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

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m trying to keep up with my four-year-old grandson’s interests – right now it’s dinosaurs. So I’m on my iPad looking for info and there’s a link to a video. I click the link and I’m given a page that says I need to download Flash. The problems are A. The page needs Flash capabilities to play. B. They didn’t set their site up to know when visitors were using an iOS device and didn’t have Flash. C. They didn’t make their video play on all major devices.

I tried to find the exact link to the page, but it seems to be offline. I can only hope they’re fixing the problem.

Submitters’ comments: Look at this site! This site will represent the viking world!
I have never ever seen something as ugly as this.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to clean up the site. Lose the background, fix the text size, learn about leading and create paragraphs where they’re needed.

Halvdan

Submitters’ comments: Found this on reddit. Try to scroll – it doesn’t work! You have to use the arrow keys.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Hmm. The arrow keys don’t do anything when I try to use them. This no-scroll mistake is easily fixed – and should have been easily avoided in the first place. A much bigger issue involves the fact that the page fails Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. And WebPageTest.org isn’t thrilled with the page. It gets a grade of “C” for “First Byte Time” for the 1.472Mb page size and 8.66 second total load time. It’s interestng that the word “jewellery” has two “l’s” in it.

Body Jewellery Shop – Labret Studs Page

Submitters’ comments: I was gathering some info on the topic of buying vs building a house when I came across this monstrosity. Seriously! Animated GIFs, tables for layout! Jeez! My eyes hurt!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Well, Google is going to hate this site. It’s not mobile friendly, its PageSpeed score is 65/100 for Mobile User Experience and 70/100 for mobile speed. Hasn’t the owner of the site ever seen another website? Ever?

Irish Self Builder

Submitters’ comments: A nauseous slideshow of giant images – my favourite is the filthy hand grabbing the chess piece.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: My major confusion was over trying to figure out what the page was about. Once I understood it was about auto insurance for chess players, it all made sense – except for the need for the background images. They don’t show up on iPad or iPhone version – just the desktop. Lose them. I also don’t understand the controls at the bottom right of the screen. The sound icon seems to have no function.

The iPhone version seems to be acceptable. I’d like it if the tagline about being the insurer of the chess federation were more readable.

Tradewise64