What’s the Difference — Suck vs. Sweet

They updated, and it no longer qual­i­fies as suck…

UPDATE:  Royal pil­low did some­thing about their suck, and they no longer qual­ify for abject suck.  Thank you Royal Pillow.

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I spend a lot of time bash­ing suck because, hey, it’s easy and I’m a bit, shall we say, lazy? But what do I con­sider good in the realm of web design? Well, I think it’s about time to com­pare sites in the same cat­e­gory. That way you, the folks read­ing can see an exam­ple of good design along side suck. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it boys and girls?

So, pil­lows. Who cares, right? Chicks care, that’s who. I’m mar­ried to one who doesn’t (which rocks) but I’ve dated ones who do. So, if you’re into pil­lows, you know what cool / sexy / awe­some is, right? Well, it turns out that some pil­low peo­ple don’t. I’m talk­ing, of course, about the suck site in this squishy duo, Royal Pil­low. This site is of the nor­mal type of suck, with lame col­ors and stu­pid but­tons and a back­ground that has noth­ing to do with pil­lows. The fun­ni­est thing about the site is the warn­ing (or maybe notice) that says, “This is an SSL 128 encrypted secure site regard­less of what your browser may tell you.” in a nice bright red. Noth­ing says “trust” like telling me not to heed the warn­ings my browser may or may not throw my way.

Still not buy­ing, but WOW!

This brings us to the obvi­ous ques­tion. Do they sell many pil­lows? Some­thing tells me the answer is no. What they should do is look over other pil­low sites (pretty much every other pil­low site) and real­ize that doing it your­self isn’t wise. Take for instance, the beau­ti­fully designed site (designed by Duplex) called Bon­jour mon coussin. I’m not overly excited by pil­lows, but I actu­ally remarked to my wife about the beauty of the site (she speaks French, so it was right up her alley). She told me that it means “Good day my cousin,” to which I said, “No! You don’t say?” See, I’m kind of a smart-ass at home too.

Now, I ask you. From which of the two sites are you more likely to pur­chase a pil­low? I, for one, am not actively seek­ing them out, but I know where I intend to go should this sit­u­a­tion change. You see, design mat­ters. The whole point of this blog is to point out what doesn’t work. Royal Pil­low doesn’t work.

Build­ing a web­site that rep­re­sents your busi­ness to the world isn’t like fix­ing a cab­i­net door in your kitchen. Just because you can get a book from Barnes & Noble does not make you a designer. It doesn’t make you a back end coder either. See, most design­ers are artsy folk (and good ones). The back ends are usu­ally done by nerdy folk (and these days we have to import them from places like Japan, India and Bangladesh). It takes both to make a func­tional web­site. Sorry, I’m preaching…

Look around the inter­net before throw­ing up a web­site. You may find that the thing you were so proud of sucks, and you may need to [ghasp!] actu­ally pay someone…

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