Web Pages That Suck - learn good web design by looking at bad web design

Submitter’s comments: Found this site by accident—I still can’t figure out what possessed them to design the navigation they way they did. It took me a few seconds to even figure out how to get past the triangles and to some useful information, like what kind of company it is, etc. Bleh! Annoying music, too!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The home page is among the sillier home pages I’ve seen this year. It shouldn’t be necessary to say the FlashSplash page isn’t necessary, but the designers weren’t clever enough to understand this. IT ISN’T NECESSARY! I thought that each boomerang image would show a different piece of information when I moused over, but no. Once you click, you go to a home page that actually has a logical, readable FLASH menu at the bottom (don’t use Flash for menus). Unfortunately, I’m your typical marketing weasel and I got distracted by the falling squares and rectangles and then by the “click drag create” message.

The ADHD kicks in and soon I’m building little thingamajigs. What a waste. It’s like they set a trap for folks like me. Oh, it turns out they’re house builders.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to Everyone!!

Longvue

Submitter’s comments: The thing is I’ve seen Tim Ellis perform and I met him at a Magic convention in 2004, and he’s a really good magician – probably one of the top ten magicians in the world. He also delivers a great lecture. Its actually a real shame that his web page is so lame.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’ve been enthralled by magic for the last…well, since I was six years old. In fact, I love it so much that I don’t want to know the secrets behind the illusions. It’s a shame that magic sites have to use stars as background as I’ve seen on a number of sites. Oh, and we have a fairly flagrant violation about using sound files.

The biggest problem is the lack of contrast between much of the text/links and the background. I wish I could make the lack of contrast disappear but, alas, I’m not a magician.

Magic Unlimited

Submitter’s comments: Last evening I opened a very handy Christmas present from my wife — an “Emergency Dynamo Lantern.” As the outside of the box describes it: “5 LED Bulbs,” “NO Batteries Needed.”"30 seconds of Hand Cranking generates 15-30 minutes of light!” It is manufactured by JLR Gear.

While my wife and daughter and son were cooking today’s feast, I typed the URL into the browser to learn what other handy products they make. The home page has pretty pictures, and the categories for their products are listed (sideways though). So, I click on “Products” and what do I get?

THIS AREA IS PASSWORD PROTECTED

PLEASE
ENTER YOUR PASSWORD” [login] (I’m ROTFLMAO)

Thank you for logging on to our site. Unfortunately, this section of the web site is for our retail customers and for our internal use only.

If you need help or more information about our products, please feel free to contact us at: 510-777-9894.

Their product is very handy. Their web site is very unhandy. I suppose they mean that only the retail resellers can have access. But, don’t most manufacturers also display what products they make, and, list the retail stores where you can go buy them?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Oh, boy! This is wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. As I wrote in Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015:

These ladies are laughing at you. Why? You designed your web site for your needs, not their needs. It gets worse. After they stop laughing, they’re going to one of your competitors’ sites and buy something…

Nobody cares about you or your site!

Really. What visitors care about is solving their problems. Now. Most people visit a web site to solve one or more of these four problems:

1. They want/need information
2. They want/need to make a purchase / donation.
3. They want/need to be entertained.
4. They want/need to be part of a community.

Too many organizations believe that a web site is about opening a new marketing channel or getting donations or to promote a brand or to increase company sales by 15%. No. It’s about solving your customers’ problems.

At the least, the link name should be changed to something like “Vendors Only.” Yikes.

JLR Gear home page

JLR Gear Products Page (password protected)

Whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope you enjoyed yourself. For reasons outside my control, I celebrate Christmas. I’ve added two new features:

Worst Web Sites of 2007 Part 4 — 16 new sites from October and November!

Worst Nonprofit Web Sites Part 2 — 8 more nonprofit web sites have been added.

I’m going through the list for December right now. 2007 is looking like the mother of all sucking web site years!

I hope to have December’s list up by New Year’s Day

Since I’m not a PHP programmer, the Daily Sucker icon is automatically inserted in each entry (anybody who knows how to fix this in WordPress, kindly send me the code). This entry doesn’t really suck.

For a limited time, the Nielsen Norman Group is giving away their PDF report from 2001 entitled Beyond ALT Text:
Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities.

Nielsen Norman Group Report page

Submitter’s comments: Yes, this is for real.

Blinky text (in Firefox), marques, random justification, tiled background images, images in front of text (file of life page), links changing colors?, frames, etc. It’s an example of “How many annoying elements can I put on one page?”

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Don’t forget the animated divider bars.

Here’s another example of why you don’t put dates on a web page. Fortunately, the home page doesn’t have a date. Speaking of dates, I finally have proof that cops are psycho psychic. The Motor Vehicle Accident Statistics page is dated March 14, 1999. But the header says “Motor Vehicle Accident Statistics 2000.” Pretty impressive. They can see the future. I wonder if they knew I was going to make their site the Daily Sucker?

Some of the other pages are dated as follows:

12-10-99 Webmaster’s Comments

05-28-02 Domestic Violence and Records Request

10-19-03 Firearm Licensing Information

It looks like only the Department Roster is reasonably current.

Seekonk Police Department

Submitter’s comments:
I think you will love that the “English version” text moving around in the screen when you mouse over. Also, the left menu is sideways.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I also like the fact the TITLE tag is “ydta.” Yeah, the search engines are going to know it stands for “Young Design Talent Awards.” Sure.

Hong Kong Young Design Talent Awards

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I was reading a post on a Microsoft blog about how the yet-unreleased Internet Explorer 8 passed the Web Standards Project’s Acid2 test. Hmm…Microsoft and web standards in the same sentence? One of the ADD thoughts that ran through my brain was, “Hey, go run Microsoft’s home page through AccessColor’s color contrast and brightness test.” The results will have nothing to do with web standards, just the ability to code a page in such a way that the text is readable against the background. It’s all about visual contrast.

I ran Microsoft‘s home page through the analyzer and received the following results:

1. Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 62.13% of the total text.
   A Fail message is displayed next to the HTML source line.
2. Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 0.53% of the total the text.
   A Warning message is displayed next to the HTML source line.

Now, I’ve never met a stupid person who worked for Microsoft (some have been a little too Lifespring-ish for my taste), so I have to ask myself, “Don’t they understand it doesn’t cost millions of dollars to make your page readable?” OK, they’re stupid.

Microsoft’s Home Page

Submitter’s comments: This is the web site for my home town of Covington, Indiana. It’s so bad that I’m going to make a donation to the town in support of a better web site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Personally, I think you should give your money to some nonprofit who can do some good. Doesn’t anybody understand the concept of visual contrast? I ran the home page through AccessColor and received the following results:

Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 15.22% of the total text.

Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 18.84% of the total the text.

We also have multi-colored divider bars, centered and flush-left text, multi-colored text, and they’ve put the date the site was last edited (March 3, 2006). Oh, and the TITLE tag for the home page is “Home,” which doesn’t help the search engines index the site.

Covington Business Association

Submitter’s comments: I’d like to make my submission to the “daily sucker”.  I think that they break just about every rule.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Not every rule, but enough to qualify as the Daily Sucker. It has a lot of the usual mistakes such as a tacky logo and poor use of color. But it also has an interesting mistake I don’t talk enough about — putting dates on your pages. The Slogans in Education page has a copyright date of 1999 right where you can see it. My initial reaction is, “It’s too old to have any value. I’m not going to read it.” If you have to put a copyright date on a page, then put it at the bottom of the page or say, “Copyright 1999-2007.”

Somebody should write a little Javascript program that outputs, “Last edited XX-XX-XXXX,” where the date is a random date that’s between 5-30 days before today’s date. It would be nice if the Javascript were obfuscated so if someone looked at the source code, you couldn’t tell exactly what the Javascript did.

New Foundations

Submitter’s comments: I have been researching competitors’ web sites today, as well as reading your excellent site to get tips for when we redesign our web site early next year, and I came across this site which seems to suck quite badly.

The home page isn’t the worst I’ve seen, but click on the news, profile, history and products buttons – what genius thought up blue text over a predominantly blue image? Click on the contact button as well – have you ever seen such ridiculous, large, ugly buttons!! There is also a serious lack of useful information and I don’t think it’s been updated in a couple of years.

Wish all our competitors were so lax with their web design!!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s a simple-looking site that’s simply all wrong. My biggest web design complaint is the lack of contrast and we’ve got plenty of that mistake. Didn’t anyone at the company look at the site and wonder why they couldn’t read the navigational buttons? Maybe the English are some super race who aren’t bothered by silly concepts like “contrast” and “readability.” Why did they use graphic buttons for navigation? Why is the TITLE tag — one of the most important tools used by search engines to index this site — called “home?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: Awful Flash navigation that just wastes space and is not intuitive. The “main menu” at the top doesn’t work until you click on it. Subpages only show sub-page navigation unless you figure out that you can change it to the main menu by clicking the main menu link at the top, to get back to the sub-navigation you have to click the button that says “MAIN “, that’s intuitive.

You can get a snow report by clicking the star next to where it says “Main Menu” (that’s Mystery Meat Navigation). They have also named the site map “Explore.” Wouldn’t have ever figured out what that was because I never would have clicked it on my own.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The word “Awful” in “Awful Flash navigation” is an unnecessary modifier. There is no such thing as good Flash navigation because:

1. Some businesses won’t let employees install plugins
2. Many users of the Firefox browser use an add-in called “Flashblock” which, surprise!, blocks Flash.
3. Sometimes Flash fouls up.

Flash is OK, as an accent just don’t make it your navigation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: Not great design, but the truly sucky part is in their EULA, which I would violate if I told you about it. Instead, I’ll send you to Archive.Org where you can see it for yourself. It’s the 7th paragraph.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: God, my readers are so very clever. I wouldn’t want to send you to their site because of some user agreement you wouldn’t know you were violating.

Because of the way the EULA is phrased, I’m going to assume their home page informs you of this EULA and makes you click to agree before you can enter in the same way you have to verify you’re old enough to enter a pron site — not that I’ve ever visited any <grin>.

Really bad EULA at Archive.org

Submitter’s comments: Vincent, have I got a Daily Sucker for you! I just found a web site whose background reminds me of Frankie Ford’s web site, which was a Daily Sucker from sometime in the fall of 2006 — remember that one? Well, just one look at the city of Nanty Glo, PA’s web site will make it feel like deja vu as far as backgrounds go, and that’s just the beginning of this site’s suckiness.

The menu at the left works just fine in Internet Explorer, but it’s a real pain to use in Firefox. Not to mention, the popup menus are just plain ugly, period. Also, most of the other pages on the site open in popup windows, and none of them that I looked at have any link back to the home page or anywhere else on the site.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: Hi Vincent, I stumbled across this web site and I just wanted you to take a look at it – I think you will love it ;-)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: If, by “you will love it,” you mean “I will hate it,” then you’re right. Lack of contrast, graphics for text, and really cheesy graphics are a hallmark of this site. I’m not sure what they support, but their site makes me against it — even if I’m for it. That makes as much sense as the site.

Industries for Africa

Submitter’s comments: Hello Vincent, I have found, sigh…, another contender that has a horrible web design.

The web site is just ugly. Long pages, large images, you name it. When you click on their links, the pain does not stop. It leads to more madness! Not only their links is uglier, guess what they have: FRAMES!  I have a bad feeling that this web site could be one of the worst real estate web sites that I have ever seen.

To sum things up, it is just a huge (Document Size: 344KB) and ugly (bad web design) web site

Vincent Flanders’ comments: With the housing industry having such horrible times, now is NOT the time for any company in the industry to have a sucky web site.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: I came across this web site looking for some info about the town of Groombridge in the South East UK.

Visually the site is not that bad, but the question is : Why use images for text ? This makes this web site inaccessible and virtually unmaintainable.

Plus the color theme is different on each page, as if there wasn’t enough bandwidth wasted already.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I like this example a lot. It’s a Subtle Sucker. Your initial reaction is “Why did you use it?” but the mistake of using images for text is actually a huge mistake.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: I found this site while researching the bizarre “Secret.” Click on “Marie Diamond, Feng Shui Consultant.” It’s Flash, so there’s no new URL.

Just remember what she says on her site: The Universal Laws of Life attracted you to this website. Ouch!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I don’t know a thing about Feng Shui, but I am the world’s expert on web pages that suck or Bad Web Feng Shui, and this page sucks. Once again, we have issues with contrast. I ran the home page through AccessColor and was told “Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 66.67% of the total the text.” Bad Feng Shui.

Initially, I thought the blurry picture was bad web feng shui, but then I remembered the picture on the “Secret” site. It’s like looking at someone after you’ve drunk six beers. I guess that’s true. I’ve never had more than a sip of beer in my life and my last sip was more than 30 years ago. Beer tastes like what I think yak urine would taste like.

Marie Diamond Feng Shui

Submitter’s comments: CONTRAST!! This one’s a blog, so I don’t know if it counts. I like this guy, I’m from MN, He’s from MN, he’s a great pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, it’s a great blog, but please DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE CONTRAST!!! AGH, MY EYES!!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Another site featuring my pet peeve — lack of contrast between text and background. Once again, I ran the home page through AccessColor and was told “Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 39.24% of the total text.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: I’ll be surprised if this site hasn’t been offered for your consideration previously! It is, as you will see, a miraculous collection of unreadable text, mysterious images, hidden navigation and questionable functionality; still worse, a large sum of money was paid to create this mess.

Although we can say that is passes cursory accessibility tests for the differently-abled. It may be the first web site in history where blindness actually enhances the user experience.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: When I first viewed the site in Internet Explorer, I assumed it was designed to work only in Firefox. Nope. It’s messed up in both browsers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: “This site is best viewed at a 1280×1024 pixels monitor resolution. Click here for instructions on how to change your monitor resolution.”

It’s all jumbled in Firefox, too. I can’t get to some of the links behind the Flash animation.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: And don’t forget my number one pet peeve: Lack of contrast between the text and the background. Small white text on an orange background just doesn’t cut it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: I ran across this one while looking for some ideas for a new site. Enjoy. :)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s times like these I get religious and offer up a prayer: “Dear God, I hope he didn’t get any ideas from this site other than not making one that looks like it.” On the subpages, I’m especially not fond of the trailing cursor.

City Of Oceanside, California

Submitter’s comments: Don’t know if this even comes close to the suckiness of the Saugerties Police Department page, but this one is pretty bad in it’s own right.

WTF is with all of these sites and their animated GIFs?

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitter’s comments: Just try buying HughesNet, formerly DIRECWAY, from this guy – the link from the DIRECWAY graphic is broken. DIRECWAY was changed to HughesNet almost two years ago.

Almost all of the text is underlined – you can’t tell which text is a link so you have to mouseover every line. And the background gives me a headache just thinking about it.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Well, if the link is the one I’m clicking, it isn’t broken but goes to a parked domain. My guess, is this site is no longer used and somebody forgot to take it down.

DISH Hawaii

As you might have heard, SW Washington State got hit by 100 mph winds, knocking out electricity, phones, and Internet access. That’s why new Daily Suckers haven’t been Miracuoulsy, everything is working (wasn’t supposed to be fixed until the weekend). I’m putting together Daily Suckers right now and, keep your fingers crossed, they’ll be up soon.

 Thanks for your patience.