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

Submitter’s comments: This piece of crap has been around in various obnoxious forms since 2005. It’s no better six years later.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This site is so very wrong—aesthetically, morally, spiritually, etc. The least of their problems is they’re dealing with monkeys, but calling them primates—which they’re not (My daughter phoned and told me, “Dad! Once again, you’re wrong! They are primates!” Then she emailed me a Wikipedia link.).

As the home page loads, you’re greeted with—I kid you not—the theme song from the TV show The Monkees. Looks like someone didn’t read my article, Why You Can’t Use Music On Your Site. I love the fact the home page TITLE tag is “Blank.” I wish the site were, too.

If I ever want my daughter to never talk to me again, I’ll send her the link to this site. She seriously considered becoming a primatologist and simply viewing this site would cause her to fall to the floor in a paroxysm of revulsion and disgust.

Rainbow Primates

Submitter’s comments: Has to be the most visually offensive, color intensive and mind-blowingly ego-centric website that I have ever seen!

This is more than a rant site, but there is no evident means to respond to his thoughts and rants, except for comments and they appear to be disconnected. There is no email address, nor any phone number or address for snail mail.

He just lets it all hang out and evidently doesn’t seem to notice that the very design and color of the text will turn people off!

Anyhow, despite some obvious problems in communications, this website is the most visually jarring one I have seen in a very long time. Maybe you and yours will agree. I nominate it for the worst set of web pages in the new decade and hope we do not see any others that are worse! This site would seem very hard to beat to the bottom of the pile.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It took a bit of time to find out what political position he wanted. I noticed he lost and was considering running for the U.S. House of Representatives. With a website as horrible as the one he has, he probably won’t get far. We could try and politely help him figure it out, but it seems that politeness is not going to work. We need to bring in the big guns—an inspirational message from my favorite preacher—the late, great Sam Kinison. (The link is TOTALLY NSFW. Instead of Sam’s solution to World Hunger, imagine he’s saying the following using the same tone of voice and decibel level):

If you want to become a $#%#$ congressman, make your $#%#$ website look like it belongs to a $#%#$ congressman! Go to the Congress Directory. Choose any $#%#$ congressman—here’s one I chose at random! Make your $#%#$ website look like his, %%#@5@5%!

OK, now go to YouTube, watch Sam in action and substitute the words above. Remember. NSFW. Here’s the link.

Bill O’Neill – Bucks County’s “Voice of Reason”

Brightcove is launching an entire new product line for making mobile and web apps called Brightcove App Cloud. Developers will be able to use App Cloud to create their apps once and then deploy them to the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and beyond. It creates HTML5 apps as well as mobile touch websites, and it is not limited to video apps.

It’s on TechCrunch

Submitter’s comments: Yes, that’s right. Rules this site breaks from the get-go: Not realizing the apparently random acronym they chose to name their business is a slang term for masturbation. But the site itself is an eyesore of mid-90s proportions. Even worse than that, really. There’s no discernible design scheme or even organizational structure whatsoever – just graphics thrown on a page over a graphic background with a graphic navigation that lands below the page break. Awful.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I agree, but its awfulness is awesome. What wonderful examples of bad web design techniques like:

As far as I can tell, there is not one single word of legitimate text on the page. We have repeating images, beveled graphics—heck, the home page is nothing but a bunch of images strung together.

I thought s/he was kidding about the meaning of “fap,” but it turns out to be true.

FAP Machine

Submitter’s comments: Not only does this telemarketing company foul-up our dinner time, they’re also making the web an uglier place to live

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This site’s look takes me back to late 1995 when Vermeer Technologies created FrontPage. For a site built with FrontPage, it looks better than most. Of course, that’s like someone saying to me, “For a fat guy, you don’t sweat much.” In a way, it’s simplicity is endearing but it just doesn’t look professional in 2011. Oh, get a new logo.

THE SMITH COMPANY

Submitter’s comments: Here’s a really bad Over-the-top Website.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Actually, it’s a really bad Over-the-top Website that looks like it came out of 1997.

What else can I say?

The Slide Rule Universe

Submitter’s comments: Here’s an example of a Page That Goes On Forever on an Over-the-top Website.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I think that succinctly sums it up.

The submitter’s phrase “Page That Goes on Forever” reminds me of a line from one of my favorite Joe Ely songs—The Road Goes on Forever (once you’re on the page, click the play button):

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

If Joe were to write a song about this page, the line would be:

The page goes on forever and the garbage never ends.

Dreams of the Great Earth Changes

Google wants to give high-quality search results. Obviously, everyone with a website wants to rank highly in search results, but nobody is sure what Google is looking for. This article provides additional guidance.

More guidance on building high-quality sites

Submitter’s comments: Be sure to click through – if you can read the funky flashing font.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m going to skip the SplashPage and move right to the dreck. It’s obvious to everyone but the site owner what’s wrong. You can go to StumbleUpon and just about every website you’ll find looks better than this one.

Sunset Loft

Submitter’s comments: The Great Wall is one of the only food choices we have in Maricopa – in my quest to find their menu online, I stumbled upon this glorious site!

I was greeted by this monstrosity of a website. Please be sure to have your sound on to enjoy one of the worst looping MIDIs in the history of MIDIs.

Don’t forget to check out the Lunch SPECAILS.

P.S. Their house fried rice really IS delicious.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s possible the site could induce seizures. Be careful.

I also am fond of COUPON’S (should be “Coupons”). On the “House Specials (spelled correctly) page, the prices are impossible to read. Actually, the prices on all the pages are difficult to read. Didn’t anyone look at the site when it was completed?

Great Wall of Maricopa

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I was going through 2009′s Worst Non-Profit Websites and discovered, much to my surprise, that the International Congress of Churches & Ministers’ website hadn’t changed.

Don’t skip the intro. Wait it out. It’s worth it.

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy.

International Congress of Churches & Ministers

Submitter’s comments: I’m really interested in Electric Vehicles, but I worry that exposure to this site may cause long term damage to my eyes.

Not only a truly hideous design, but so badly written that even if I choose to view with no style in an attempt to make it easier on my eyes, it becomes useless. Just a PITA for me, but what if you’re wanting to read their pages and are somehow disadvantaged or have a less capable browser device?

Just thought I’d share :)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Rarely are my readers wrong. It is a truly hideous design, made worse by a lack of contrast (44.52% of the text on the home page failed W3C contrast guidelines). Where’s the focus? What’s important? Why isn’t the content categorized?

Why is there so much content?

Electric Vehicles UK

Submitter’s comments: Mystery Meat Navigation, very little information or context about the product, use of Flash, and inaccessible design make this website suck.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Dude:/Dudette: This is a website for San Francisco-based cigarette rolling papers. It’s supposed to suck because the audience will never notice the difference. If this were a website for any other business, you would be 200% correct—so don’t use these techniques unless this is your audience. Oh, the site is probably NSFW.

Here’s an old video of a speech I gave where the site catered to the same market.

Randy’s Wired Cigarette Rolling Papers

Submitter’s comments: I’ve followed your website for some time I have a few terrible links for you to review. I hope they’ll make the cut; hopefully, they don’t offend your eyes too much.

Just Jobs 4 Students Submitter’s comments: Yukky colour scheme and hidden nav. Vincent Flanders’ comments: Not sure about the navigation, but there’s too much white space and the text is too small. Of course, in this job market, who cares? Finding a job is tough.

PMIS Estate Agents Submitter’s comments: Pure vomit. Vincent Flanders’ comments: I don’t think I’ve seen blue and purple vomit, but the color scheme is atrocious.

Interesting selection. It’s going to be an interesting year.