Web Pages That Suck

Since we’ve been looking into some successful and not-so-successful publishers’ websites, I decided to see what I could find on the Web about effective websites/design in general.

One of the first sites I found was webpagesthatsuck.com. Though it sounds like it would be entirely devoted to making fun of the many terrible websites that can be found online, there is also a lot of helpful information for businesses looking to improve their sucky websites. Really, the majority of the site is dedicated to bad websites, with lists of the Ugliest/Worst Business Websites from 2005-2009 and Worst Webpages of the Decade. It’s harsh, especially because these are actually business or non-profit websites—not just the result of some kid messing around on his parents’ computer. But it’s also true. The websites listed are really bad.

But what’s also there is a Web Redesign Checklist, featuring a long list of things a business should look for to determine if its website sucks. The recurring message is that if your site or its content is designed to meet the needs of your business rather than the needs of the visitors that are reaching the site, your website sucks. A few more ways to tell if your website sucks:

• A quick scan of the homepage doesn’t tell visitors much about your purpose
• There is any Flash, splash, or background music (unless it is a music website)
• There are pop-ups
• The text is too small, or in ALL CAPS
• There are dead links, or sections that are under construction but still accessible
• The calendar information is outdated
• There is scrolling, blinking, fading, or moving text
• Links are not clearly labeled
• The color scheme is ugly

The checklist provides 149 different items, all of which have probably annoyed users at one time or another when visiting business websites. The solution the author provides is for the web designer to go through and fix any items on the company’s website that were checked. It seemed overly simple at first; but really, if you are aware of the bad design elements present on your business website, it shouldn’t be that hard to fix them.

The funny part is that webpagesthatsuck.com is not very well designed itself. The author (designer? Sucky webpage determiner?), Vincent Flanders, freely admits that the site has always been poorly designed. I thought that a poorly designed website about poorly designed websites would undermine the credibility of the information presented, but the checklist Flanders provides seems to me—a person with little to no web design experience—to be legitimate.