I should probably clarify. Yes, the websites objectively suck. They suck in usability and also in design. But they also suck in content. When you're an author

I should probably clarify. Yes, the websites objectively suck. They suck in usability and also in design. But they also suck in content. When you're an author looking for agents, you're basically looking for three things: 1. What genres/ages/categories are they interested in? (Or just as importantly, not interested in.) 2. What is their experience and track record? 3. What are their submission guidelines? For many agent websites it's shockingly difficult to find this information. Even something as basic as whether an agent is open to submissions can be difficult to find. (Agents often close to online submissions, so whether or not you can submit is an important question!) So we're really talking about a failure to think through, in a step-by-step way, what authors experience when they visit your website, what they want, and how to make that information actionable. It's "design" in the broader sense of that word, not so much the narrow sense. The mechanical aspects of how to get content onto a page probably also interfere, to some extent, with making this all happen, but I think those are likely secondary issues to the issues of basic functionality and content. But again, like I said: the incentives don't really align to make this a priority. That's the bottom line. If you get enough submissions then you have what you need, and you don't need to improve your submission experience at all. And the ratio of aspiring authors to available agents will always put this in agents' favor.