Web Pages That Suck -- Examples of Bad Web Design

These are the Daily Suckers -- Examples of Bad Web Design -- from WebPagesThatSuck.com. I couldn't predict every new sucky design technique that would come along when I wrote the book because there's always a new way to do something bad. This page will keep you up-to-date. Live examples.

My definition of "daily" is "whenever I'm in the mood."


Date: Wednesday, August 4, 2004

Where in the hell is the link?

This page makes the Daily Sucker because it talks about how they've improved Microsoft.com by redesigning it, but they:

  1. Don't have a link to the redesign so you have to take their word they've done what they say they've done. If you believe what people tell you, then I'd like to say, "Hey ladies. I'm rich, single, and in public I'm often mistaken for Tom Cruise and in private I'm mistaken for Ron Jeremy."

  2. Don't have the link in an obvious place -- I scanned the document and couldn't find it. If you can't find it, then it doesn't exist.

It's also important to show the redesign because I want to check it out in BrowserCam to see what the page looks like in different browsers. I also want to make sure they didn't pull the same stupid stunt Microsoft pulled (and is still pulling). You can't see the Microsoft logo on their home page (new window shows you what the MS home page looks like today) -- and lots of other pages -- if you're running software that blocks ads like Norton Internet Security. I don't know how long this has been going on, but it's annoying. Here's my article about the problem.

Maybe if we all click this link, Microsoftian Robert Scoble will read about the problem and get somebody to fix it.

Today's sucker goes into detail about a topic that's interesting and important -- how to design a site without using tables. Unfortunately, the topic is being linked to "web standards." Back on May 11, I pointed out that web design is not about using web standards, or usability testing, or any other belief system. Here's what I said back then.

Jared (Spool) started User Interface Engineering (http://www.uie.com/) back in the dark, dark ages of 1988 and he was recently interviewed for InfoDesign. How can you not like someone who says:

I learned quickly that business executives didn't care about usability testing or information design. Explaining the importance of these areas didn't get us any more work. Instead, when we're in front of executives, we quickly learned to talk about only five things:

  • How do we increase revenue?
  • How do we reduce expenses?
  • How do we bring in more customers?
  • How do we get more business out of each existing customer?
  • How do we increase shareholder value?

Notice that the words 'design', 'usability', or 'navigation' never appear in these questions. We found, early on, that the less we talked about usability or design, the bigger our projects got. Today, I'm writing a proposal for a $470,000 project where the word 'usability' isn't mentioned once in the proposal.

When we work with teams, we teach them to follow the money and look for the pain. Somewhere in your organization, someone is feeling pain because they aren't getting the answers they want to one of the questions above. (emphasis courtesy of Vincent Flanders)

The Jared Spool Interview

Anybody who tells you it's "about something" -- Buddhism, the Democratic Party, EST, Web Standards, or whatever is trying to sell you something.

Throwing Tables Out The Window

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Wednesday, August 04, 2004

The Daily Sucker Backgrounder

The Daily Sucker contains material that should be considered updates to the book, "Web Pages That Suck." and Son of Web Pages That Suck. I can't see the future -- if I could, I'd be picking lottery numbers and stocks. The Daily Sucker features new sucky design techniques not in existence when the book was written. Since Web designers are stubborn, I also include old sucky techniques featured in the book. Maybe if they see a bad technique featured enough they'll stop using it.

The suckers are based on user input. You see a site that you think sucks and then e-mail the URL to me. No personal pages (personal pages are supposed to reflect the individual's personality, artistic freedom, and lack of taste -- a commercial site is about making money) or Web site designers (it would look like a conflict of interest). If I think there's some merit to your selection, I post it along with some commentary -- and quality commentary helps determine whether I use the suggestion. If you know of a site that qualifies, let me know.

The sucky example will usually be available for only 24 hours (or thereabouts -- weekends and egregious examples are exceptions) -- never to be seen again. Well, probably. Somebody could always suggest them again -- and they do.

E-mail Vincent