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

Submitter’s comments: The home page is merely the beginning. Different backgrounds for each page? Check. Text that doesn’t fit inside the table cells? Check. Text as logo? Double check. Text as logo that doesn’t fit in the header, and ends up covering over most of the first set of links? Triple check. Eye-hurting backgrounds on some pages? Check again.

*BREEEEEATH!!!*

Animated GIFs that serve no purpose? Check. Boring page? Check. Pick a font and stick with it please dear benevolent God why me? Check.

Anything else? Probably check.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I noticed that the ZIP LINE page states this attraction is coming in the 2012 season and that we should “(Check our website and Facebook for updates)” Uh…I’m on your web page.

We also have underscored text that isn’t actually a link and some pages mix flush-left and centered text. On the plus side, the text is large enough you can read it, unless the page color is too bright, like the Prices page.

The site gets a FAIL for mobile.

Thunder Island

Submitter’s comments: You don’t hear from me often, but when you do you can bet it’s because I’ve found something worthy of mention. To be honest, I find lots of sucky sites on the web, but I only send you the ones that truly, inarguably and inexcusably suck.

My nomination for the Daily Sucker is PenGun.com. It is abusive to the mind on so many levels. Everything from the color scheme to the background to the HR tag use just makes me cringe. Still, even with all of that I might have let it go, were it not for the Mystery Meat Navigation. That is where I draw the line.

The navigation on PenGun.com is flash-based, which is bad enough, but on top of that you can barely tell it is navigation because… there are no words in the default view, and all of the graphic links look exactly the same. You don’t get the privilege of seeing where you’re headed until you hover the mouse over each link. And, the descriptions promptly hide themselves after your mouse leaves the area. For further proof that we’re dealing with a Mystery Meat Navigation issue, you’ll find written instructions right below the navigation area telling you how to use it.

And just to add insult to injury, there is a sound when you hover over the navigation.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: ou need a monitor with 1600×1200 pixels before you can see the menu at the bottom. Why it’s there I just don’t understand.

Yes, it says the page is a personal page, but a personal page is a page about you and your life. Heck, even Vincent Flanders.com isn’t personal.

Stinger Penguns

Submitter’s comments: I just saw a local TV restaurant review on this place and thought I’d check it out.  Interesting splash page, except that seems to be the whole site. Talk about Mystery Meat Navigation!

I checked out the link that says “Amazing,” and several of the patron comments about their restaurant are negative. I thought at first maybe they were toning down the background for the critic’s quote page, but they didn’t.  I guess I’m just not hip enough for this website.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This is a rare example of lose-lose-lose. We have Mystery Meat Navigation that isn’t suitable to view at work and, if you do view it, might cause epileptic seizures. What are these people thinking? They’re obviously not thinking about mobile users because I can’t get past the first screen on my iPhone, which is PFS (Pretty Stupid) for a restaurant. Massive, massive FAIL.

Justine’s Restaurant – NSFW and possibly seizure inducing!

Submitter’s comments: I was researching website design for a project I am doing and stumbled across this website. I’m not sure where to look because my gaze keeps going from one paragraph to another trying to figure out where to look as they all seem to compete for attention.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s your stereotypic crappy-looking website. A blind man would be offended by the color scheme. Check out the subpages, especially the “Small But Important Details” page.

I’ve often asked myself, “Why can’t we see that our web pages suck?” I’ve never figured out the answer to this question. The closest I’ve come is an article “Why can we predict other people’s behavior more accurately than our own?” To paraphrase, when we view other people’s behavior we consider the context. With our own behavior, we don’t.

In the world of web design, we can see other people’s mistakes, but not our own, because we’re too close and too familiar with our own pages. We can use our critical eye on another site, but our critical eye goes blind on our site.

Valley Isle Aquatics

After I typed the link, Satori hit me. The existence of bad web design can be explained by the following:

Submitter’s comments: Bad design, good prices

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s your stereotypic crappy-looking gun website. It mostly consists of one long page and looks like it was created back in late 1995.

I went to Google and typed in [guns NC] and didn’t find today’s sucker listed. What I did find was the Hyatt Gun Shop, which was the #1 search result. It won’t win any Webbys for design, but it won’t get listed on this site (unless there’s something horrible I didn’t see during my cursory visit). Hyatt’s look should be inspirational to Classic Firearms.

Classic Firearms

Here’s a link to one of my YouTube videos about another gun site.