An Interview with Vincent Flanders

August 19, 1998

Robert Carter

Editor's note: Web Pages That Suck is available from the MSDN Online Bookstore .

It's a Web Site -- No, It's a Book
What's in the Book
Technology Don'ts
It's About Money
Who's the Marketing Genius?

The Internet, as we all know, is littered with lots of sites that try our patience; in fact, the "Back" button is probably the most-often-used button in your browser. If Vincent Flanders and Michael Willis have their way, though, tiresome pages heavily draped with animated GIFs, outsized graphics, black backgrounds, and irrelevant mouseovers will be a thing of the past. They have published a new book, Web Pages That Suck, that is de rigeur for anybody styling themselves a Web designer.

It's a Web Site -- No, It's a Book!

With WPTS, Flanders and Willis have made themselves the Internet equivalents of William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White. Strunk and White are known for The Elements of Style, a must-read for any aspiring writer or editor. Like Style, noted for its admonitions ("Omit needless words.") and clarifying examples, WPTS focuses on teaching good Web design by pointing out how embarrassing or annoying bad design can be (can you say "black background"?). The book is an outgrowth of the Web Pages That Suck site, which went live two years ago, and rapidly became one of the best spots to see other sites eviscerated in public. And although Flanders and Willis handle their subjects with a great deal of grace and humor -- nothing mean-spirited -- the site's allure is similar to what you feel rubber-necking at accident scenes; you can't help but look, and you're always relieved it wasn't you.

Perhaps because their reputation preceded them, I was surprised at how thoughtful, thorough, and even moral the book is. While WPTS the site made its name by poking fun at transgressors, many of the bonehead examples in WPTS the book come from Flanders's and Willis's own work. In true egalitarian style, no one is sacred. Flanders, who kindly agreed to chat with me, conveys the purpose of his work as such: "We're the guys that come up to you at a party and tell you your fly is open." Sure, it's a little embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as finding out later.

Bring Them All Back Home

The book covers all the major phases of a site's development, from conception to maintenance to marketing. And there is very little HTML. Rather, Flanders and Willis focus on instilling lots of the practices and mantras they feel are prerequisites for Web success. When necessary (and sometimes just for fun), they resort to puns and painful examples, as witnessed by their "Ommm page" decrying the use of splash pages. They clearly enjoy exploiting their unique license to create (for illustrative purposes) and lampoon bad design practices.

"We intentionally stayed away from the Art God approach, where someone gives you the code but doesn't talk about all the sweat it took to get it right," Flanders explains. There are no hidden agendas in WPTS. If anything, the authors want you to know it's not easy to do a good Web site. They even dare to ask the fundamental question: What could you put on your Web page that would make people (who are not your mother) want to come back? Not what will get them to come once -- what will get them to come back. (I'm still haunted by that one.)

As to the skill set of most Web authors, Flanders is wary of the enthusiasm many folks bring to creating their first pages. "For some reason," Flanders opines, "people think the mere act of creating a Web page magically eliminates their lack of innate artistic talent. It's as if learning how to type was all you needed to become a writer." The ease with which anybody can "borrow" someone else's images doesn't help. "It personally pains me how many animated GIFs appear on some pages, many of which were created elsewhere." WPTS states in no uncertain terms that no matter how easy they May be to acquire, it's still stealing if you don't get permission to use someone else's images. If they're available for free, Flanders reminds readers there's usually a good reason why.

Technology Don'ts

Flanders and Willis are also reticent to adopt technologies for their own sake. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should," Flanders remarked during our talk, and that sentiment neatly summarizes much of the advice in WPTS. "Too many people," he lamented, "use a Web site to pad their resume." They're not interested in whether form follows function, but form in and of itself. Sure, you've shown you can use Flash, but did the site really benefit from that 15-second animation of the company logo morphing into place? Did anybody wait around long enough to see it?

That is the ultimate strength of the book: its insistence that building a site is not about you, nor about Flanders and Willis -- but about the people you want to visit your site. All the authors' efforts are in service of making the Web better, faster, and stronger. They clearly have been on the receiving end of many a tortuous plug-in download, and want to spare future generations that pain.

It's About Money

Flanders and Willis also remind us that most of the sites out there, in some way, shape, or form, are about making money. Obviously, the major corporate sites are about making money (even if many seem to forget that fact). But even "informational" or non-profit sites should be about making money. Not crassly, and not to the extent that they get in the way of the information they want to provide. But if they're using the Web as a means to generate support for their cause, why not offer people the opportunity to contribute online as well? And don't make it hard to contribute, either, by burying the contribution page in an obscure area of the site.

Both the "What will bring visitors back?" and "It's about money" mantras serve to focus the efforts of Web development on making sites that look professional, are easy to navigate, and contain useful information. They can still be funny or irreverent, but the point is not to bury those features in a cumbersome, amateurish design.

In service of good design, WPTS offers chapters devoted to navigation, graphics problems, text problems, frames, site maintenance, and links. "Where did people get the idea that 'Click here' is an informative statement?" Flanders laments. For the intrepid, it discusses the tradeoffs inherent in using the latest technologies, such as Flash, Dynamic HTML, and JavaScript. As Flanders points out, "It isn't called the bleeding edge for nothing."

Who's the Marketing Genius?

Perhaps surprising to afficionados of the WPTS site, fully three chapters in the book are devoted to marketing. The most interesting of the three deals with understanding how search sites work, and how to get them to give your site its due. In fact, the success of the WPTS site was due in large part to Yahoo's naming it a cool site of the week (which, unfortunately, Yahoo doesn't do anymore). The chapter also discusses some of the lame practices the aptly named Net Scum adopt, such as keyword padding. Flanders would much rather we all take the high road and use keywords that actually describe our sites. "What are these guys thinking? That we'll be happy when we get to their site and find it has nothing to do with what we were looking for? What's worse, more often than not, their sites suck anyway," he concludes.

As a final point to would-be designers, Flanders encourages us all to browse and learn from the major successful sites. "The Amazon.coms, the Dell computers -- they're phenomenally successful, and they're investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the navigation and design of their sites. Chances are they're learning something with all their research. Use their good practices to inform yours."

Overall, Web Pages That Suck is one of the smartest investments you can make before you commit any major Internet faux pas. If you already have a site, no matter. The WPTS book can still save you before the WPTS site makes an example of you.