Submitter’s comments: I teach Creative Advertising Strategy and Direct Response Advertising at a university. In class, we look at webpagesthatsuck.com to learn what not to do, just as you suggest and it is quite helpful. However, my students never fail to point to web sites that are highly regarded, such as Leo Burnett, that utilize Mystery Meat and flying navigation.

In fact, this Web site REALLY DRIVES ME NUTS! When you click on “skip intro,” for example, it seems that that is not an option. What are those flying apples all about anyway? Please take a look at this site. I would really like your opinion, as my students are telling me that Burnett’s site is avant garde when I think it is ill-conceived.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Since your students are enamored with graphics, let me give them two graphics that describe Leo Burnett’s web sites:

I rated Leo Burnett (Canada) the 6th Worst Web Site Navigation for 2007. I know I’ve also used the USA version of Leo Burnett as a Daily Sucker, but I can’t find the original reference.

Web sites are about solving your visitor’s problems. Have your students read Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — especially #1, 2, 3, 7, and 8.

Leo Burnett
Leo Burnett Canada

Submitter’s comments: Old school and still using frames.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Old school and still using frames poorly.

Police sites like the Cape Giradeau County Sheriff’s Department are always amusing. In fact, there are enough poorly designed cop sites that they had their own category: Worst Web Sites of 2008: Cops and Chiropractors.

The frames are not sized properly (one of the problems with using frames for navigation) and there’s no leading between the links, making them hard to read. I spent a few minutes “fixing” the leading and the menu on the left shows the original site and the menu on the right has my changes. Guess which one is more readable? Leading is important.

While the site won’t make the Worst of 2009 Cops and Chiropractors, it’s still Daily Sucker material. We’ve got the flashlight mouse when you move your cursor over the navigation links, beveled text, highlighted text, centered text, cheesy graphics, and mixing centered with flush-left text and all the usual suspects.

The one good thing about the site is the address, phone number, and fax number are prominently located at the top of the page.

Cape Giradeau County Sheriff’s Department

Submitter’s comments: Hey. I’m a high school student in a web design class and we look at and discuss the Daily Sucker at the beginning of each class period. I found this web site while looking for examples…

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m so glad to see that high school kids are learning about bad web design. The person submitting today’s sucker obviously learned his/her lessons well. I’ll give you an A+ for recognizing bad design.

Where do I start? The whole site is a mess starting with the 2.3Mb home page. Basically, anything that moves should be removed, the background image needs to go, and…who am I kidding?…just nuke the site and start over. I was going to suggest using Google (search for ‘carpet store”) to look up other carpet web sites as examples of what a carpet web site should look like, but the search results all pretty much suck. Carpetone, looks the best, but it has a lot of contrast issues. The Carpet Store could also be a Daily Sucker.

Online Carpet Store

Submitter’s comments: Apparently they’re only trying to make people who use non-Microsoft browsers feel even *more* depressed by trapping them in an existentialist nightmare with only one useless outgoing link.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I want to change their trademarked tagline from “A Crisis Has No Schedule™” to “A Web Site Has No Links.” This web site really upset me until I realized it was for a company selling services and not a site people in distress went to when they needed help.

Here are the BrowserCam screen shots and here is one I made (with notes) that’s 1.2Mb.

Behavioral Health Link

Submitter’s comments: Take a look at the McDonald’s Australia ‘Broadband Version’ Flash site I just stumbled across.  You can shake around the sandwiches! Also note the ‘what goes into our food’ icons are hidden behind the giant ‘deli choices wraps’ logo…it all seems a bit suss to me.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: At least there’s an HTML version.

I have a reasonably OK broadband connection so it was difficult for me to read the directions on how to navigate the site. Of course, if you have to explain your navigation, your site’s screwed. The site also has popups and my browser wanted to block them.

McDonald’s Australia (Flash version)

Submitter’s comments: I love this place but their website sucks. They’re a family-run business, but is that really an excuse for such a bad web site?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I thought, “Why is a drive-in movie theater open in February?” Oh, that’s right. It’s summer in Australia. Damn. Well, I suspect most people who go to the drive-in don’t check the web to see what movie is playing. Well, the young people don’t. Sigh.

I don’t understand why the blue image is at the top of each page. I’m not sure we need the film icons either. After all, it says it’s a theater. The two navigation buttons are ugly and, like the first Daily Sucker, the biggest mistake is the site’s navigation. I’ll try to be subtle:

It looks like the only way to navigate from a subpage is to hit the back button.

Galaxy Drive In Theatre

Submitter’s comments: I was shocked to see my alma mater’s web site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Aren’t we all?

Unfortunately, the site’s color scheme is dictated by the school’s colors which are so ugly even a blind decorator would run away screaming in horror. I’m not sure why it’s necessary to have the two flags. Hopefully, the students know they live in Ohio which is in the United States. On the other hand, maybe they don’t know. It would be really, really nice if the TITLE tag said something other than “newhome.” Something like “Lexington High School” would be nice. It would also be a good idea to have the background of the soldier match the background of the page. There are centering text issues and scrolling text issues.

The biggest mistake is the site’s navigation. I’ll try to be subtle:

It looks like the only way to navigate from a subpage is to hit the back button. Go straight to detention. (For those of you who attend or have attended Jesuit high schools, “Go to jug.”)

Lexington High School

Believe it or not, I used to be a fairly good equestrian. For various reasons, I haven’t been on a horse since…well, since before most of you were born. I still have a fond place in my heart for horses.

I recently discovered Fugly Horse of the Day that’s about “Snarky commentary about the breeding of poor quality horses, silly or abusive training techniques, and pretty much anything else that annoys me!” You have to love a tagline like that. The author discusses a poorly designed horse web site and it reminded me that there are a lot of poorly designed horse web sites. Ten years ago one horse site was the Daily Sucker with the following commentary:

Horse sites don’t need music. First of all, it’s illegal to use someone else’s song on your site. Repeat. It’s illegal. Against the law. You could be sued. Just because it isn’t the original performance doesn’t make it legal. It’s wrong. Did I mention it was illegal?

Even if it were legal, you’d still want something appropriate. A Natalie Merchant song on a horse site makes no sense. Or a song by Jewell. “My Old Kentucky Home” makes a lot more sense — it might even be in the public domain, but I’m no expert. Music sites can have music.

There are some other problems. The site was designed on an 800 x 600 pixel monitor. If you view the front page on a higher resolution monitor, text and graphics run into the repeating border.

We’ve got needless GIF animations, multiple size and colored text, and the “Welcome To” message. Finally, the greatest sin of all the top doesn’t pop —the important information and links aren’t in the first screen.

As today’s first Daily Sucker demonstrates, people are still using music on their web sites.

At some point in the last ten years they’ve fixed the site, but it’s hard to escape your past. Here’s a screen shot of how it used to look. If you click on the picture of the link below, you’ll see a video about the past and present versions of the site.

The Old and New HorseClassified.com

Submitter’s comments: A website 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).

It always amazes me that people think they have the legal right to put music files on their web sites. You can’t 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.

There’s a lot more wrong, which I’m sure will be discussed in the comments.

Gates and Fences