I don’t know which is the worse element: the twirling caduceuses (caducei?) or the exploding welcome; the inexplicable flying doves or the pulsating, color-changing radio buttons; the rotating “send email” button or the hideous nurse graphic.
You know, this website would be bad for a 9th grade classroom project. But it’s colossally bad for a high-tech, life-sustaining medical facility. If you were a dialysis patient and were looking for transient care or were relocating to that city and needed a new place to dialyze, would you pick this kidney center if your only contact was the website?
I’m very clearly an amateur yet I must say that even my website runs circles around theirs. Of course, I had to design my own because I’m operating on a shoe-string with no start-up capital. This facility, on the other hand, grosses in the 8 figures annually. There’s no excuse for this monstrosity.
And the saddest part is I know y’all can show me examples that are even worse than this.
Whomever built that web site obviously found the animated GIF Construction Program (ONLY $24.99!!!) and apparently liked it just a little too much. Holy crap, after looking at each page they REALLY like the aminated GIF progam!!Different GIFs for every page!!! Even a dove in flight!!! I bet the person who made that page also uses tons of exclamation points!!!
That site is bad. It reminds me of a page I made for fun while working support a good number of years ago. I made a ton of aminated GIFs (cause I was bored) and put them all on one page just to see how long it would take to load over a dial up connection. I ended up with about 80 on a page and it took forever to load.
Besides the GIFs and the on mouse over buttons the fact that the background changes on every page is annoying as hell.
A lot of people seem to miss the stylistic coordination that good sites have. More than once I was paid to create a front-end for a website that was entirely visually- coordinated (fonts, grahpics, images, ect) only to find within a couple weeks the person in charge of it had found some “cute” (read: ugly) little pictures online (usually animated gifs) and sprinkled them around.
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My urinary tract is working ok for now, but if I never need dialysis I’ll be glad to know that there is a place where only 29 people or less will have had their blood run through the membrane that my blood is running through! I mean, it would turn me off to know that I’m sharing a membrane with 35 people or more, but twenty-nine is ok!
Don’t worry - it’s only one person per dialyzer - it’s used 30 times on the same person. But if even that bothers you, there are plenty of no-reuse facilities!
The funniest thing is the photo they chose to lead with. Those sure are some glamorous vehicles parked in front! You have to ask yourself why they felt like this photo added anything. Incidentally, is the dialysis clinic sinking into the earth? That’s kind of what it looks like.
I looked at the website and was immediately reminded of the one Homer Simpson put up in the Simpsons prior to his Mr X website: it was nothing but twirling graphics, dancing Jesuses and hamsters.
However, the pros can be just as bad. Ok, not just as bad, not even CLOSE to just as bad, but still … pretty bad. Check out the Zaxby’s Restaurants website. Then ask yourself what good that Flash intro did you or them.
I think Flash is about the most overused piece of software for website construction. So many Flash-based websites would be just as attractive, not to mention less bloated and easier to use, if they were written in plain old html, with some good CSS. Flash is a powerful tool that has an important place on the web; shame that so many website designers haven’t worked out that it’s not necessary for most regular web pages.
I don’t know who designed that website, but I do know that, while it was being created, Christopher Walken was standing behind the designer saying “I could use just a little more animated gif!”
I think you guys missed the most important feature.
Mission Statement:
“South Arlington Dialysis Center’s major priority is to deliver the highest quality of health care services to patients with kidney diseases. This will be achieved through a program of continuous education and the participation of patients and staff to puruse the highest goals of medical care.”
