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

Submitter’s comments: My husband is into mountain biking and bike-packing and has been shopping for bike bags lately. He loves the products made by Carousel Design Works…or he probably would if he could order them. I present you the product site that won’t let you buy products.

This is a great example of sucking. At first glance it seems like this is a really nice site…but I dare you to try and buy something…seriously, you can’t do it. What’s the point of showing off your awesome products if no one can order them? All they have is a Flickr page with photos of the great things that you can’t have. My husband finally found a PDF download of their “order form” and most of the items m are sold out and there’s no info on how to actually place an order.

What a strange company website. Maybe one day we’ll get to own one of their fantastic bags, if we can just find a dang “Buy Now” button somewhere on the site…even a phone number or other directions for ordering would be good, but you’re not going to find that here.

Oh, and just to make it better the blog has one post that’s been there since the site’s inception. Way to go Carousel Design Works, you did a good job creating a whole bunch of nothing. I guess we’ll buy our bags somewhere else.

Thanks for listening to my rant

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s not a rant if you’re right. I tried to figure out how to buy something. I found how much items cost, but no link to buy. I spent about five minutes in my search—which is 4 minutes 40 seconds too long.

I don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s a northern California wine country thing.

Carousel Design Works

Submitter’s comments: Enjoy.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Personally, I prefer more commentary when submitters send in a site; however, I’ll overlook the dearth of analysis because I’ve finally been shown a website that reaches zero on the Page Speed performance index. Briefly, Page Speed “evaluates the performance of web pages and get suggestions on how to improve them.” Today’s Daily Sucker needs a lot of improving.

If you look at the screenshot I took of the Page Speed score for the site’s home page, you’ll see it’s 12 (out of 100). The major problem is the site improperly scales images. The site wastes almost 2Mb because they take an image that’s 2738 x 1353 pixels and use HTML to fit in a 544 x 400 pixel space. The site uses the same technique on seven other images on the home page..

Interestingly, Page Speed Online gives the site a score of zero. That’s right. Zero. Houston, we’ve hit bottom. There’s probably an interesting story on the different scores, but it’s too hard to find anyone at Google to speak with. Yslow, another performance test product from Yahoo!, gives the home page a score of B (84). Obviously, these two programs think certain performance issues are more important than others.

The site has a whole host of other problems. No logo. Centered text on the home page, but flush-left text on the Speaker page (possibly others), an animated globe (why?), underscored text that isn’t a link, a lack of navigation and other issues.

<ADHD moment>IE 9 doesn’t seem to handle named anchor text correctly. When you click the scales images link, you don’t end up at the correct spot.</ADHD moment>.

Jack Laurie

Submitter’s comments: Flash and music. What’s not to like?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I love bad design because there’s always a new way to screw up a website. Today’s Daily Sucker has found a new way to screw up Flash. Seriously. It’s a new way.

The home page takes forever to load. Of course it does because it’s a 3.55Mb file. Here’s the part I’ve never ever seen before: All that shows up on the screen is the message “Play Intro.” Seriously. It would be fine if the choices were—you know what I’m going to say—”Play Intro” and “Skip Intro.” Of course you knew the right way to handle the Splash page. Actually the right way to handle a Splash Page is not to have one. Think about it. You wouldn’t have to load 3.55Mb that nobody really wants to see. I clicked the Skip Intro button as soon as I could find it and I’m sure everybody else does—unless they hit the back button or close the window and find a site that makes sense.

When I clicked the “Home” button I expected to be taken back to the Splash Page. No, there’s actually content there. Most people will not click it for much the same reason. The button really should be called “Who We Are.”

The “About Us” button should be called “What We Do.” The content of the “Services” button seems to be short on contrast and very short on paragraph leading.

Sutoer

Submitter’s comments: It’s a web page for a local race track and their web page design is among the
worst I’ve ever seen.

First, you have to scroll left / right to see all the text on the screen. Secondly, the ridiculous use of colored text throughout the website makes it nearly impossible to figure out what’s a link and what isn’t. Third, the images used are ridiculously low resolution and include a ZOOM feature! Fourth, the ‘gallery’ is impossible to navigate. The list goes on. This truly is terrible web design and a page that deserves a spot on Web Pages That Suck. Really bad.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: You do have to scroll if your screen’s resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels. My window is 1216 x 1896 pixels and I don’t have to scroll. On the other hand, the way text is used is frustrating. Click on “News.” I’d give you the URL, but I can’t because the site was created in Flash. Like Freddie, Flash is dead on non-game-based websites.

It’s extremely frustrating to view the Rules page. I can give you a link because it’s an unmarked PDF. When you look at it, you’ll be stunned. Instead of using a PDF, the document should have been an HTML document.

Bear Ridge Speedway

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