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Ugliest / Worst Over The Top Web Sites of 2009
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Contenders for Worst Web Site of 2009: January - March #14-24
Web design is an art. Great web design occurs when design and content are seamless and you don't notice its greatness. With great web design, it's easy to find the information you need. The content makes you want to return again and again and, most importantly, great design gives credibility to the company/organization.
2009 Is Shaping Up As A Good Year For Bad Web Design
During the first three months of the year, there were 68 Daily Suckers. I've whittled them down to 27. If the rest of the year is as bad, we'll have over 100 serious contenders. Looks like a lot of web designers and web design firms will be busy redesigning these sites in the interim.
Some of these sites may have been fixed or improved since they were originally listed. Let me know.
14. d/Lux/MediaArts
Submitter's comments: The links move around onscreen. If you roll over a link, it blanks out all the other links.
Quite unworkable.
Vincent Flanders' comments: Really, really stupid navigation. But, hey? why else would it be The Daily Sucker?
Other comments: I am getting so very tired of these stupid Flash sites! Flash is a great tool; why do so many idiotic "designers" have to misuse it and give it a bad reputation? That low-contrast home page is visually UN-appealing; while the navigation (obviously "cute and imaginative" in someone's mind) is not well thought out. What are people who have impaired vision supposed to do?
CLICK TO SEE PICTURE OF OLD SITE
d/Lux/MediaArts(Current site)
15. Dr. Joye Pugh's Publications and Writing
Submitter's comments: This web page is very difficult to read. It has a black background with red lettering. That makes it hard enough to read but add the glowing menu and glowing links, your eyes will start to hurt quickly. There is also underlined text that is not a link.
Dr. Joye Pugh's Publications and Writing
Vincent Flanders' comments: Yesterday, I talked about web sites belonging to “Over The Top” industries. As I described it yesterday:
…an “Over the Top” industry is just like the definition of pornography — you know it when you see it. Over the Top sites generally deal with philosophy, religion, politics, etc., but they're generally not mainstream.
If you look at my examples of Over The Top sites, you'll notice that today's sucker is right at home. It's not mainstream, has TABLE borders on, red text on a centered background, underscored text that isn't a link, and the most amazing feature: glowing links. I can't remember the last time I've seen links that glow. Really impressive, When I say “impressive” I mean “sucks.”
What drives me crazy is that it doesn't take much effort to “fix” the home page. I spent a total of three minutes changing fonts and text colors and I made the home page 2000% better — which is pretty good (2.5Mb) considering I'm not a web designer. It's not beautiful, but at least it wouldn't be today's Daily Sucker. Think what a real web designer could do!
16. ABBC Breeders & AKC
Submitter's comments: Hey, check this one out.
Vincent Flanders' comments: I cry every time one of Pedigree's dog adoption commercials airs (they sponsored the Westminster Dog Show, so I cried a lot). While Pedigree's ads make me cry in sadness, this dog site makes me cry in desperation. What is it with dog breeders (well, animal breeders in general).
Originally, I thought I would put a link to a dog-related site that looked good so that today's sucker would see a good looking dog site and use it as a model for their own site. Since the American Kennel Club is the most prestigious dog organization in the country, I figured their site would qualify. Yes, it looks infinitely better than today's sucker, but they've got serious contrast issues as this small screen capture demonstrates (if you want to see the full report, this 1Mb screen capture will give you the information.)
Basically, according to AccessColor, 24.46% of the AKC's text fails to meet the W3C's recommendation for color brightness and color difference. Gosh. If a dog doesn't meet the AKC's color standard, it can't be entered in an approved dog show. If anybody should know the importance of color and meeting the standards, it's these folks. Bad doggie.
17. Gates and Fences
Submitter's comments: A web site about gates that overdid it on the pictures.
Vincent Flanders' comments: Actually, everything is overdone.
My first reaction is “Where's the focus?” My eyes are immediately drawn toward the large picture of a welder — which would be marginally OK if this were a welding web site. My eyes are then drawn toward the garish red navigation buttons. Next, I look for the logo and I don't find a “real” logo, but some text saying “Welcome To Gates N Fences.” (You don't have to say “Welcome to” because they've already made the commitment to go to your web site.) Because I think they must be links, I mouse over the two pictures at the top of the page. They're not. What you get is text that's impossible to read.
While not impossible to read, it's difficult to read the text on the page. On one of the pages, we have a floating across the page “Buy Now” button that's incredibly cheesy. Speaking of incredibly cheesy, I'd like to comment about the music (Kenny G) that automatically plays when you visit the site — in Internet Explorer (not with Firefox and maybe other browsers).
You can't put music on your site unless you pay for the privilege. See my article Why You Can't Use Music On Your Web Site. It's possible they paid. The company is in Miami and they make really cool gates and it's possible they traded one for the use of Kenny G's song. It's possible.
The home page is around 2.45Mb, with 2.28Mb consisting of that Kenny G song. Gosh, if they get rid of the song, the web site would load much faster. Here's another company who looks like they have excellent products that has a less-than-excellent web site.
18. MCI Management Center
Submitter's comments: I find it hard to believe that someone at some point in time found this “cool” and paid for it. It's an Austrian university's web site
The above is the link to the English version. The German version opens a pop-up onload as an extra. So all non-German-reading visitors are really missing out! :P
The “C” metaphor of the navigation scheme is obviously derived from the logo. But just because you can doesn't mean you should! It's wrong to put the logo on the bottom right, especially
when there's so much empty space on the top left of the page!
The navigation is a set of image maps, and the whole thing is in layout tables.
I also dislike that on the home page it doesn't highlight individual links on hover, making the blocks of links look like one huge link and that the subpages are made with frames.
If you reload the page with JavaScript disabled it will show the links for Masters and Bachelors degrees. As far as I can see, you can actually reach all content without JS and images enabled, but the metaphor really loses whatever impact it might have had.
As for your pet peeve, yup, we seem to have contrast issues too.
Vincent Flanders' comments: This is the most bizarre navigation that I've seen in a long time. When you go to the German version of the site, no white menu text shows up. This is very bizarre.
I've never seen the main logo placed in this position before. On subpages, the logo is at the bottom of the page. Huh?
19. Complete Health Center
Submitter's comments: It's almost as if some people don't want people to visit their site. It's all in Flash. It has stupid animations for EVERYTHING. (Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should do it.)
Vincent Flanders' comments: It's a very simple concept: If your web site can be built with HTML, build it with HTML and not Flash.
What's going on with all these sites where there are videos of people welcoming me to their web site? On the positive side, when you stop the music it stops on every page. If you leave the site and come back, the blonde replays her welcome message. It would be nice if the site set a cookie so you only saw her once. Of course, most people won't return to the site.
20. Serro Scotty Camper Enthusiasts
Submitter's comments: I found this site when I used Google to find the brand of vintage trailer that I just bought. Could not believe it is for real, but the sad thing is, it is.
Vincent Flanders' comments: If there's one web design tool that's worse than the old Microsoft (Af)FrontPage, it's Yahoo! SiteBuilder. It's almost as bad as converting a Microsoft Office document to HTML. SiteBuilder offers templates for hobbyists that are pretty scary, but they're not as bad as this site.
I'm a very pale, boring, white guy and I love color, but this site takes the concept of multiple colors to a new level. Here's a screen capture of the site that shows off my new HP w2408h monitor that I'm in love with. The good news is this is what I see with the window open; the bad news is this is what I see with the window open. Could we stick with one color, two type sizes, and flush-left text? It would be nice to have something in your TITLE tag besides “Index,” and it would be great if you could mark your newsletters as PDF files.
21. Titusville, Florida — North Brevard Business Directory
Submitter's comments: Have you ever checked out Coast to Coast AM's or Titusville, Florida's web sites?
Titusville, Florida — North Brevard Business Directory
Vincent Flanders' comments: Not until just now.
As far as Coast to Coast AM goes, we have to remember that it belongs to an industry I call “Over the Top.” As I've described it:
…an “Over the Top” industry is just like the definition of pornography — you know it when you see it. Over the Top sites generally deal with philosophy, religion, politics, etc., but they're generally not mainstream.
If you look at my examples of Over The Top sites, you'll notice that Coast to Coast really isn't outrageous enough to qualify. Yes, it uses garish colors, but the links are all the same color (orange) and there isn't the alternating text colors on the same line that OTT sites use. This site is quite tasteful — for an OTT site.
However; but; nevertheless: If this site were for any other industry, it would be Daily Sucker material. Remember: Context is everything.
Titusville Florida, on the other hand, is Daily Sucker Material. It starts out looking worse than Coast to Coast AM and then goes downhill from there. About half-way down the page, the listings widen to fill up the screen and it becomes a mess and The Daily Sucker.
22. Anachrome
Submitter's comments: Vincent: I was doing some cursory research into the fun world of Red-Green 3D images (stereoscopic anaglyphs), fully expecting to find a lot of images mainly of white on black with horribly contrasting colours. Wasn't expecting the same from the web pages however.
Other than the horrific contrast, it seems to scroll on for eternity and comes up with a few hundred errors in the HTML validator. I think this qualifies for a sucker, if it hasn't already been nominated already.
Anachrome Advanced Plastic Anaglyph 3D Glasses and Anachrome 3D Technology
Vincent Flanders' comments: To start things off on the wrong foot, the home page is 14.37Mb. This page is a classic example of Mistake #5 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — “Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn't look like it.“ Just because it's called a web page doesn't mean you have to put everything on one page.
We have almost every text problem in the universe. Here's a list I'm compiling of text mistakes. How many does this site make?
- Small text, which is difficult to read and comprehend.
- LARGE text, which is difficult to read and comprehend.
- LOTS OF WORDS IN ALL-CAPS.
- Scrolling, blinking, fading, or moving text.
- Underlined text. (Only links should be underlined.)
- Centered text (some headlines can be centered)
- Justified text.
- Sideways text.
- Uncommon fonts.
- <FONT> tag.
- Inappropriate font faces — like Comic Sans on a senior citizen site.
- Multiple text sizes on a page. There should be two sizes — one for headlines and one for text.
- Multiple text colors on a page.
As bad as the text may be, it's “only” taking up 330Kb. The rest of the 14Mb is allocated to graphics. Obviously, dividing the home page up into multiple pages will help. Still, the images need to be optimized. There are lots of web sites where you can go and optimize your images. A couple of them are Web Resizer and SmushIt. An online program that reduces the physical dimensions is Quick Thumbnail, another is resizr, and you can search Google for both online and standalone image resizing programs. Two free Windows programs are Image Resizer from VSO Software and Easy Thumbnails
The site is dealing with an interesting topic. Unfortunately, the information is presented in a totally useless format.
Anachrome Advanced Plastic Anaglyph 3D Glasses and Anachrome 3D Technology
23. Just Like Sugar
Submitter's comments: The poor music and Flash animation at the beginning with that atrocious scroller is bad enough, but there's no way to turn off the announcer's voice on the home page, and he ‘talks' to you EVERY time you click on the HOME link. Then, if you use an ad block program, the entire site ‘poof' disappears, as though it's an ad. The only thing you get is a scroll bar! When you request a sample, the fireworks flashing button and very loud rendition of the Star Spangled Banner is cheesy, if nothing else.
And do we really, really need to see THAT many pictures of the product? I mean, brand recognition is one thing, but wow.
Oh, did I mentioned the entire site is masked so the URL NEVER changes, and it's actually hosted on a different domain?
Vincent Flanders' comments: The site is frame-based, which makes it appear as if there's no content when you view the source. I didn't get the fireworks and Star Spangled Banner when I clicked to request a sample. Your mileage will vary. However, the navigation is bizarre. All those pictures of the product make it hard to focus and find the links to click. Oh. The only real navigation is the home page icon and the back button and you know how I feel about the back button:
Another problem with the home page (at least in Internet Explorer 7) is that part of the page doesn't display. The only way the bouncing, stupid pictures display is for me to hit the browser's Refresh button. The home page (including the refresh) is 2.49Mb and that's just too big.
The irony is I'm interested in the product and I'll check it out next time I'm at Whole Foods.
24. Barnard Castle
Submitter's comments: Here's an example of an exceptionally bad web site for a town here in the northeast of England - a place called Barnard Castle. Nice little market town, but you'd have trouble determining that from the site.
The navigation is appalling, and when you do get to a page, you'll be lucky if it works at all. Getting back to the home page is hard - back button nav is your only option. Also, it's a site of a thousand styles. I couldn't manage to find two pages that looked the same. Keeps you guessing about what's coming next, though. The black/red combo also isn't very welcoming.
Vincent Flanders' comments: Well, there is some navigation on the subpages that leads back to the home page. Unfortunately, it's intermittent and we all know the perils of intermittent reinforcement — slot machines are a good example.
My main issue is focus. Where's the real focal point of the home page? It can't be the scrolling “This Is Barnard Castle Life,” because clicking the message doesn't lead anywhere. It's the same with the castle pictures.
If you look at your browser's status bar as you scroll, you'll see x-y coordinates
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