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

Submitter’s comments: Is it just me or can you find an obvious way to sign up? Tell me it isn’t just me! I was waving money in front of the monitor and everything!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s not really you. I HATE websites that don’t want to take my money. I’ve had several instances where the order form blew up when I clicked the payment button. I had to scroll to the bottom of the page and there I found the magic word “Support.” Clicking that link led me to your usual knowledge base-type article where I had to scroll down and click “How much is a Premium subscription?”

They need to put a Signup/Login or Support button at the top of the page.

Webshots

Submitter’s comments: Their mystery navigation is that it has left people I know clicking what they thought was a menu to important links that took them nowhere. A friend of mine contacted me today to ask if I ever had problems pulling up certain pages on the Web site. Upon examination, there is a long menu list of pages you can go to that don’t even have hyperlinks.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The menu links running across the top work, but the links on the right side don’t seem to work. Initially, I thought this was an old, dead website but there are event dates scheduled for 2014. Not sure I understand why they made this mistake, but not having links is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.

Christian County GOP

Submitter’s comments: I stumbled upon something so unbelievably bad, well, I still can’t believe it. It’s the new site “Canada: A creative nation” made by the government of Canada.

Usually, you would expect an official government web site to at least look professional. This one illustrates perfectly how, when you try to “be creative”, breaking all usability and web design principles is a great way to distinguish yourself… indeed, this is a unique site, one that all Canadians can be proud of. :-)

Try the French version as well as the English one, so you get to appreciate this wonderful site in both of our official languages. By the way, none of the links a the bottom of the page are working…. some link to ‘#”, some link to non existing pages… nice :-)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Oh boy. It’s bad enough it takes forever to load, but then you get some good old skeuomorphic web design. Like we’re idiots or something. Please take a look at the subpages and try to navigate in the rooms.

Canada: A Creative Nation