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

Submitter’s comments: Searching for a local service I came across this site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I suspect this is a large, well-respected company who doesn’t understand that their image is being hurt—especially by their images. Like yesterday’s sucker many of the images are resized in HTML or CSS. Because someone designed the page wider than 1200 pixels, you have to scroll horizontally to see the complete page. One of the partially cut out images is 581 x 388 pixels and it’s scaled down to 300 x 300 pixels.

The menu items have a white “aura” around them, which shows they were designed for an all-white background. You also don’t center text content.

Wet Water Equipment Technology

Submitter’s comments: This is a site of a local woman who deals in Feng shui decorating amongst a million other things that are all listed on the same site in no particular order.  I really like the “Clear (your) Clutter” advertisement on the right column of the page.  I wish it worked.

I thought Feng shui decorating was about proper placement of things.  It’s hard to find my Qi on this site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Qi whiz, I’m always losing my Qis.

The submenus on many/most/all the pages are impossible to read. Some pages are centered and some pages are flush left (Interior Design), we’ve got rainbow dividers (which, thank God, are not animated) and while I like color around me, there’s just a little too much color on the site.

If this is what websites should look like when they’re Feng Shuid, then we’re all Wang Chunged (tonight. [Sorry for the 80’s musical reference.]).

Feng Shui Interior Design

Submitter’s comments: The website is stuck in the 1990s and it’s terrible to navigate.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: They also have links that are unmarked PDFs—lots of them. I viewed the source and counted 103 unmarked PDF links!

The home page has a Google Page Speed score of 14—one of the lowest I’ve seen. It’s major error is it resizes images in HTML or CSS. There are 32 of them and if they were properly scaled, they could save 2.5Mb in bandwidth each time the page loads. The site doesn’t enable caching or compression.

We have too much material on the home page (of course we do), the usual text problems (multiple colors, sizes, etc.). If scientists conducted experiments the way they design websites, all the scientists would have been blown up.

Ohio Academy of Science

Submitter’s comments: First of all, FLASH!!!!  It’s everywhere, the entire site is built in Flash with animations, flashing, auto playing background audio and not to mention that the intro audio file on the splash page sounds like I’m going to see Ron Jeremy appear on the screen any moment.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I don’t think I want to see Flash or Ron Jeremy appear on the screen. I certainly don’t want Ron Jeremy to appear in a Flash video.

I swear I’ve used this site before , but I can’t find any record of its existence. I suspect there’s some sort of horrible Flash template out there that reminds me of this site. There is nothing on this website that requires Flash. Why use it?

Industrial Painter is a classic example of Mistake #6 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — “Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn’t look like it.“ I wanted to find out if every painting company looked like today’s site. I conducted a search using the term “military painting” (which Industrial Painter also performs) and clicked on the first link I found, which was for Breton Industries. While the site won’t win many awards, it’s infinitely better than today’s sucker.

Industrial Painter

Submitter’s comments: This is a viable candidate—it’s actually been mentioned many times in the national media. But actual content is harder to read than a circa ’05 Myspace page.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Many people have said “Military Intelligence” is an oxymoron. I don’t think anyone ever said “Military Corruption” is one. Then again, you can put almost any organization’s name in front of the word “corruption” and it makes sense.

This is just another Over-The-Top Website where nobody in their right mind is going to believe a word that’s said simply because of the site’s look.

If you have an OTTW like this one, make it look like Pinterest. whose design is over-the-top but it looks like a normal site so it’s not an Over-The-Top Website. I know it sounds confusing, but it isn’t.

Military Corruption