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

Submitter’s comments: It’s a catalog! Another case of a company that doesn’t know what a website is FOR. I’m not about to download some stinking huge PDF file just to see what they’ve got.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The web is not about putting your catalogs online. I like dogs—other people’s dogs. Even when I owned a dog, I would never ever visit a site like this because it’s too much trouble to find out what they could offer my dog.

I couldn’t read yesterday’s Daily Sucker, Carol House Furniture, because there wasn’t enough contrast between the text and the background. Today, I can’t read the text on the site because it’s too small. Didn’t anybody notice that no matter how big/small you resize the window YOU STILL CAN’T READ THE TEXT?

When it comes to websites, If I can’t read it, I’m gonna leave it.

rollingpet.net

Submitter’s comments: I’ve been into Carol House Furniture before and they have really nice stuff. In fact, their slogan is “because you like nice things.” Their website, though…well, let’s just say that it’s “because we like web pages that suck” and lemme tell ya, it does!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: When I went to their home page I discovered it was really a splash page–a splash page I couldn’t read because there wasn’t enough contrast between the text (#999) and the background (#FFF). Clicking the “Enter” button opens a new window and takes you to their Flash-based website. When it comes to websites, Flash is dead, dead, dead. The page also has two people talking at me. Nobody goes to a web page to have people talk at you. The top menu is not easy to read because the first line also lacks contrast.

If you click “Furniture Selection” and click “Bedrooms” and then “Bedspreads” and finally click “California Kids,” a new window opens and you’re taken to the California Kids website. The navigation is confusing.

Carol House Furniture

Submitter’s comments: This one is a total shocker. Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) here is taken to a whole new level.  Once you delve into one level, you have to spot the little ‘trap door’ icon to get out again.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: An example that shows that using the latest and greatest (HTML5) doesn’t guarantee you a great looking website. The MMN is pretty bad, although they think that periodically showing the subpage names gets them off the hook. No. People have to wait and waiting is not what the Internet is about.

The worst part about the MMN is the text in the middle says “Hover over the images to navigate our site.” Only 5 of the 12 images are navigational links.

The Pickled Ploughman

Submitter’s comments: This bunch were advertising on TV, and I looked them up to see if they were providing a genuine service. It seems they are, but I was intrigued by the Latin tagline on their home page:

Ut a nunc ornare velit ornare ullamcorper sed eu magna.

So I used Google search and it presented several unrelated sites, but they all seemed to have a similar layout — a WordPress theme, it seems. The text is placeholder text, but possibly with an actual meaning relating to the theme; my Latin is extremely rusty and I’m not certain either way. It’s fine that some of the pages appear to be works in progress, and are full of Lorem Ipsum.

But beyonddebt.com.au is advertising on TV. And they have meaningless, at least to them, text on their home page.

Doh!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I could be wrong, but I don’t think there are many Latin-speaking Australians. I also don’t think the phrase “Ut a nunc ornare velit…” translates to “Are you struggling with debt.” A more likely translation would be “Es vos nixor per debitum?”

When viewed under IE8, you can’t view the phone number in the upper-right corner of the home page. You can view it in Google Chrome. They need to use a service like BrowserCam to test their site.

My best guess is the site is “nearing completion,” but since they’re advertising on TV, they need to have the site fully functional. Serious mistake.

Beyond Debt

MAY BE NSFW

Submitter’s comments: This website is for Laren Stover’s book, “The Bombshell Manual of Style,” and what a bomb it is. There is no navigation to speak of, you only progress forward through an incredibly annoying Flash with low-res graphics, and god help you if you need to return to a previous section because you’re going to need to drag all those panties off the screen and “walk” the little dog again.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I took the site’s Bombshell Test and answered 9 questions correctly, which makes me a bombshell with va-va voom to spare.

The above graphic demonstrates the major flaw of this site. It’s created in Flash. Flash is as dead as Steve Jobs. The graphics are poorly constructed and the site does nothing to make me want to explore further. If the site were created using HTML5 Canvas, we’d have designers wetting themselves over its brilliance. In Flash it sucks. Timing is everything.

The Bombshell Manual of Style