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

Submitter’s comments: My husband is into mountain biking and bike-packing and has been shopping for bike bags lately. He loves the products made by Carousel Design Works…or he probably would if he could order them. I present you the product site that won’t let you buy products.

This is a great example of sucking. At first glance it seems like this is a really nice site…but I dare you to try and buy something…seriously, you can’t do it. What’s the point of showing off your awesome products if no one can order them? All they have is a Flickr page with photos of the great things that you can’t have. My husband finally found a PDF download of their “order form” and most of the items m are sold out and there’s no info on how to actually place an order.

What a strange company website. Maybe one day we’ll get to own one of their fantastic bags, if we can just find a dang “Buy Now” button somewhere on the site…even a phone number or other directions for ordering would be good, but you’re not going to find that here.

Oh, and just to make it better the blog has one post that’s been there since the site’s inception. Way to go Carousel Design Works, you did a good job creating a whole bunch of nothing. I guess we’ll buy our bags somewhere else.

Thanks for listening to my rant

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s not a rant if you’re right. I tried to figure out how to buy something. I found how much items cost, but no link to buy. I spent about five minutes in my search—which is 4 minutes 40 seconds too long.

I don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s a northern California wine country thing.

Carousel Design Works

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I went to Staples and searched for “stickers” and this is what I got.

My wife: You know that link you sent me? They want me to register.”

Vincent Flanders’ comments: That isn’t helpful. “That link you sent me” tells me nothing. Fortunately, I went and asked her, “What link?” Turns out the link was for a new food site called Gojee.

Basically, you have to register before you can use the website. Yes, I know there are links, but they’re not terribly informative. The “About Us” link tells you it’s a food site that has a lot of writers, pretty pictures and if you tell them what food and food-related items you have in your cupboard, they’ll come up with a recipe suggestion.

I thought the “register before you can get content” concept was dead. I even thought about removing it from Does Your Web Site Suck? Checklist #1. Good thing I didn’t.

BTW, they’ve got some talented back-end people who are performing all sorts of web-page loading magic to keep this site so snappy. Gojee is also using Kissmetrics to help “Identify, understand, and improve the metrics that drive your online business.” Good idea.

In case you they change the site (and with Kissmetrics they might do that if their tests tell them to change), so here’s a screenshot of the Gojee home page. It’s very tasty.

Gojee

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I click a link that goes to SeoMoz’s MozCon SEO seminar. Here’s what I see along with some notes about how I felt. Granted, I could have scrolled down and found the information. As Steve Krug brilliantly pointed out, “Don’t Make Me Think.” Or as I like to say, “Don’t Make Me Freaking Think.” James Robert Johnson has better examples—not to mention a better explanation of the problem—in his article “Please print the day of the week along with the date.”

BTW, don’t put any kind of dates on your articles. Jakob Nielsen’s brilliant article F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content loses a lot of its luster—incorrectly—when you see it was written on April 17, 2006 (it was a Monday but it serves no purpose putting that in the article). Still, you automatically think, “This is old research and I’ll discount it.”

Submitter’s comments: Netflix released a new design of their site. You need to be a subscriber to see the monstrosity that they have unleashed but I think you might have a candidate for next year’s awards. The overall usability has fallen off the charts.

But don’t take my word for it – read some of the 1400+ comments on the blog that have been posted since yesterday morning about this thing.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Wow. I was thinking about joining. My son-in-law has it so I’ll have to check it out.

Netflix explains their new navigation. When you have to explain your navigation, your navigation sucks. I’ve never seen an example to disprove this theory. Sounds like they’ve added Mystery Meat Navigation.

Here’s the Netflix blog discussing the redesign along with 1,500+ comments