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

Submitter’s comments: Subtitled “Where valuable information is dumped on you without charge 24/7.” This site has a lot to dump on the visitor.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Dump is the operative word. Don’t click on anything. I clicked on “Click Here” and a PowerPoint presentation immediately downloaded itself. Of course, there’s no warning..

Supervideo

Submitter’s comments: It’s bad enough dealing with the US Post Office’s 20-digit tracking numbers, but they figured out a way to make online tracking even MORE complicated.

Type in your tracking number, which looks like this:

0310 3490 0001 0692 1429

and the form removes the spaces as you type, making it much more difficult to proofread the number.

Good design would strip the spaces AFTER the number gets submitted, so the user deals only with the more user-friendly version of the number. Duh. Appalling to think that millions of people get to deal with this lousy interface. :(

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Well, it’s entirely possible we won’t have the Postal Service to kick around for much longer. You can copy the above numbers or copy some of the example numbers on the page and paste them into the form. It scrunches them together and the small font makes them difficult to read. Oh, well.

U.S. Postal Service Track and Confirm

Submitter’s comments: This is a terrible play on legal websites!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I think “play” is the operative word here. When I first went to the site, my first reaction was, “Holy stuff! This can’t be real.” Then I remembered, “Hey, this is the Internet. It’s full of crappy, stupid web design. Of course, it could be real.” I poked around and I found a link that referred to the TV series Breaking Bad. I think this site was an attempt to get some PR for the show.

You have to love the site. You want to believe it’s real because it’s so believably bad.

Better Call Saul

Submitter’s comments: Enjoy.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Personally, I prefer more commentary when submitters send in a site; however, I’ll overlook the dearth of analysis because I’ve finally been shown a website that reaches zero on the Page Speed performance index. Briefly, Page Speed “evaluates the performance of web pages and get suggestions on how to improve them.” Today’s Daily Sucker needs a lot of improving.

If you look at the screenshot I took of the Page Speed score for the site’s home page, you’ll see it’s 12 (out of 100). The major problem is the site improperly scales images. The site wastes almost 2Mb because they take an image that’s 2738 x 1353 pixels and use HTML to fit in a 544 x 400 pixel space. The site uses the same technique on seven other images on the home page..

Interestingly, Page Speed Online gives the site a score of zero. That’s right. Zero. Houston, we’ve hit bottom. There’s probably an interesting story on the different scores, but it’s too hard to find anyone at Google to speak with. Yslow, another performance test product from Yahoo!, gives the home page a score of B (84). Obviously, these two programs think certain performance issues are more important than others.

The site has a whole host of other problems. No logo. Centered text on the home page, but flush-left text on the Speaker page (possibly others), an animated globe (why?), underscored text that isn’t a link, a lack of navigation and other issues.

<ADHD moment>IE 9 doesn’t seem to handle named anchor text correctly. When you click the scales images link, you don’t end up at the correct spot.</ADHD moment>.

Jack Laurie

Submitter’s comments: Flash and music. What’s not to like?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I love bad design because there’s always a new way to screw up a website. Today’s Daily Sucker has found a new way to screw up Flash. Seriously. It’s a new way.

The home page takes forever to load. Of course it does because it’s a 3.55Mb file. Here’s the part I’ve never ever seen before: All that shows up on the screen is the message “Play Intro.” Seriously. It would be fine if the choices were—you know what I’m going to say—”Play Intro” and “Skip Intro.” Of course you knew the right way to handle the Splash page. Actually the right way to handle a Splash Page is not to have one. Think about it. You wouldn’t have to load 3.55Mb that nobody really wants to see. I clicked the Skip Intro button as soon as I could find it and I’m sure everybody else does—unless they hit the back button or close the window and find a site that makes sense.

When I clicked the “Home” button I expected to be taken back to the Splash Page. No, there’s actually content there. Most people will not click it for much the same reason. The button really should be called “Who We Are.”

The “About Us” button should be called “What We Do.” The content of the “Services” button seems to be short on contrast and very short on paragraph leading.

Sutoer