those perfectly serviceable blogs built on Blogger or WordPress – clean, simple design that does what it needs to do and doesn’t send users running in the opposite direction.

What a decent website does cost is time. You have to figure out:

Given the vital place of your website in your communications strategy, it only makes sense to take the time – and spend the money, where necessary – to keep your site fresh and constantly updated.