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

bulletMake 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.
bulletForce 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.
bulletPlay 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.
bulletControl my browser for me. Just take it over. Resize it, if you want.
bulletSet 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

bulletUse 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.
bulletBurn 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.
bulletMake 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.
bulletUse 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)
bulletShow 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.
bulletRemind 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.
bulletUse HTML tables. Forget CSS. Travel back in time and use some HTML.
bulletUse 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.
bulletUse 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.
bulletMake 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.
bulletUse 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.
bulletBe 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.
bulletGive 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.
bulletMake sure your site only works in one browser. Cross-browser testing is overrated.

How to Write Awful Content

bulletForget 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
bulletMake 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.
bulletBe 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

bulletShow no professionalism whatsoever. Don’t make your website look professional, don’t act professional. Just be a kid.
bulletDon’t pay attention to your visitors. Completely ignore them. Don’t answer email, don’t accept feedback, nothing.
bulletMake navigation as frustrating as possible. Providing contact information is unnecessary. Show zero links to your homepage. Break the back button with every link.
bulletBore 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.
bulletForce me to register. People think that registering will keep visitors coming back. It won’t. So keep making people do it.
bulletNever 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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