Sites featured in articles like Worst Websites of 2010 often are redesigned, which explains why some sites mentioned in my articles don't match their current look. The Daily Sucker features current examples of bad web design which haven't been fixed (yet).
If you see a site that you think sucks, email the URL to me. No personal pages (personal pages are supposed to reflect the individual's personality and artistic freedom) or web site designers (it would look like a conflict of interest), or others of their ilk.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: Personally, I prefer more commentary when submitters send in a site; however, I’ll overlook the dearth of analysis because I’ve finally been shown a website that reaches zero on the Page Speed performance index. Briefly, Page Speed “evaluates the performance of web pages and get suggestions on how to improve them.” Today’s Daily Sucker needs a lot of improving.
If you look at the screenshot I took of the Page Speed score for the site’s home page, you’ll see it’s 12 (out of 100). The major problem is the site improperly scales images. The site wastes almost 2Mb because they take an image that’s 2738 x 1353 pixels and use HTML to fit in a 544 x 400 pixel space. The site uses the same technique on seven other images on the home page..
Interestingly, Page Speed Online gives the site a score of zero. That’s right. Zero. Houston, we’ve hit bottom. There’s probably an interesting story on the different scores, but it’s too hard to find anyone at Google to speak with. Yslow, another performance test product from Yahoo!, gives the home page a score of B (84). Obviously, these two programs think certain performance issues are more important than others.
The site has a whole host of other problems. No logo. Centered text on the home page, but flush-left text on the Speaker page (possibly others), an animated globe (why?), underscored text that isn’t a link, a lack of navigation and other issues.
<ADHD moment>IE 9 doesn’t seem to handle named anchor text correctly. When you click the scales images link, you don’t end up at the correct spot.</ADHD moment>.
Submitter’s comments: Flash and music. What’s not to like?
Vincent Flanders’ comments: I love bad design because there’s always a new way to screw up a website. Today’s Daily Sucker has found a new way to screw up Flash. Seriously. It’s a new way.
The home page takes forever to load. Of course it does because it’s a 3.55Mb file. Here’s the part I’ve never ever seen before: All that shows up on the screen is the message “Play Intro.” Seriously. It would be fine if the choices were—you know what I’m going to say—”Play Intro” and “Skip Intro.” Of course you knew the right way to handle the Splash page. Actually the right way to handle a Splash Page is not to have one. Think about it. You wouldn’t have to load 3.55Mb that nobody really wants to see. I clicked the Skip Intro button as soon as I could find it and I’m sure everybody else does—unless they hit the back button or close the window and find a site that makes sense.
When I clicked the “Home” button I expected to be taken back to the Splash Page. No, there’s actually content there. Most people will not click it for much the same reason. The button really should be called “Who We Are.”
The “About Us” button should be called “What We Do.” The content of the “Services” button seems to be short on contrast and very short on paragraph leading.
Submitter’s comments: It’s a web page for a local race track and their web page design is among the
worst I’ve ever seen.
First, you have to scroll left / right to see all the text on the screen. Secondly, the ridiculous use of colored text throughout the website makes it nearly impossible to figure out what’s a link and what isn’t. Third, the images used are ridiculously low resolution and include a ZOOM feature! Fourth, the ‘gallery’ is impossible to navigate. The list goes on. This truly is terrible web design and a page that deserves a spot on Web Pages That Suck. Really bad.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: You do have to scroll if your screen’s resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels. My window is 1216 x 1896 pixels and I don’t have to scroll. On the other hand, the way text is used is frustrating. Click on “News.” I’d give you the URL, but I can’t because the site was created in Flash. Like Freddie, Flash is dead on non-game-based websites.
It’s extremely frustrating to view the Rules page. I can give you a link because it’s an unmarked PDF. When you look at it, you’ll be stunned. Instead of using a PDF, the document should have been an HTML document.
Submitter’s comments: Their website truly sucks. It has been up for over a year with half-deployed content, poorly implemented Flash, background sound, oddly implemented photo slide shows, conflicting contact info, etc.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: If there’s anything worse than Flash, it’s Flash that doesn’t load (IE 9 and Chrome) for a long, long time and, even then, the center content doesn’t load until you click the menu. If you click “Products,” you get the message “page 3.” I love the fax number and email address on the bottom-right of the front page (xxx-xxx-xxxxx). Didn’t anyone notice the problems?
Submitter’s comments: Since you are or were Catholic I thought you might “like” this site. It’s seriously sucky!
Vincent Flanders’ comments: This church is located in Bellevue, Washington and I used to live in the slums of Bellevue. (Seattle area folks will get the joke. The estimated median house or condo value in 2009: $544,900. But not in the slums of Bellevue <sigh>.)
The home page is frame-based, which displays the page “correctly” only if you have a large monitor. If your monitor is smaller, you’ll see both sets of frames. The text is way too small and hard to read unless you’re close to the monitor. Sum/many of the subpages have completely different looks like the Confirmation and the Music Ministry pages. Some of the pictures are incorrectly scaled. There’s one 1.4Mb picture that’s 1,500px × 2,10px (scaled to 214px × 299px). Another is 1,024px × 683px (scaled to 700px × 466px). Some of the links open PDFs, but the links don’t identify them as PDFs.
As to the submitter’s comments: yes, I’m a pre-Vatican II, lapsed Catholic. The Latin at the beginning is a remnant from my days at a Jesuit high school. We had to put A.M.D.G. at the top of all our work. It means “For the Greater Glory of God.” That holy thought comes from the same folks who helped bring us the Spanish Inquisition.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: I have no idea what they do and I don’t care. I’m not sensitive to seizures, but this horrible flashing, strobing images made me feel like I was going to have one. WTF are these people thinking? Wait. They’re not thinking.
Submitter’s comments: First, we have what is just overall weird design, where the Man from Mars
couldn’t figure out what the site is unless he already knew an awful lot about the site. Then we have Mystery Meat Navigation: a rectangle (not obviously a link) labeled Imprint Technologies is actually the contact link. Finally, all the content is presented in frames which, at least on my browser, fill up about 1/3 of the screen.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: On my portrait monitor, they don’t fill up that much space and the contact link is two-thirds down the page. The submitter is right. This is a very weird design. Usually, when people use frames they try to show all the content and try not to make their visitors scroll. On this site, they hide (unnecessarily) as much content as they can. What the Heck? We’ve got the repeating background, the strange colors and lack of contrast. Wow. Bizarre.
Submitter’s comments: Comic Sans alone would be enough but the ugly colors and confusing menus and “cram everything on the home page” philosophy just offends me. Someone needs to be taught what a menu is
actually for.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: Comic Sans? People are still using this font? If you don’t think this it’s aesthetically wrong to use this font, check Google. The home page rated a 41 (one of the lowest scores I’ve seen) on Page Speed, which tells me that Page Speed is actually got some cojones.
The information they provide is quite helpful and, with just a little work, this site could be presentable.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m almost speechless. The site sucks as much as my tennis skills (I’ve never played); however, I believe this site has the worst trailing cursor on the internet.
Submitter’s comments: As you might realize from the link I’m going to send you, I’m a Spaniard. Seeing how there are elections coming soon, I went to register in the local section of my favourite party. I went to the national site and checked on my specific zone. And, after checking the website, I’m starting to have my doubts. The site is 3 years old by now, but that doesn’t really make that much of a difference. You don’t even need to speak Spanish to see the randomly coloured text, broken pictures, SUDDEN CAPS, a banner you can’t click on, horrible header… And, most painfully, they don’t even use the party’s current professional logo, but a GIF showing badly cropped logos from the previous century. Most links from the website are broken, but that isn’t that surprising by now.
My main question is why they haven’t taken that website down yet, when they can clearly make a professional site- the correct one appears 2nd on a Google search (under the horrible one), but, as I said, the official website links to the wrong one- it’s depressing.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: What’s depressing is that your English is better than my English <sigh>. Americans. Ya gotta love how we’re so cosmopolitan <grin>.
On the plus side, it looks like everything that’s a link is underlined. This is helpful because we have links with different colors, sizes and capitalizations.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: Since this type of mistake is easily fixed, I’ve provided a video and a screenshot.
First, the video. I’m hoping stupid WordPress shows the video in the iframe below. Make sure you click the bottom right to get the full screen.
NOTE: Looks like stupid WordPress is being stupid and not showing the iframe. If the YouTube video doesn’t show up in the iframe because WordPress is stupid,here’s a link to the video on YouTube.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s a classic example of an Over-the-top Website. Commenting further would be a waste of my and your time. The site can only be saved by nuking it.
Submitter’s comments: I found this site today and it took me five minutes to realize that to get a menu you have to… (deleted by Vincent Flanders).The designer left the “Untitled Page” default title.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: I deleted the explanation of how to find the menu because I want you to enjoy the process of finding it. What’s the process? Luck—or, perhaps, agony.
This site proves my theory that there’s a finite amount of good web design and an infinite amount of bad web design. This site is a definite contender for Worst Web Site of 2011.
Low Price Skates – Bad Web Design Example #2 for for the week of August 1-5, 2011
Submitter’s comments: Here’s an ugly website.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: Wow! Not so much for the site, but for distant memories. Once upon a time, I was a 6-foot tall 140-lb teenager. I went roller skating every Friday night from 7:00 p.m. to midnight; every Saturday from 1:00 p.m. to midnight; and every Sunday from 1-6 p.m. That’s probably why I weighed 140 lbs.
Speaking of strange, I know the site sucks but I’m amazed at its consistency (yes, it consistently sucks). The navigation seems to be logical and consistent and, unlike 95% of the sites that animated GIFs, their use makes sense.
It’s quite “colorful,” but you can actually read the text. Hmm.
Submitter’s comments: I was looking at some local businesses sites earlier, and this one made me boggle.
It’s like they went, “Oh, that top line of photos look great!” and just started throwing them around everywhere on top of each other like a vomit of dance photos and photos of low-contrast text. And then I checked the source code, and boggled more.
I know it’s just a small-town dance school, but damn, even the town corn maze has a better page than that.
Vincent Flanders’ comments: There are a lot of interesting problems.
The home page TITLE tag is “Home.”
My monitor is 1200 pixels wide and you have to horizontally scroll to see everything because the page is cut off.
The logo might be professionally made, but it’s white. I can’t really see it that well.
They’re not a non-profit so they shouldn’t have a mission statement on the home page. The good news is the mission statement is at the bottom and it’s hard to read because the text is white.
Worst Websites
