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

Submitter’s comments: So, the Alabama Legislature overhauled their old website to the “new and improved mobile-friendly” site you’ll see once you go to their site.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Mobile friendly? That’s like saying the Ferguson, Missouri, police are friendly to African-Americans. Here’s what Google says this page looks like on a mobile device.

The local newspaper gave it a crappy review too. It’s well-written and touches on many design points. Read it.

The Alabama State Legislature

Submitter’s comments: This is so full of fail – animated GIFs combined with a partisan . . . oh, never mind. I am sure it will vanish down the memory hole. Who ever thought this would come across as a mature, responsible, adult expression rather than a failed “We’re cool, too, and know how to use the web, just like you, including copyright violations”? My guess, some staff member will get blamed or the members will double down.

If it qualifies for suckiness (at least this page, not really the site), better move quickly or copy it.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: “If it qualifies for suckiness”? This is the essence of fail. This 6Mb page is a waste of bandwidth. As far as copyright violations go, Congress is immune.

I hate politics the way Hitler hated Jews. Republicans run this committee, but I’m sure Democrats would be just as stupid and put something similar up. What this page says to me is, “We’re fat, ugly, boring (mostly) white males who are desperately trying to appear hip. I should know. I’m also a fat, ugly, (rarely) boring white male who doesn’t care about whether I’m hip or not.

Web design is not the place to try to appear hip or cool or anything but helpful to your visitors.

U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee

Submitter’s comments: Boy, this one is a… something else. Everything flashing and changing, not to mention there is no wrapper. It hurts the brain..

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Part of me is sad because I absolutely love blinky and shiny things. Probably my ADD or my marketing background. Part of me is sad I can’t read anything so I can’t order anything (I said I love blinky things).

Believe it or not, I wouldn’t have a problem with the way it looks – it is about blinking objects – if there were navigation, the page was readable and the damn menu wasn’t centered.

Blinkee.com (I think there might be some NSFW links, but I can’t really read the text)

Submitter’s comments: Here you go.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The good news is you can read the text. (Part of) the bad news is you have to do a whole lot of horizontal scrolling to read the text. Google’s PageSpeed Insights – the newest, most important ant factor in how well your page ranks — doesn’t think a whole lot about High School Sports’ loading time. PSI gave the home page a mobile score of 67 and desktop score of 55. WebPageTest.org seems to think even less — check it out for yourself.

High School Sports MS

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