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The Daily Sucker - Current examples of bad web design

The Daily Sucker

Sites featured in articles like Worst Websites of 2010 often are redesigned, which explains why some sites mentioned in my articles don't match their current look. The Daily Sucker features current examples of bad web design which haven't been fixed (yet).

If you see a site that you think sucks, email the URL to me. No personal pages (personal pages are supposed to reflect the individual's personality and artistic freedom) or web site designers (it would look like a conflict of interest), or others of their ilk.

If I think there's some merit to your selection, I may post it along with some commentary. If you know of a site that qualifies, let me know.

The Dee Buchanan Studio of Dance – Bad Web Design Example #1 for the week of August 1-5, 2011

August 4th, 2011 3:03 am by Vincent Flanders

Submitter’s comments: I was looking at some local businesses sites earlier, and this one made me boggle.

It’s like they went, “Oh, that top line of photos look great!” and just started throwing them around everywhere on top of each other like a vomit of dance photos and photos of low-contrast text. And then I checked the source code, and boggled more.

I know it’s just a small-town dance school, but damn, even the town corn maze has a better page than that.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: There are a lot of interesting problems.

  1. The home page TITLE tag is “Home.”
  2. My monitor is 1200 pixels wide and you have to horizontally scroll to see everything because the page is cut off.
  3. The logo might be professionally made, but it’s white. I can’t really see it that well.
  4. They’re not a non-profit so they shouldn’t have a mission statement on the home page. The good news is the mission statement is at the bottom and it’s hard to read because the text is white.
  5. They didn’t look to see what the home page looks like in the Chrome browser. The page is broken, with some sections overlapping others. It’s also broken in Firefox 5.
  6. Images have non-SEO-friendly names like image3461.jpg.
  7. They used some Microsoft Office program to generate the HTML.

The Dee Buchanan Studio of Dance

Posted in Daily Sucker, Usability, Web Design, Worst Web Sites |


14 Websites We Don’t Even… Plus 6 That Are New To Web Pages That Suck on July 26, 2011

July 26th, 2011 1:01 am by Vincent Flanders

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The Huffington post recently ran the article 14 Websites We Don’t Even… Thanks to author Craig Malamut for referencing and linking to Web Pages That Suck. Eight of the 14 sites were originally featured on WPTS and Malamut knows how to pick the worst of my worst. In fact, he has a very good eye for very bad web design and his commentary has just the right amount of snarkiness. Kudos. The other six sites he selected are pretty freaking awful. I’m going to skip one site that seems like a personal site and honor him with submitting the other five as excellent candidates for Worst Website of 2011.

6. I Kiss You

I kiss you is a horriblly designed website

His English is better than my whatever-is-his-native-language (“I try to be good person” should be “I try to be a good person”). By far, it’s the least offensive of the sites. Just a little cheesy (you’ll understand my reference to “cheesy” a bit later).

I Kiss You

10. Historian of the Future

Historian of the Future is a horriblly designed website

The Historian of the Future has a website of the past. As I’ve said many times, there’s no need for a mission statement (unless you’re a nonprofit) because every mission statement can be summarized as “All babies must eat.” Except for this site. It’s mission statement is seven paragraphs long and I’m not sure what it says.

The great news is s/he actually tried to categorize the material and created a navigation system instead of one long page. The bad news is the site is 1996.

Historian of the Future

11. Raft.org

Raft.org is a horriblly designed website

Holy Mother of God. This site was a definite contender for the #1 Worst Website of 2011 (ironically, I have about four sure winners), but the site has “disappeared.” It’s probably gone because of all the traffic The Huffington Post sent. Fear not. I made a quickie video (no sound) that will give you a good idea of how horrible the site was/is.

12. Aiseikai

This site is a horriblly designed website

It looks like it’s for a hospital. The sheer horror of it makes me wonder, “If you check in, will you be able to check out?”

We have everything that’s bad in American websites, with the added problem of Japanese text. These folks also don’t understand DNS. If you leave off the “www” as in http://aiseikai.or.jp/, the website won’t work. Then again, that’s not a bad thing. At the very least, it qualifies, as do most of the others, to join the Over-the-top Websites.

Aiseikai

13. Mama Cheesie’s

Mama Cheesie's is a horriblly designed website

It’s an Italian restaurant, right? Nope. They sell handmade clothing and accessories. Not the least of the site’s problems is the name “Cheesy.” As the Free Dictionary defines the word, “Informal banal or trite; in poor taste.” Not what I’d want. I’m always stunned when I look at sites like this. Doesn’t anybody see that you can’t easily read the text. AccessColor says it fails W3C standards on 43.38% of the total text. It’s a total disaster.

Mama Cheesie’s

Posted in Daily Sucker, Usability, Web Design, Worst Web Sites |


The Newest and 155th Mortal Sin in Web Design for July 21, 2011

July 21st, 2011 2:02 am by Vincent Flanders

Vincent Flanders’ comments: My article, Does Your Web Site Suck? Checklist #1 — 155 Mortal Sins That Will Send Your Site to Web Design Hell, used to feature only 149 Mortal Sins. Well, we’re now up to 155 and it’s a doozy.

After going through hoops to enter my name, address, credit card info, etc., your $@$&*(% shopping cart blows up when I click on the submit button. (This mistake will send you to the depths of design hell.)

This isn’t the first time it has happened to me. It happened when I tried to order an upgrade to Adobe InDesign. If you ever dealt with Adobe, you know how difficult it is. You have to log in—which means you have to dig up the email address and password you created—plus all the usual ID and credit card info hoops. Just as I clicked the last button, it blew up. I never did upgrade InDesign.

You should check out the article. Lots of revisions and more examples have been added. There are examples for roughly 75 out of the 155 sins. More are on the way.

Posted in Daily Sucker, Usability, Web Design, Worst Web Sites |


DAAAM International Vienna – Bad Web Design Example #2 for July 19, 2011

July 19th, 2011 5:05 am by Vincent Flanders

Submitter’s comments: My husband works for a scientific institution and couldn’t believe it when he encountered this website. It’s very hard to believe that this website is for an “intellectual” organization!

Scroll down to see what they added to the bottom of their site—”We apologize for any inconvenience.”—I guess they want to apologize in advance for giving people seizures!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: One of the things that bothers me about programmers—and other really smart folks—is they believe that because they’re an expert in one area (programming, let’s say) they are experts in all areas. I might tone it down a bit and say they believe they’re expert in many other areas. I think that’s what happened with today’s Daily Sucker. They think they’re web designers.

Frankly, I’m stunned. If you told me that an organization like this would have a site that uses animated images, 1990’s background image, pictures with white backgrounds on top of the yellow background, scaled images on subpages, tables and a whole bunch of other web design mistakes, I wouldn’t have believed you. The biggest of these “other mistakes” is the site doesn’t look professional and people don’t want to deal with you.

In some browsers, the graphics don’t even show up (Firefox 5 , Safari and IE9), but do show up in Google Chrome.

This organization reminds me of another one that I saved as a YouTube video—The International Association of Glaucoma Societies. That site was a classic

DAAAM International Vienna

Posted in Daily Sucker, Usability, Web Design, Worst Web Sites |


Web Performance Today – Bad Web Design Example #1 for July 18, 2011

July 18th, 2011 4:04 am by Vincent Flanders

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Back on July 4, I discussed a stupid web design feature I found on musician Robbie Robertson’s website. Here’s what I said:

Go to Robbie’s images from the 1970’s page. Take a look at the first photo entitled, “The Last Waltz.” Click on the picture. What do you get? Well, not what you’re expecting. If you’re like me, you think you’ll get a bigger version of the picture; otherwise, why is there a link? No. You get the same picture at the same size. What?

Today’s sucker is a little bit worse. Web Performance Today ran a very interesting and important article: Fourth-party calls: What you don’t know can hurt your site… and your visitors (make sure you read the article). In the middle of the page you’ll see a 480- x 352-pixel graphic (here’s a screenshot). If you click the picture to see the larger version, you get a slightly larger 667- x 486-pixel graphic that you really can’t read.

If you go to the original image on SlideShare and then click the full screen icon, you’ll get an image that’s 1095- x 806-pixels and you can read it.

If you’re going to make an image bigger, make it big enough to read and understand.

Web Performance Today – Fourth-party calls: What you don’t know can hurt your site… and your visitors

Posted in Daily Sucker, Usability, Web Design, Worst Web Sites |


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