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

Submitter’s comments: “Astrobiology – Quantum Physics – Origins – Evolution – Metamorphosis – Extinction,” but not any design sense. Now we know where all the beveled edges and using tables for page layout went to die. I think this purports to be a science publication.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The site has a great URL and a lousy looking website. I know my book covers were colorful and all, but these book covers are over-the-top-space-themed covers. I’ll give them credit for keeping most of the text left-justified. Left-justified is especially nice when reading the opus,  “The Evolution of Life From Other Planets.”  This stuff is way over/under my head (not sure which because I don’t plan to spend the time reading anything here.

Cosmology

Submitter’s comments: This is INEXCUSABLE for a website to do this, and there’s no way to opt out of this to view the site. And no, I didn’t enter my E-mail address. Just WHO signed off on this, anyway?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This silly technique of requiring new visitors to register is a favorite of trendy, online retailers. Fab.com used to do it, but finally wised up. This technique annoys me no end because it adds an annoying extra step. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution: use a throwaway email address. The folks at Touch of Modern should have caught on to the fact that the email address I used to access the site—bob321@mailinator.com—is a throwaway address. Got me inside their site like a champ, though. Here’s a screenshot of what was inside when I visited.

If you’re faced with this kind of problem, here’s an article from 2012 that features a bunch of services to generate fake email addresses—I mean “disposable email providers”. Please note: some websites are wise to this technique and have blacklisted some/many/all of these services. Please only use these services for website registration or to send me suggestions for the Daily Sucker . BTW, don’t email me from your work address. Especially if you’re submitting your company’s website .

Touch of Modern

Submitter’s comments: This web page sucks.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Of course it sucks. I love this site because it belongs to an architectural / engineering company. We all know how much architectural websites suck.

This website is a classic. Scroll over the brown boxes and you’ll get the Carousel From Hell. Jakob Nielsen has an article about carousels that Mimarch should have read. Here are the details:

Designing Effective Carousels: Create a Fanciful Amusement, Not a House of Horrors

Carousels allow multiple pieces of content to occupy a single, coveted space. This may placate corporate infighting, but on large- or small-view ports, people often scroll past carousels. A static hero or integrating content in the UI may be better solutions. But if a carousel is your hero, good navigation and content can help make it effective

As I said earlier, in the world of carousels, Mimarch has the Carousel from Hell. In fact, it might even be seizure inducing.

The home page also has scrolling Mystery Meat Navigation, but clicking the graphics is a waste of time because nothing happens. Why? The home page has around 225 files and eats up 25Mb of bandwidth 25 megabytes!

The sub-pages have text that’s very difficult to read. I could go on but I’ve got to get up early and my tolerance for crappy web design can only take so much.

Mimarch

Submitter’s comments: While on vacation two weeks ago headed down to Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg, TN, we spent the night in Lexington, KY.  We were driving around near the UK campus and saw a place called Hugh Jass Burgers and, I have to confess, I couldn’t help but bust out laughing at the name.

During an idle moment at work, and just out of curiosity, I looked ’em up online…and saw that their website sucks in more ways than one.  For starters, why open the rest of the site in a new window?  Makes no sense to me…

Vincent Flanders’ comments: What makes even less sense is the site is Flash-based and there’s no mobile version. A restaurant without a mobile website? What the heck? Here’s what you see on an iPhone when you go to their site:

Another design mistake is how tacky the site looks on a large, portrait monitor. I almost forgot to mention the website has a splash page and there is music that automatically plays when you enter the real site. (Actually, I kind of like the music, but “kind of” isn’t good enough. As someone who is well-known in the heterosexual community, I wouldn’t want to go out with someone who was kind of like a woman <grin>.)

Hugh Jass Burgers

Vincent Flanders’ comments: School is back in session and lots of colleges, universities, and high schools are teaching web design. Lots of sites are teaching techniques to help you make your site current. Unfortunately, not everyone is teaching good web design techniques.

Today’s example fails Navigation Rule #1: If you have to explain your navigation, your navigation sucks. It also violates Navigation Rule #2 (Don’t force your visitors to scroll horizontally) and Navigation Rule #3 (Make sure your navigation works on the web and on mobile).

Yes, I know this horizontal parallax effect is clever. If the limitations of this technique were explained and a warning that “It’s not for everyone” were issued, I wouldn’t have a problem.

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