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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My wife: You know that link you sent me? They want me to register.”

Vincent Flanders’ comments: That isn’t helpful. “That link you sent me” tells me nothing. Fortunately, I went and asked her, “What link?” Turns out the link was for a new food site called Gojee.

Basically, you have to register before you can use the website. Yes, I know there are links, but they’re not terribly informative. The “About Us” link tells you it’s a food site that has a lot of writers, pretty pictures and if you tell them what food and food-related items you have in your cupboard, they’ll come up with a recipe suggestion.

I thought the “register before you can get content” concept was dead. I even thought about removing it from Does Your Web Site Suck? Checklist #1. Good thing I didn’t.

BTW, they’ve got some talented back-end people who are performing all sorts of web-page loading magic to keep this site so snappy. Gojee is also using Kissmetrics to help “Identify, understand, and improve the metrics that drive your online business.” Good idea.

In case you they change the site (and with Kissmetrics they might do that if their tests tell them to change), so here’s a screenshot of the Gojee home page. It’s very tasty.

Gojee

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.

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

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I wanted to be a professional poker player long before it became respectable. Back in the early 1960’s you were looked upon as a criminal, which you were since gambling was illegal. Unfortunately—or fortunately—I didn’t have the necessary talent, math skills, and people-reading ability. Oh. I couldn’t keep a poker face, either. Heck, I don’t know the difference between the Big Blind and my Big Fat Ass.

Well, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) seems to have something in common with VF. It’s not good at math. I went to look up the background on Jody Howe. He had recently been eliminated from the tournament and I wanted to see how much he had earned. The page said he had earned a total of $13,349 in his career, but it listed his WSOP winnings as $160,036. In fact, it listed this number twice. In case the WSOP fixes their mistakes, here’s a screenshot of the erroneous page.

If you’re going to use numbers, make sure your back-end software works correctly.

Jody Howe background page at the World Series of Poker