I like to ask this question of the Dope every few years: What are some of the worst websites you’ve encountered and/or had to deal with? By “worst” I mean worst design, ugliest, worst functionality, etc. So the website’s content doesn’t necessarily qualify it for this list. A white supremacy website, for example, if it was laid out well and easy to read, wouldn’t make this list. But your local florist, if their website was ugly, not helpful, etc., would.
I’ll nominate a local butcher: Zimmerman Meats. Info about locations, how to contact them, and what they charge to process deer. No information about inventory or prices, which is probably what 90 percent of their customers want to know.
Facebook. It may have improved, but it used to be a mess.
No intuitive way to navigate via menus, no tooltips etc.
Lord only knows how it became so popular, apart from its policy of pushing users to ‘add friends’?
I have an account because someone said they had put up some pictures I wanted to see.
Hardly ever log in to it.
.
I’m trying to think of a well-designed web site. Maybe TSD is pretty well designed.
But I think the worst may be Bank of America. I try to login, the account number comes up automatically, but it won’t let me even enter the PW. I have to clear the account number, go to the PW file, get the account number and enter it, back to the PW file, get the PW and enter it and then I get a 2nd factor ID to finally get to the account. The only thing I use the account for is to collect social security. I figure I better check if Trump is still letting payments go to non-residents.
Warning! If you go to this website, Life Action Revival, please do not click any farther, because not all the links are totally fucked up. //Brandon Joyce.//
There’s too many to be specific for one website, but a lot of restaurant websites tend to be poorly set up. In particular finding a good menu is difficult in a lot of cases. Some times they have a small, out of focus photo as the menu. Other times they don’t have a menu at all, and in order to look at what they serve you have to click on the link for online ordering. Another issue is the “enter your zip code to see the menu” phenomenon, as if there are major differences between different locations of the same restaurant.
I hate the restaurant websites that assume that I want to order right now and don’t show me the menu because it’s too early in the day. Sometimes I just want to see what they have.
Uber-crank websites are not generally known for good website design.
This isn’t the worst I’ve encountered, but it’s plenty bad, featuring characteristics typical of such sites, including:
an endlessly scrolling main page,
(mostly) black background,
colored-lights-can-hypnotize fonts and of course
batshit-crazy content.
not-so-batshit-crazy content which somehow fits into the connect-the-dots mindset of the crank(s), like this.
*the hero of this website is long dead, but one or more of his devotees is keeping the candle of lunacy burning.
Vincent Flanders long had a great website, “Webpages That Suck” featuring terrible sites, the mistakes they made and the characteristics of good ones. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated since about 2015 and many links are non-functional. He’s still semi-active on Facebook.
Years ago, Mirsky’s Worst of the Web highlighted a few of these every week. Of course, back then, everyone was doing a web page, even if they had no design talent.
My mortgage transferred three times before I paid it off two years ago. It went from Regions to USBank and then for the last couple years a state run HUD agency. They had the most awful website I’ve ever seen. It looked like it had been built by a junior high student. When they had a special message, it would float in red letters above the main page. It looked absolutely ridiculous. There was only the most minimal content on the other pages.
It had no notification system so you could only get important messages by logging in. I only logged in when I was making a payment. On a couple occasions, I then saw a hovering red message that because of a holiday, payments would need to be made early (everyone’s payment date was the 1st). I was never charged a late fee but it really pissed me off because who looks at their mortgage website until they are making a payment? Anyway, I started paying more attention to when holidays occurred. It also could not save your payment information but due to the shoddy mess of the website, I was fine with that. You also got no confirmation because no notification system. I was so happy to be done with them.
The Heaven’s Gate cult used to support themselves by doing web design. Which is hard to imagine, because even back in 1997 I can’t believe anybody considered this an example of good web design:
It’s always breakfast too, when they JUST have the breakfast menu out but it’s 10 minutes before breakfast ends so I won’t be there when breakfast is over and I just want the lunch menu to look at.
Subway too just doesn’t let you look at the menu of your local Subway if it’s closed. I have to cheat and find a nearby 24 hour Subway just to look at the menu.
I can think of many examples of poor website design, but often they are for businesses that are not naturally tuned into such things, like service businesses. They probably have their nephew design a site for them and don’t look at it critically. They don’t include the who, what, when, where and why people should do business with them.
Restaurants that don’t include their menus are repeat offenders, as many of you have noted.
It’s the ones that should know better that amaze me. I was recently perusing a web site for a local business that specializes in communications. You’d think they would know how to create an effective web site. But no!
Their web site gave me no directions on how to contact them, no names or emails of contact people, and worst of all, no samples of their work, either print, web, audio or video. They did, however, have a long, boring history of their company going back decades, which was of no interest to me at all.
Again, they are in the COMMUNICATIONS business, but you can’t see it from their web site.
My late MIL used to bank with PNC and since she was almost blind, I managed her banking on line. It was amazingly user hostile! Finding her accounts, moving money around, paying bills - nothing was easy. We were so glad when she moved to our credit union. I have no idea what PNC is like now, but I hated it with a white hot hate when I was forced to deal with it. And, FWIW, my husband and his mother had problems dealing with them in person, too. But that’s another thread.