New York City’s DOT website?

We now have a new standard in bad web design from organizations that should know better and can afford to do it right. My expectations would be low, but Mike Bloomberg can do better.

Before you launch your commerce site, compare it to this one.

The list is long, and here are some partial highlights:

• Even though the URL is on traffic signs throughout New York (this is the place to get the new parking card for meters in the city), how long did it take you to find the link on the site?
• The checkout system requires registration first.
• You must manually enter your address twice.
• The state is a pull-down list (yikes), AND New York and New Jersey are not listed in alphabetical order. They’re at top, which makes sense until you go by habit and wonder why they’re missing from the "New"s. Costs nothing to list them twice. Costs even less to leave a blank.
• The phone number requires you to mash up all the digits 5553434 even though the box is long enough (a cue!) to use a space or a dash.
• There are dozens of other problems, all culminating with this message when you’re done:

So, the new rallying cry of the mediore, "Hey, at least it’s not as bad as the DOT site."