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

Submitter’s comments: Sure their audience are contractors and weekend-warriors looking for that one item that will turn their garage into next “Binford workshop of the week.”

And their prices for items such as angle grinders, ratcheting tie downs and pneumatic tires probably can’t be beat.

Still, you’d think a company with over 400 stores and 20 million loyal customers could do a bit better than posting to their homepage a regurgitation of the printed flyer that fills our mailbox (and later serves as a drop cloth for our paint).

Or at least leverage jQuery for a bit more than nagging users of IE 7 that their browser is as crufty as the home page currently displayed — like say collect analytics on which coupons catch the visitor’s attention?-)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Gee. I thought Flyer websites were a thing of the past.

Harbor Freight Tools

Submitter’s comments: This is one of the worst active website designs I’ve ever seen.

It takes up literally less than a quarter of my screen, and all 8 (yup, just 8) pages are the same ridiculous size. Oh, except for the one that has the completely mismatched tiled gradient background image that was clearly made to fit that teeny viewport.

I don’t even remember having a screen small enough for that to make sense, especially by the time websites became a “thing.” Do yourself a favor and don’t be tempted to look at the page source; it’s guaranteed to make your brain start dribbling out of your
ears. And yes, they’re still a functional company.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I don’t believe the site is that “active.” As the photo below shows, the home page was last modified on March 24, 2005. It isn’t an active site if it’s been eight years without a redesign.

The header tells us the home page was last modified eight years ago and looks like it was designed back in the 640×480 days of the web.

This is another one of those “I hope they don’t depend on their website for business” websites. I suspect they don’t need the web. Still, the site sucks.

Gorwood Systems

From Seth Godin’s blog Dilbert understands design.

Submitter’s comments: You might have come across this one already, but just in case…

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Wow. Just click and take a look at it. It’s a (pejorative term deleted) joke.

MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies

Submitter’s comments: Supposedly the largest piano retailer on the East Coast.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s comments like the above that confuse me. Why? The site sucks. Is the company successful because nobody sees their website, but the company has great word-of-mouth? Is the company successful because the website is so poorly designed, but it matches the expectations of their customers? Do they have great TV and other media campaigns? Would they be the biggest piano retailer in the world if they had a better looking website?

The tables, the borders, the centered text, the long home page, and images are resized in HTML or CSS (PageSpeed says that “Serving scaled images could save 3.1Mb [98% reduction] on the Testimonial Page).

It’s 1995-ugly.

Rick Jones Pianos