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Website Design
How to Make the Worst Website
Creating a terrible website seems to be a common goal on the internet. I’ve
seen it accomplished many times, so I thought I’d make it easier for everyone
and post the ultimate guide.
From the time a visitor enters your site to the time they exit, there are
plenty of effective techniques to annoy them. So in this article, I will
identify 28 points to remember during a website development and how to execute
them properly. Feel free to bookmark this and use it as a reference when you’re
in the mood to frustrate visitors.
How to Make Horrible First Impressions
 | Make it load extremely slow. I have nothing better to do than watch a
loading bar. Go ahead and use millions of useless images, run on a turtle of a
server, the usual. |
| Force me to “enter”. When I click on a link to your website, why should I
expect to actually get there? Make me have to click at least twice to get to
the homepage. |
| Play background music automatically. Everyone in the world likes the exact
same music as you, so feel free to play some automatically. Don’t allow me to
pause it or anything, though. |
| Control my browser for me. Just take it over. Resize it, if you want. |
| Set up a few pop-ups. Nothing is better than a good old pop-up window to
get my attention. If I didn’t want to buy your product in one window, I’ll
definitely want it when it comes up in another. |
How to Create an Ugly Design
| Use a complex layout so I don’t know where to begin. Make it as
complicated as possible so can spend more time on your site trying to find
what I went there for. The more columns, the better. |
| Burn my eyes with neon colors. I find that lime green text looks best on
hot pink. Whatever you do, make sure it’s as illegible as possible. |
| Make me have to scroll down to get past the header. It’s not like I went
to your site to get any information. I just went there to see 500 pixels of
header. |
| Use bevels and drop shadows on your logos and graphics. Make a nice
display of pointless Photoshop text effects. (Bonus tip: use them on Comic
Sans) |
| Show off your collection of advertisements. Use many rows and columns of
flashing, animated, and distracting images from your sponsors. Clutter up your
content space. In fact, try to blend in your text ads with your real text so I
can have a good laugh when I click on one. |
| Remind me that you know how to make blinking text. Revive a bunch of those
old HTML tricks to help us remember the good old days. It doesn’t matter if
it’s annoying, because it’s so impressive. |
| Use HTML tables. Forget CSS. Travel back in time and use some HTML. |
| Use as many random colors as you can. It doesn’t matter if they look good
together or not, just make a rainbow. Eat some skittles for inspiration. |
| Use a plethora of animated gif’s. They’ll slow your page down, they’ll
distract the readers, but most of all they’ll add some cartoony annoyance to
the page. |
| Make text small so I can’t read it. It’s not like I went to your website
to read anything. Force me to get as close to the screen as possible. |
| Use at least five different fonts. The more variation, the better. Be sure
to include a few fancy, cursive, illegible fonts. Don’t make it look like you
had a scheme of any kind. |
| Be inconsistent. Create several stylesheets so each page has a unique look
(the more the merrier). Play around with different combinations of positions,
text sizes, and color schemes. |
| Give me the opportunity to scroll sideways. Make me feel as awkward as
possible by lining up images in a row so I have to scroll horizontally to see
them. |
| Make sure your site only works in one browser. Cross-browser testing is
overrated. |
How to Write Awful Content
| Forget everything you’ve ever learned about grammar. dont ever use any
punctuation capitalizatoin or anythign else that would help me read what your
tryin to say and just have everyhting run on into other sentences or use ALL
CAPS IF YOU WANT becuse its more intresting and its like ur yelling |
| Make your articles un-scannable. Don’t use any paragraphs, bullets,
numbers, or any kind of text formatting that can serve as “landmarks” for
people to keep their place while reading. |
| Be verbose. Force people to read a whole page before they can figure out
what you do or what you’re trying to say. This will keep them on your site
longer (or make them leave). |
How to Make Visitors Leave and Never Come Back
| Show no professionalism whatsoever. Don’t make your website look
professional, don’t act professional. Just be a kid. |
| Don’t pay attention to your visitors. Completely ignore them. Don’t answer
email, don’t accept feedback, nothing. |
| Make navigation as frustrating as possible. Providing contact information
is unnecessary. Show zero links to your homepage. Break the back button with
every link. |
| Bore me. Why should you give me what I want? Just don’t provide any useful
information, don’t use any images, or add any visual interest to any page. |
| Force me to register. People think that registering will keep visitors
coming back. It won’t. So keep making people do it. |
| Never update your website. Outdated information is in this year. |
There are definitely more tips and tricks out there to create the worst
website ever, so feel free to share some in the comments. And if for some odd
reason you want to create a good website, simply do the exact opposite of all
this.
Posted May 25th, 2008 by
Alec Rios
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