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

Submitter’s comments: I’d like to nominate The Marketing Collective as a Daily Sucker. Unlike The Daily Sucker for February 11th (Velokraft), it IS possible to get off the home page banner image, but… well… see if you can work out how. And once you’ve managed to find the rest of the page, click on a link to another page. You go back to the full-page banner all over again. Abysmal

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The designers don’t know how to build websites for different platforms, just don’t give a left-handed flying farkle about their visitors, are ignorant of web performance, or all three. Let’s take a look at these three issues.

The designers don’t know how to build websites for different platforms. Don’t take my word for it. Take Google’s word for it. Even though it appears (and I use that word loosely) the site was designed for mobile devices,Google PageSpeed insights gives it a score of 22 (out of 100) for loading speed for mobile and 31 for the desktop. The good news is Google gives it a score of 96 for Mobile User Experience.

The designers don’t give a left-handed flying farkle about their visitors. Look at the screen shot above and guess what’s wrong. The text doesn’t fit (acceptably) on a wide-screen monitor. Here’s a bigger screenshot. As one of the guys on ESPN’s SportsCenter says, “C’mon, man.”

The designers are ignorant of web performance. I ran the page through WebPageTest.org and the site received…well…basically a grade of “F.” Add Google’s comments above and you’ve got a site that sucks.

I didn’t have trouble figuring out the crappy navigation, which is based on poorly conceived parallax scrolling, but that’s because I’ve spent the last 19 years looking at crappy navigation. Hmm. I’m thinking I’ve wasted my life.

The Marketing Collective

Submitter’s comments: I’ve got a real sucker for you here. Velokraft is a European manufacturer of very beautiful, very expensive, carbon fiber recumbent bicycles. I think they’re German but I really don’t know because their Facebook page tells you very little and their website is unfathomable. This is a stage beyond Mystery Meat Navigation: it’s Mystery Mystery Navigation. There are links which display the front page in English, German, Spanish and Polish and two further links for the sites creators. Beyond that I can find no way to get into the site proper.

I know there is more because Bing can see it and take me there. I wondered if AdBlockPlus was responsible for me not finding a link, but even after it’s disabled I still can’t get in. Oh, and I’ve tried on three different browsers including the venerable Opera 12. If you can find the secret of the missing link I’d love to know it.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I wish I knew the secret of the missing link. I don’t. When I went to the home page, my web of trust plugin said the site rated “Poor” on Trustworthiness and “Unsatisfactory” on Child Safety. I say it’s BS and a waste of HTML code. While it’s bad, it’s not so bad that it “would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” It’s bad enough to be the Daily Sucker.

Velokraft

Submitter’s comments: Ownerterms.com is part of a ring of real estate web sites, all with similar designs and all with the same problems. The main page is too wide for my Macbook’s 1280×800 screen. Add the garish colors and oversized text, and you have a mess. Oh, and don’t get me started on the messy, outdated code.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Obviously, if it doesn’t fit in our submitter’s 1280×800 screen, it isn’t going to fit in my 1200×1700 screen. The good news is you can read the text. The bad news is a couple of weeks ago, Google sent out emails to websites that weren’t mobile friendly and on their PageSpeed insights page they said this page “…may not pass Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Oh, the home page’s mobile score was 44/100 and the desktop score was 67/100. See the screenshot below for how the page shows up on mobile devices.Click the image to see the site as Google sees it.

I’m going to give you a warning you need to heed: If you don’t fix your websites to be mobile friendly in 2015, Google will come down HARD on your site’s search engine rankings.

Owner Terms