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

Submitter’s comments: Ohdeargod this site is abysmal. Impossible to navigate, overwhelming to look at, a fondness for orange-on-white text (in Flash, can’t be selected to copy/paste). Easily one of the worst product websites I’ve ever had the displeasure of visiting.

I just wanted to know if we could use Pine Sol on wood…

Vincent Flanders’ comments: If you know where to look, or if you get lucky, it isn’t hard to find the answer to your question. Unfortunately, it’s not good to base your navigation on your visitors’ luck or prior knowledge of a site they’ve never visited.

Initially, I was overwhelmed by all the choices. Since my monitor is set up in portrait mode, as soon as the page loads it starts scrolling. Not only is there some vertical scrolling, there is lots of horizontal scrolling. The key to finding out what to do is focus on the middle green square—”WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PINE-SOL.” The trick is to notice the small type that says, “Or click on”, which is followed by TABLE OF CONTENTS. That’s the secret square. “Cleaning wood” is one of the menu choices.

Too confusing. On the other hand, someone did a nice job of making the 2 billion different colors work harmoniously with each other.

Pine-Sol

Submitter’s comments: Here’s a web page that sucks.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: WTF? I call this type of design, “Situational Suck” as in “If you’re over 25, it sucks. The site is for KidsToday (Generation Z). If you’re not Generation Z, it sucks. Mightily.

Bing Energy Drink

Submitter’s comments: This piece of crap has been around in various obnoxious forms since 2005. It’s no better six years later.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This site is so very wrong—aesthetically, morally, spiritually, etc. The least of their problems is they’re dealing with monkeys, but calling them primates—which they’re not (My daughter phoned and told me, “Dad! Once again, you’re wrong! They are primates!” Then she emailed me a Wikipedia link.).

As the home page loads, you’re greeted with—I kid you not—the theme song from the TV show The Monkees. Looks like someone didn’t read my article, Why You Can’t Use Music On Your Site. I love the fact the home page TITLE tag is “Blank.” I wish the site were, too.

If I ever want my daughter to never talk to me again, I’ll send her the link to this site. She seriously considered becoming a primatologist and simply viewing this site would cause her to fall to the floor in a paroxysm of revulsion and disgust.

Rainbow Primates

Submitter’s comments: Has to be the most visually offensive, color intensive and mind-blowingly ego-centric website that I have ever seen!

This is more than a rant site, but there is no evident means to respond to his thoughts and rants, except for comments and they appear to be disconnected. There is no email address, nor any phone number or address for snail mail.

He just lets it all hang out and evidently doesn’t seem to notice that the very design and color of the text will turn people off!

Anyhow, despite some obvious problems in communications, this website is the most visually jarring one I have seen in a very long time. Maybe you and yours will agree. I nominate it for the worst set of web pages in the new decade and hope we do not see any others that are worse! This site would seem very hard to beat to the bottom of the pile.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It took a bit of time to find out what political position he wanted. I noticed he lost and was considering running for the U.S. House of Representatives. With a website as horrible as the one he has, he probably won’t get far. We could try and politely help him figure it out, but it seems that politeness is not going to work. We need to bring in the big guns—an inspirational message from my favorite preacher—the late, great Sam Kinison. (The link is TOTALLY NSFW. Instead of Sam’s solution to World Hunger, imagine he’s saying the following using the same tone of voice and decibel level):

If you want to become a $#%#$ congressman, make your $#%#$ website look like it belongs to a $#%#$ congressman! Go to the Congress Directory. Choose any $#%#$ congressman—here’s one I chose at random! Make your $#%#$ website look like his, %%#@5@5%!

OK, now go to YouTube, watch Sam in action and substitute the words above. Remember. NSFW. Here’s the link.

Bill O’Neill – Bucks County’s “Voice of Reason”

Submitter’s comments: Yes, that’s right. Rules this site breaks from the get-go: Not realizing the apparently random acronym they chose to name their business is a slang term for masturbation. But the site itself is an eyesore of mid-90s proportions. Even worse than that, really. There’s no discernible design scheme or even organizational structure whatsoever – just graphics thrown on a page over a graphic background with a graphic navigation that lands below the page break. Awful.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I agree, but its awfulness is awesome. What wonderful examples of bad web design techniques like:

As far as I can tell, there is not one single word of legitimate text on the page. We have repeating images, beveled graphics—heck, the home page is nothing but a bunch of images strung together.

I thought s/he was kidding about the meaning of “fap,” but it turns out to be true.

FAP Machine