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

Submitters’ comments: Either familiarity with somewhat archaic Eighteenth Century English alerted me to this and no one with the institution caught it or “Iquim” is more appropriate for a soon-to-be-released Apple device and app likely to set unbelievable sales records.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’ll actually get in line for that product. Yes, the name’s bad but the site is socially acceptable except it fails on Google’s mobile test and PageSpeed Insights (9/100). Mobile is pretty much where all the activity is these days.

The real fail is the lack of contrast in the submenus. Light gray text on a black background is hard to read. If your visitors can’t read it, they’ll leave it.

iQuim

Submitters’ comments: Word on the street is that you’re back. I won’t ask.

Anyway, here’s a page I just ran into, and I thought of you. I figured you haven’t had enough pain in your life. This is just a textbook case of thinking that everything wrong with the internet is everything right…Flash website, music that loads and plays without asking, lots of text that you can’t even copy/paste, slow loading with percentages that animate, and I’m sure you can find more.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Flash is dead. Let me say that for those few people who are hard of reading…FLASH IS DEAD! If you don’t believe it, the last bastion of Flash is advertising and Google says Flash is dead as of January 2, 2017. It doesn’t work on mobile. Nobody likes it. The screenshot above is what you see on the desktop. It sucks. This is what mobile looks like. It sucks worse.

TagTeam Signs

Submitters’ comments: I haven’t written to you in a long time, but today I found a site that’s right up your alley. The Trident Case company supposedly makes rugged cases for smartphones and tablets, but their site is a delightful mix of bad technical glitches, mystery meat navigation and disorganization. There’s even a special bonus! The fun begins at Trident Case.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The submitter had a lot of bad things to say that I’m sure were accurate at the time s/he submitted this site. Unfortunately, it was stuck in the wrong folder. Still, the obvious problem is this site wants me to think. Nobody wants to think. It looks like the first thing that happens when I visit the site is I’m being forced to fill out a subscription form. I don’t see an “X” on my phone or a small window on my desktop. Like many internet users, if there’s no promise of naked and/or dead bodies, I’m not staying around to figure out your navigation scheme.

Trident Case

Submitters’ comments: Unfortunately this is actually my bank’s website. I hated their previous website, but a few months ago they launched this new redesign and it’s worse than their previous site. I get the creeps every time I have to enter my online banking info.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: If you get creeped out by the new site, I don’t even want to know what your reaction was to the previous monstrosity from October 2015. I don’t know if they’re using Flash, but it’s worth checking out for the talking head. The new site is 100% better than the old one, but there are some interesting page load problems. WebPageTest has some interesting results. Go to their site with a regular browser, the site gets an “A” for First Byte Time, but the page load time takes 6.812 seconds; however it gets an F on mobile, but its load time is only 3.499 seconds. Oh, upon initial inspection the mobile site looks fine.

Aesthetically, it’s challenged. Aesthetically challenged. What galls me is when I “shrink” my window to a width of 980px, the navigation disappears as well as the “Breaking News.” I don’t care about the Breaking News. The navigation – that’s a different issue.

Service Credit Union

Submitters’ comments: Visit the web design past with this Italian “medical” site, which also uses FrontPage. I strongly suspect some (pejorative term deleted), if not OTT (over-the-top). On site pages are often very long (20 or more screens’ worth). The top menu seems to take you to either more pages on the site or other sites, but not in any uniform way. Have at it.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s in Italian, but since I use Google Chrome as my browser I had Google Translate’s function translate into English because like most Americans, I only know one language. It’s definitely an Over-The-Top website and not just because it’s talks about alternative medicine. It’s a classic example of Mistake #6 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 — “Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn’t look like it.“ I call this type of design the “I haven’t taken my antipsychotics in a while school of web design.” Maybe it’s just a terminally fatal case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome.

Oh, before you go to the site, check out the screen below:

The Web of Trust plugin does NOT like the site at all. It told me that it has an unsatisfactory score for Trustworthiness (2/5 score) and Child Safety (2/5 score). Caveat emptor. I think we can consider it a design flaw <grin>.

As expected with this type of site we have text problems—but fewer than is “normal” for an OTT website. We have both flush-left and centered text on the page and some links are in bold and others aren’t. He uses TABLEs with borders.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights, whose goal is to “Make your web pages fast on all devices,” doesn’t think much about their home page. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test thinks even less with the page because it flunks their test.

If you are the purveyor of an alternative medicine site and want to look like you know what you’re doing, go to The Food Babe’s site. For those of you who are unaware of her, she’s the object of ridicule in the scientific, medical and nutritional communities who practice conventional medicine. No comments about whether she is or is not practicing woo. Of course, going to her site brings up a Web of Trust popup window. She’s viewed slightly more positive than Mednet.org, scoring 3/5 on both Trustworthiness and Child Safety. I view her more positively because her site gives the appearance of competence.

Mednat.org