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

Submitter’s comments: This used to have more information on it. I’m pretty sure he just didn’t find it necessary to him after a while, but that doesn’t help new users who want to know what the software is and does.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Semi-hemi-demi-coherent Mystery Meat Navigation. The top three items are easy to figure out, but the symbols on the bottom aren’t. The RSS symbol on the bottom left actually takes you to what should be the home page. The image at the bottom right takes you to GitHub, the code repository.

SpeedCrunch

Submitter’s comments: I’ve been reading your site occasionally the past years. It’s always good for a laugh. This website that I encountered today contains Mystery Meat Navigation and ultra slow fade-ins and fade-outs. Very “fancy”. It makes me not want to eat there, even though it’s supposed to be a really good restaurant!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The only good thing about the site is that it’s NOT Flash-based. The centered, itsy-bitsy type should drive visitors crazy. What are they thinking?

The Clove Club

Submitter’s comments: Useless animation-like scrolls? Sure. But you’ll have readers that may not have been born yet when this design was popular.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: S/he’s right. This design was popular in 1996, as was the Marquee Tag (first used in Internet Exploder 3 on August 13, 1996). Interestingly, Archive.org’s earliest example of Dispensa-Matic’s website is February 2003. I guess they were trying for a retro look.

Not to offend my Japanese readers, but this website should be nuked and redesigned.

Dispensa-Matic

Submitter’s comments: OK, this is a bad, BAD idea. I love their food – but the fact that music plays when you visit their website, not so much.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Music? What Music? <grin> I have Flash disabled in my browser. When I used another browser I got to hear the music as the page loaded. Don’t autoplay music on your website. Actually, don’t have music on your site unless you’re in the music business.

Taco Mayo makes an even worse mistake. If you go to a page like “Nutrition” and then click the home link, the music starts all over again.

Taco Mayo

Submitter’s comments: After looking at this site, I don’t feel like I would want to have orthopedic surgery at this facility. Personally I would suggest a clean minimalist design, and not use the animated the-dye thing going on in the header.
And for a tour of an operating room, I can’t open this in Safari, this should work across all browsers.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Looks to me like the patient is suffering from early 2000-style web design. Hire two designers and call me in the morning. Actually, the home page I checked Last-Modified date for the home page and discovered it was November 12, 2009. The Home Page!!!!

Flash is used for the header and, of course as we all know, Flash doesn’t show up on mobile. The virtual tours are a mess. They work on some systems and not others. Hey guys! There have been a lot of improvements in web design since 2009.

BJC