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

Submitter’s comments: This new site for a high performance driving school make me wonder if the techniques they teach are as out of date as their design savvy. They’ve managed to incorporate many of your website faux pas greatest hits: animated GIFs, centered text, (even centered bullet lists!), questionable color pallet (lime green text over mustard yellow text on black backgrounds), page dividers, contrast errors (dark blue text on background) and more. Makes me dizzy just looking at it:

Vincent Flanders’ comments: When my first daughter turned 16, I wanted to send her to the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving to learn how to drive during bad weather, car chases and other extreme conditions common to Southern California (where we were living). Bob was a 1960’s American Formula 1 driver—and there weren’t a lot of them. I knew that his school could teach her everything she would need to know. While I knew his school was good, I discovered I couldn’t afford it. Every once in a long while when I’m in a car with her during bad weather she reminds me.

I’m sure Mr. Swanson’s school can teach you what you need to know. I’m sure it’s quite good. I’m also sure that I would never use his services after looking at his website.

Here’s the easy way to review his site. Just compare his site with Bob Bondurant’s.

Don Swanson Racing School

Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving

Which one looks like a professional organization? Which one makes you say, “Damn! I want to sign up!” As I often say, “If you don’t look like a pro, the people will go.”

Don Swanson Racing School

Submitter’s comments: Here’s some Jewish Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) that’s definitely not kosher.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: MMN is never kosher; it’s trefah. (I hope this is the right term. I’m such a goy. I apologize in advance.) What’s really narisch, is the logo on the subpages. When you click on one, you’re sent back to the MMN home page. This is idiotisch.

The fly-out menu on the home page made a little sense back in 2000-2001; it makes no sense today. To prove that I’m a goy’s goy, I was going to complain that the menu was on the right side. Then I realized that Hebrew text is read from right-to-left. Obviously, the text on this site is in English but its placement “makes sense.”

As far as the use of MMN on this site—Farschemn.

Yeshivah of Flatbush

Submitter’s comments: OCR is one of the big exam boards in the UK and they’ve just launched a re-design that makes their website essentially unusable. It has random design elements, inconsistency as a theme and a bizarre sideways scrolling navigation/mangling control. I’ve been in the software business for 20 years and this is probably the worst combination of a bunch of awful ideas I’ve ever seen!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: If I remember correctly, some well-known / published author / web authority is the father of this navigational monstrosity. I’m sure it’s a guy who created it because no woman is this illogical.

Visitors have to work to use the navigation. If they have to work, then they have to think. PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO THINK. Doesn’t anyone remember Steve Krug’s web design best seller "Don’t Make Me Think"?

Someone will say, "Well, it’s this way for mobile users." No it’s not. OCR.org doesn’t have a mobile or tablet version of its website. Using the arrow navigation on a tablet or iPhone is an awful experience. At least we only have until December 21 to put up with this stupidity.

OCR

Submitter’s comments: Here’s a site meant to help promote the band hyperbubble.

Hyperbubble (official web site) combines Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) and multiple pages that contain MMN to create fun, funky splash pages that guard users from ever finding their actual content. They’ve also never heard of text on the Internet and rely on images for gig announcements. Not that you’ll ever find one.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It’s a band site and they’re allowed to be stupid. Fortunately, the music community has, in large part, stopped creating stupid websites. For example, the person who submitted U2’s site back in 2000 said the following:

Although I LOVE U2! The site designer should be ASHAMED!

These guys have plenty of money to work with and the site just doesn’t run
properly and looks completely devoid of artistic merit… ( I know typically artists
sites are a little flashy but they also usually WORK ) In addition to the dreaded
*mystery meat*… I find myself trapped, when I enlarge pictures as instructed,
and when I attempt to enter the different *rooms* it hangs up and you have to
click on the window to register then click exit to get out! VERY VERY POOR! Check
it out!

When you go to U2’s website today, it looks, for the most part, like a regular website. Especially when you get past the splash page.

You don’t keep information away from your customers.

hyperbubble

Submitter’s comments:. I came across this hot pink beauty that is slow to load, horrible to read, and all around miserable for the end user to experience. I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that it is an Architecture site, but I thought I would share. Keep up the great work! :-)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I was impressed that Rice University not only has their own mobile app, but their website works on a mobile phone—even without using HTML5. Apparently, I was under the mistaken impression that HTML5 was necessary to use the Viewport tag. I sit corrected. On the other hand, the school of architecture is not impressive in a positive sense.

The site has no mobile app or even a mobile version. That’s the least of its problems. The most serious is the contrast clash of the flaming pink color with the white links below. Your eye is immediately drawn toward the pink section with the school’s logo. Then, when your eyes go toward the text your eyes blur momentarily. There must be a scientific name for this, but I don’t know its name.

We also have Mystery Meat Navigation toward the bottom of the page in the Publications section. Maybe these book titles (when you can read them) mean something to other architects, but I can’t be sure.

The home page is HUGE. It clocks in at 7.1Mb. Not only is it fat, but it’s slow. It takes over 3 seconds for the first byte to show up and then takes an additional 3.5 seconds to start to render. The page takes 44.5 seconds to fully load. Here’s a waterfall of the page (this link is the same as the one above) showing what’s wrong.

Rice isn’t alone. Lots of architectural websites suck. Check out Architecture — An Industry With Sucky Websites.

Rice University School of Architecture