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

Carpal Tunnel Surgery Sucks. I’ve been laid up with CT surgery this last week and I was suffering a lot of pain and numbness before the surgery. My typing skills right now are horrendous, so I’m going to limit my commentary. Limit it to zero. Just the submitter’s comments.

Daily Sucker #1: Gordon Wayne Watts Official Research Page

It’s a toned-down version of your Over-The-Top Websites. It lacks the gaudy colors and the violently moving animated GIFs that OTTWs have. Then there’s the stupid music. If the stories lined up, I wouldn’t bother suggesting it the Daily Sucker.

Gordon Wayne Watts Official Research Page

I came across this website after reading the reviews on Yelp. The reviews are mostly positive but the web page really sucks! The menu is a slideshow that rotates every 5 seconds. Why it rotates, I do not know and I can not read that fast. So they give you a way to stop the rotation by moving your mouse over the thumbnail. The only problem is after you stop the rotation you can only read the top half of the menu. If you move your mouse to scroll down it starts to rotate again and there isn’t a way to stop it from rotating on the bottom half of the page. Horrible design.

Joxer Daly’s

Here’s my suggestion for the Daily Sucker.

Essex Primary

This company is been in business since the late 1970’s selling stoves and they do print advertising all the time with this website listed as the contact. You can’t read a lot of the links and that background graphic is from 1996.

J.C. Enterprises Quality Woodstoves

Submitter’s comments: Thought this one would perhaps make honorable mention?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s an honorable mention. Barely. It’s a toned-down version of an Over-The-Top Website. It lacks the gaudy colors and the violently moving animated GIFs that OTTWs have. If the stories lined up, I wouldn’t bother making it the Daily Sucker.

The home page scores well on Page Speed and Yslow. Most of the front-end problems are caused by all the ads. I’m actually impressed.

Michael Savage

Submitter’s comments: Here’s a BAD website for ya!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Actually, I don’t have a clue how s/he got to this page from the home page (it might be a landing page for an email). The worst problem—and there were many to choose from—is that when you mouse over to the Products menu, most of the items on the menu were hidden by the January Special Flash animation.

The home page is deliriously silly. Flash animations galore inside table cells that are outlines. I was so distracted by the animations, I forgot to try to figure out what the site was about.

It’s a classic example of Mistake #6 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — “Have you ever seen another website? Really? Doesn’t look like it.“

Worse, “Have you ever seen a website from a competitor?” On a whim, I typed in rugdoctor.com and was taken to a website that’s infinitely better although it sucks a lot because of a lack of contrast. You look at the page and you know exactly what they’re selling.

VacAway January Special
VacAway Home Page

My predictions are next to last.

Catch the video. May be NSFW.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6DjmYGAaM