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

Submitter’s comments: This has to be the single most annoying site I’ve ever come across. The bizarre autoscrolling… the flashing graphics… the “mystery meat” navigation, with hidden nav elements popping out at random as you move the mouse around (all the while the page scrolls nauseatingly under it)… words fail me! Must be seen to be believed… but I recommend taking Dramamine first.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: As I like to say, “Crap on fine China is still crap.” It’s a beautiful website, but useless as far as navigation goes. It’s no fun to try to read the text,either. I love the jewelry, but I certainly can’t afford anything. The company is located in Ojai, California—the word “Ojai” is Indian for “expensive tourist trap.” Well, most of what I saw in Ojai is worth the money, but the town is a little too-too for my taste—just like this website.

Jes MaHarry

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s a Flanders Family tradition to go to the Seattle Dog Show. Only illness and pregnancy (my daughter) or quarantine (my grandson was a preemie and couldn’t mingle with the public) keep us from going. The American Kennel Club keeps track of all sanctioned dog shows so it was natural I go there to find out about the dates for the Seattle Show. Imagine my surprise when I arrived. You can squint at the image above, or open up a bigger image of the AKC home page in a new window.

Here are the problems (as marked on the image)

1. There’s a large image that tells you to watch the 2012 AKC/Eukanuba National (Dog) Championship on February 2, on ABC TV.
2. However, at the top of the screen, there’s a message under “Top News Items” that a Wire Fox Terrier named “Sky” wins the Eukanuba championship.
3. If you somehow missed the news item, there’s a picture of Gabriel Rangel (I obviously spend too much time watching dog shows if I know his name) holding the winner and the ribbon.

Why the @#$% would anyone, outside of dog show participants, want to watch a dog show if they know who’s going to win?

Maybe the AKC thinks only serious dog show participants are going to go to their site. Wrong. There’s a whole section on how to choose a dog that’s aimed at newbies. Regular people view the site. I won’t watch the show on TV.

THIS IS SO STUPID.

American Kennel Club

We’re getting closer to the bottom of the barrel!!

I’ve gone through the Daily Suckers from September through December and I whittled the list down to 14 “winners.” I’m now faced with the unpleasant task of going over the previous eight month’s worth of garbage and come up with my lists of the Worst Websites of 2012. Pray for my sanity.

Worst Websites of 2012: September to December Contenders

Submitter’s comments: Unfortunately, I am submitting the recent redesign of my college’s campus store site. Every student in the college uses this site to find the necessary course material for each semester and, frankly, this site is an atrocious (example: small blue links on a red background)

Hopefully some outside opinion will make them consider another update!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m hoping that the garish colors used here are the school colors. Even if they are the colors, you don’t have to use them on a bookstore. I don’t know what the relationship is between this school and RISD (Rhode Island School of Design—a Daily Sucker ten years ago), but somebody needs to help out this campus store.

A quick look at the home page found at least one typo (“locatedon”). Did I mention that the colors suck and the text doesn’t look like it’s styled with CSS (text rubs up next to box borders), but there are two stylesheets. Both of them suck too.

Rhode Island College Campus Store

Submitter’s comments: My father works as an electrical tester and was looking for some new equipment, he stumbled across this in his searches:

You can clearly see that, at some point, a professional helped to design this site and, over time, someone or something has just torn their work to shreds.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I agree. It looks like they had links called “Latest” and “Featured” and “Special Products” that went to subpages. Not now. They added these to the home page and then started listing items. Then they mucked up the center column by adding information about the company and ordering information. They basically threw in the kitchen sink. The subpages are equally messy.

I’m trying to cram in some sites before the year ends to try to get them into consideration for the Worst Websites of 2012.

Testermans