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

Submitter’s comments: The South Cafe in darkest Cornwall asks the visitor to ‘discover a hidden gem.’ Having discovered broken links from Bing maps and Trip Advisor, I found that www.south-cafe.co.uk isn’t quite dead – you just have to know to type www.south-cafe.co.uk/South_main.swf to get any content. Flash only content (which scales to fit the window, no matter how ridiculous the result) is bad enough: but no index page? A great way to stay hidden, indeed.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: If there’s one thing every restaurant would kill for is to keep their restaurant from being found by search engines and visitors. I went to Google UK and searched for the site. The only non-restaurant review links I found were for www.south-cafe.co.uk and here’s what you get when you click that link.

Since it’s Flash-based, the site is useless on mobile. The “Menus” page’s own menu is difficult to read even though the text is large.

South Cafe

Submitter’s comments: This page is so horrible I had to share it with SOMEONE.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I thought the page hadn’t been changed since it was created in 2004; however, the header indicates it was last-modified on “Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:53:46 GMT.”

Yeah, it’s for kids, but it’s still poorly done. I especially love the “About the Author” and “About the Illustrator” sections which are just pictures with text used as graphics which you can’t read.

You need Java to hear the music. Java? What? I haven’t seen the Netscape 3.0 button in years. Wow.

George The Moose

Submitter’s comments: Here is a good one.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’ll give it credit for being readable. No artsy-fartsy #777 text. Nope. You have lots of text in lots of different colors and it’s all readable. I must be getting old (my daughter would say, “No, dad. You’re already very, very old) but it doesn’t really annoy me like so many other over-the-top websites. Probably because nothing is animated.

Yes, music does automatically play and the choice of music is surprising. It’s the theme from the movie “The Sting,” which I don’t think it’s the kind of message you want to send. A more logical musical choice would be Prince’s “1999.” Yeah. We’re gonna party like it’s 1999. In this case, we’re going to build a website like it’s 1999.

Parties by Debi

Submitter’s comments: Here is a good one. Surprisingly, it’s GMC. Everyone here who has to use the site is constantly complaining about how bad the font is. It has rendered parts of the site completely unreadable.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Interestingly, screenshots of the home page make the menu text at the top look better than it looks on a monitor. While text is readable on a monitor, the text isn’t crisp and looks amateurish. The text navigation below the trucks is practically illegible and it lacks sufficient contrast. If you look at the very bottom of the page, there’s some legalese that’s totally impossible to read unless you highlight it and stick your face six inches from the screen. Since it’s legalese, it’s perfectly OK to make is unreadable.

If you mouse over Trucks, Crossovers/SUVs, or Vans, you get even more text that’s difficult to read and “choppy.” (Sorry about “Choppy” but it’s almost 4:00 a.m. here.)

Disclaimer: I have relatives who currently work for Ford. I also had lots of relatives who worked for GM subsidiaries or may still work for them (haven’t seen them in 20 years).

GMC

Submitter’s comments: I can read it on my laptop, but not on my office monitor.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: You can read it on your laptop because you can easily tilt the screen and because the laptop’s screen is a lot closer to your face than your desktop’s screen. The page’s background color is #fff and the text color is #898989 which, according to the Colour Contrast Check, fails the WCAG 2.0 contrast ratio formula as shown below:

If you can’t read it, people will leave it.

iTunes Preview for MapQuest