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

Pizza Capers

Submitter’s comments: I’m a first-time reader of your web site, and I’m finding it very informative – and amusing.  There is one web site I’d like to submit for your consideration, due to a misplaced use of metaphors and a high dependence on Flash: Pizza Capers.

The hand cursor and the basil/chili plants that swing if you put the mouse over them, but otherwise do nothing, are just idle distractions, but try taking a look at the menu – you have to go through every page by grabbing the bottom right corner of the page, dragging it halfway across the screen, and let it go.  If I wanted to thumb through a menu, I’d go into the place and thumb through the menu.  This is why I end up using the PDF version.

And the ‘capertron’ part of their ‘order online’ section is still ‘coming soon’. But on the other hand, the pizzas are excellent – they’re the only place I’d order takeaway pizza from.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: As I said yesterday about Mellow Mushroom:

Pizza Parlors are Yet Another Industry That Sucks (YAITS). This one, is a little more high end than others of its ilk, uses Flash where it could just as easily use HTML.

Although the submitter is somewhat inaccurate — you can also click on the corner of the page to change it — the real question is, “Why in God’s name would you want to use a book metaphor?” You’re wasting time, people are going to forget where certain items they may want to order are located. What does this buy you?

What really ticked me off is that I couldn’t figure how to close the menu once I opened it. I couldn’t go anywhere else. Clicking at various spots on the home page didn’t work. Another bad feature of Flash that’s used at Pizza Capers is that when you mouse over certain icons, Flash sound files are activated.

Once again, it’s important to notice that a sucky web site does not translate into a sucky product; however, if a person’s only experience with your product is your web site, you’re in trouble. What we have here is a site that’s F.U.C.K.E.D — Flash Used to Corrupt Knowledge of Effective Decisionmaking.

Worst of all, not everything is viewable on my 1900- x 1170-pixel window, as this screen shot demonstrates. OMG! I was just playing around with the home page and discovered that the only way to see everything on the home page is to click and drag and hand cursor. This site is a black hole of f*****g death.

Pizza Capers