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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.

TW Steel – An Example of Bad Web Design for August 11, 2014

August 10th, 2014 10:10 pm by Vincent Flanders

The Daily Sucker - an example of bad web design

Submitter’s comments: TW Steel make fancy watches We have pointless Flash intros, a strange “See the world of Watches/See the world of TW steel” round link thing that follows the cursor around, and in the see the world of TW steel bit -some showy hidey Mystery Meat Navigation madness.

I didn’t like it. Maybe you won’t either.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I don’t like it either, which is sad because I really like watches. KidsToday (and many AdultsToday) don’t realize many watches were extremely expensive (except watches like Timex). When I graduated from high school last century my parents bought me “a decent watch” for $150. There were no digital watches. You had to wind them to keep them going. In today’s dollars, the watch would cost $1,100. No wonder my old many lectured me about not losing the watch.

Ironically, the mobile version of TW Steel’s website looks and works a lot better than the Flash-based desktop version.

The Store Locater is a total joke. For “Country” I put USA and for “City” I put Vancouver. I was given a big map and after looking at it I couldn’t tell if there was a store in the area. I don’t think there is one, but why doesn’t it tell me that instead of giving me a map and having me try to see if there’s a store in the area. This massively, massively sucks.

TW Steel

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


Thorn Ford Dental Laboratory – An Example of Bad Web Design for August 8, 2014

August 7th, 2014 9:09 pm by Vincent Flanders

The Daily Sucker - an example of bad web design

Submitter’s comments: New dental laboratory website in my area. I think its horrible. What does websitethatsucks think?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I think you found The Daily Sucker for August 8, 2014.

One of the problem with white links on a black background is what color do you make the :hover Selector. Like most websites, Thorm Ford screws it up worse than most. They blur out the links. Mouse over the down arrow and you’ll discover the sublinks are BLURRED OUT so you can’t read them! On my 1200px-wide monitor, you have to horizontally scroll.

I don’t remember ever seeing a mobile score of ZERO on Google’s Pagespeed Insights results before today’s gem. On this screenshot of the mobile version of their Services page, you can see how unreadable the page is.

Thorn Ford Dental Laboratory

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


Philip Bloom – An Example of Bad Web Design for August 5, 2014

August 5th, 2014 1:01 am by Vincent Flanders

The Daily Sucker - an example of bad web design

Submitter’s comments: Justified type.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Books use justified type. This is the Internet age and KidsToday don’t read books so why use a typographic technique that isn’t normal. The justified text on the home page is what badly justified text looks like. Interestingly, justified text on sub-pages looks “fine”—probably because the line length is longer giving the justified text a better chance to “work.”

Philip Bloom

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


Alfred Sung Eyewear – An Example of Bad Web Design for July 31, 2014

July 30th, 2014 8:08 pm by Vincent Flanders

The Daily Sucker - an example of bad web design

Submitter’s comments: I just had the interesting experience of trying to find a pair of glasses on the Alfred Sung website. I lasted about three mouse clicks into the site and then was too puzzled to continue, so I thought I’d send the site to you instead. Here is yet another example of not only confusing Mystery Meat Navigation, but also a useless, pointless, unnecessarily annoying Flash menu system. Really? You needed Flash for this?

All I wanted was to complete a simple task: look at their catalogue of frames to see if I could find a replacement for the pair of Alfred Sung glasses that I used to own and loved and happened to accidentally destroy last week. I have a general idea of the design I want (in fact, I even had a model number on the old frames that I was hoping I could look up). I expected I could go to their site and say, “Hey, show me all the women’s half-frames you’ve got and I’ll probably give you some money.” As a bonus, I was hoping they might even tell me what retailers in my geographic region carried their frames. The site didn’t really allow me to do any of that.

I have no idea what all those little square buttons on the main site are for and why they are just showing me random pictures of models instead of telling me something useful, and I can’t really be bothered to click on them all to find out. After a moment or two I realized there’s a tiny little, not-well contrasted link on the bottom right saying “Collections”. Call me crazy but if you’re selling eyeglasses your clientele probably doesn’t see very well and you might want to make your text easier to find and read. So I clicked on “Collections” and got… something? I think this is a perfume ad on a eyewear website? I thought I was going to get some eyeglasses collection?

According to that ad, I must be in love with Alfred Sung… well maybe, but I’m definitely not in love with their site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The Mystery Meat Navigation on Sung’s home page is really, really awful. As the submitter stated, Flash is used on the home page and my Firefox browser is set up to not display Flash, so there’s nothing.

As the submitter correctly noted, the site isn’t useful. It’s really just a badly built advert.

Alfred Sung Eyewear

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


Minnesota Board of Pharmacy – An Example of Bad Web Design for July 29, 2014

July 28th, 2014 9:09 pm by Vincent Flanders

The Daily Sucker - an example of bad web design

Submitter’s comments: Though many government websites probably don’t have money to invest in web design, The Minnesota Board of Pharmacy website is particularly bad. I’ve taken a preliminary class in HTML and wonder if I could do better.

Be sure to check out the “What’s New” section with the flashing rainbow NEW after every item listed. Thousands of Pharmacy Technicians and Pharmacists have to access this website every year to renew their licenses and I keep hoping this site will get an overhaul.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Yes, I’m sure you can do better. It’s a fairly standard 1996 design but with some interesting use of navigation. Normally, clicking the logo that’s at the top of a subpage will normally send you back to the home page. Nope. Home links are at the bottom of the page.

The site is usable on a mobile device. Well, it’s as usable as a FrontPage-generated page can be. I can’t imagine anyone filling out a form using a phone, but I guess it could be done. Maybe we should classify this site as a proto-responsive website. Maybe we shouldn’t.

Minnesota Board of Pharmacy

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


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