I was browsing through some sports coverage and ran across this link. It’s an amazing (read: bad) site that ignores all the standard rules of engagement in web design and development.
- On a 1024×768 monitor there are horizontal scroll bars.
- The navigation is flash based, and different on the home page than on subsequent pages.
- Using Internet Explorer (IE) you have to click the navigation once to activate it, and again to use it
- It’s tables based!!!
- White space is inconsistent
- The navigation looks like it was built by fisher price
- Despite the fact that they use some CSS, they still use inline styles
- Because only some of the text is HTML it resizes in Firefox, but the rest doesn’t
This list could go on but I’d get tired typing in all the things I hate about the site…or sites. As it turns out the whole thing looks like a league re-design based on some template. What a waste of money. By not following standards they are hurting their search engine rankings, making the site difficult to manage, navigate, and it is not accessible. Why re-design a set of sites and not use the latest in standards? If you’re going to ignore the rest of the development world why not at least implement the fixes like the Flash/Eolas problem? (maybe that’s why…they don’t know about it?) Yes, I know it’s a beta, but it’s pretty far along, as the teams are all posting up their content already.
With the problems that this site has you have to really question where they found their developers. Did they pay bottom dollar to cut costs? Did they hire students, or overseas? No matter what the reasons are they sure got their money’s worth with these sites. Maybe they should take a look at the NBA, or NFL league sites. I know WTT doesn’t generate the revenue that the NFL does, but it sure doesn’t help your bottom line turning away web site traffic.