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 paragrahs, 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.
Edit: Chris over at SpoonGraphics wrote an article featuring The 5 Worst Website Designs in the World. There’s some great inspiration right there.
Stumbles, Floats, Diggs, and all other forms of support are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Classic. Classic. It’s funny because it’s true…
Thanks for this highly informational article. With your help, my websites should be much worse than my previous. ;)
Fred,
Yes, there are a lot of websites that make me think they were actually trying to make it bad. They are the inspiration for this article. Thanks for your comment.
Chad,
I’m glad I could help. Thanks for your comment.
Hah, x10.com is the absolute worst. So bad, in fact, that when I was recently researching home automation, I visited the site and had to leave. Blinky, flashy, images. contrating colors, no search, ugh. The worst.
[...] How to Make the Worst Website - Alec Rios [...]
Thanks for the example, surfer. I lasted about 12 seconds there, but my eyes begged me to leave.
This is hilarious. Thank you for the contributing a smile to my day.
Josh,
I’m glad you like the article. I had a lot of fun writing it. Thanks for your comment.
I get those points and will give them a try in my future projects :D
hahah…damn funny! I like this 1!
Anyone remember the old Geocities websites from ten years ago? They’d have made great case studies for this article :)
I think this is the best website I’ve ever seen - http://havenworks.com/
It incorporates many of the elements you’ve mentioned above.
You are the greatest!!!
preaching water while drinking wine?
look, your own ‘header area’ is about 280 pixels tall, out of which a 140 pixels tall section is totally useless, being filled with rather pointless and overdone grunge, while the rest of it at least tells people where they are… with a not too original logo that has - a drop shadow?
your actual, relevant content starts after about 500 pixels.
you use a tiled grunge texture as background for your content. where does that fit in your crusade for legibility and usability?
also there’s nothing objectively wrong with photoshop effects on type, if they’re done right. have you seen this collection yet, for example?
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/12/sexy-bold-and-experimental-typography/
bevel and shadow to your heart’s content, but do it beautifully. of course you might check some ‘philosophy’ on the relativity of beauty too, before condemning others’ tastes.
before anyone asks: no, i’m not related to x10.com or any other such site. i’m just a random designer who followed a random link and is somewhat disappointed now.
(i wonder whether comment moderation will let this be published.)
Oh man, I joke *all the time* about throwing blinking text onto our website here.
And lo and behold, I find out it’s a BAD idea? Who knew!?
Hilarious article. Good call on all of them.
Some ideas you missed:
- make all of your text an image (goes with the “load time = loooong” point)
- don’t have any content, just simply link around your site in an endless loop
- and of course, display on every single page you have: “Top 10 ____ Ranked/Visited/Popular Website” and link back to the other nine in a neverending list/loop. And make sure it’s large and obnoxious
- The Gamble
i know there are a lot of bad websites out there, but there is one..
just see yourself:
http://www.ingenfeld.de/
Thanks for your comments, everybody.
Mike, I can’t wait to see. :)
Kailoon, I’m glad you like it.
John, Geocities was definitely a great source of inspiration for this post. But I’d have to say that countless myspace pages were the main source.
Shannon, wow. Excellent example.
Chestozo, thanks. ;)
Nobody, I’m sorry you feel that way.
I took a quick screen shot and found that my actual content begins at about 330. Maybe 500 was the wrong number to throw out there, but the point I was trying to make was that the content should be on-page and should not require scrolling down.
My logo doesn’t have a drop shadow, actually.
I think my content is quite legible (if anyone else disagrees, please let me know, thanks!) Please clarify how my tiled grunge texture affects usability, though.
About the bevels and drop shadows, I’m writing a post at the moment and hopefully we can get on the same page about this. Check back soon.
Your comment made some points worth addressing, so I approved it. Thanks for your time.
The Gamble, I think the text images can fit under “unnecessary images” and the other two can fit under “Make navigation as frustrating as possible.” Thanks for the suggestions, though. If you come up with anymore, I’d love to hear them.
nfo, another great example. It didn’t even have to finish loading before it filled up my bad-website-ometer.
Thanks everyone.
“Be brief. Force people to read a whole page” Shouldn’t that say “Be verbose.”?
@nfo: I actually found that site quite charming, as kitsch art. It’s a little like when Mr. Burns went to the Mayo Clinic and discovered he had Three Stooges Syndrome — his myriad diseases cancelled each other out.
The x10.com site has a video which AUTOPLAYS after 10-20 seconds. A crime worthy of immediate imprisonment.
My pet peeve is the long Flash load time and custom interfaces. My brother is a Flash specialist, and I have to bite my tongue sometimes.
Confused, yes that makes a lot of sense. But the point I meant to make (which I obviously didn’t follow through with) was that you should be brief in terms of information, but not brief in the amount of content. Whether that makes sense or not, I’m editing my post right now. Thanks for the correction.
LL, I enjoy flash once in a while, but it seems to be overused these days. Thanks for your comment.
[...] received a comment on my last post about How to Make the Worst Website Ever that’s got me thinking. Under the Bad Design category of that article, I made a point about [...]
[...] How to Make The Worst Website (tags: webdesign) [...]
I’m just wondering… is using frames also “going back in time” (because I like doing so: http://www.kockenest.nl is one of my sites made with frames)
[...] How to Make the Worst Website - Alec Rios (tags: webdesign inspiration funny) [...]
Pouline, frames seem pretty old fashioned to me, too.
[...] In this article, Alec Rios will identify 28 points to remember during a website development and how to execute them properly. [...]
i think i’m gonna follow your advice and make page with all of the above lol
[...] Check out how you can here. [...]
fadi, I can’t wait to see it completed. There are several great examples posted here in the comments section for more inspiration. Thanks for your comment.
Awesome!!!!!
Will be following in future.
Regards,
Vinodh
Vinodh, glad you like it. Thanks for your comment.
Personally, I’ve found making the whole site in flash to be the most effective. I love confusing, long loading time navigation, especially when it doesn’t give me anything useful. Oh, and blind people love that it’s not screen reader compatible.
Well it depends on how you look at the world… First of all the if you dont like music in the background some people do. And if the site is about music or better if the site is about a band why the hell it shouldnt start playing the music in the background.
Second youre talking about ugly design but in the first paragraph your referring to the functionality of the website. It doesnt matter if its too complicated, it matters that it looks good. Then the header thing in the design section also points that (functionality), it doesnt matter if its big or small its there for a point to make the website look better. The same goes with making text small, the opportunity to scroll sideways…
Also about writing it depends again on whats the subject of the website… If its a rap website that represents the rap community or something like that you think theyll write with grammar?
Anyway youve got some good points there but you cant generalize things. Just that you think website doesnt look good for some reason someone else thinks it does. The taste is relevant.
[...] Ho trovato tramite DesignObserver questa fantastica guida: How to Make the Worst Website. [...]
Great post, I enjoyed it very much, I even would add another small thingy: “The easiest way to get worse HMTL is cutting it automatically from PSD (Photoshop or Imageready) - it generates tables and leaves no chance for cross-browsering”
I just had to read thru all o f them LOL
Don’t need any help I do a great job of creating an awful website or blog on my own.
I think you need another one. How about the people with dark themes and make the text you haev squint your eyes and hurt yourself trying to read it.
Well done
Ryan, I remember when I knew nothing about web design or what flash even was. On an all flash site, I would click the back button only to end up on another website. Frustrating for the non-savvy user.
Shaban, taste is relevant, but on a professional level I don’t approve of auto-playing music or bad grammar. Maybe I am generalizing a little bit, but it seems that so are you when you doubted that a rap website would use grammar.
Daniel, yes cross-browser compatibility is a serious problem these days. I’m glad you enjoyed the article.
Wendy, sometimes I think I’m a fan of dark themes. Until I leave that website and realize my eyes are burning. There are a few exceptions, though.
Thanks for your comments everybody.
Ugh, don’t forget clashing colours! It’s fun to have your eyes blinded after a few minutes of reading boring content!
I just read a site where it was a bright cyan (almost white but not quite) text on black background.
oh and teenager’s myspace pages are the worst
Andy, that website sounds painful. I actually wrote a comment further up on this page saying that myspace pages were the main inspiration sources for this post. Thanks for your comment.
Under the bullet point suggesting “be inconsistent” I would suggest that if it is going to be the ugliest site ever then there will be no stylesheets whatsoever. Instead there will be a plethora of inline html garbage contained in frames (oh the pain) and tables. It still amazes me how many people do not understand that tables are for tabular data. The definition is somewhat intrinsic!
@Alec Rios. I think you have a rather good point about myspace pages. Some profiles I’ve seen are prime examples of how not to design a web page!
Joe, actually using unnecessary tables is also on the list. There needs to be some kind of CSS Awareness Day for those frame and table lovers. Thanks for your comment.
[...] Funny and painfully true: twenty-eight tips for “How to Make the Worst Website“ [...]
[...] How to Make the Worst Website Ever - An article outlining 28 sarcastic tips and techniques for creating the absolute worst website you can possibly imagine. [...]
Oh, how true!
Pat, thanks for your comment.
Everyone, here’s another prime example:
http://www.myspace.com/soybuddha
The gripes about frames, css, and tables are perfectly fine for those who like to call themselves professionals or who accept money for web design, but for someone who just needs to put some info up on the web and doesn’t want to mess around with concepts like segregating style from content or the ontological premise of the word “table”. To them, it gets done what needs to be done.
I think a WYSIWYG awareness day is a better idea. Programs like iWeb (if you don’t mind using a .Mac account), RapidWeaver, and a whole host of other modern WYSIWYG editors can help novices create tasteful websites without needing to learn the more complex ideas of web programming.
Calling my mom out on bad web design is like calling the guys playing catch in the park bad athletes.
Some points on here still apply to n00bs (like animated gifs and music in the background, blinking text, etc), but getting pissy about using tables and no CSS is using the wrong yardstick on some people.
That’s a valid point, but this post was more aimed at the design community for a laugh (hence all the sarcasm). A lot of readers here are working professionally and will want to do more than just get the website done.
Frames, tables, and anything else on the list above is perfectly fine for those who are not planning on marketing it - which is the point I think you’re trying to make - but apart from that I really do believe these practices are unacceptable.
Thanks a lot for your comment.
[...] Have a horrible website design. The only thing that’ll come out of a good design is praise. You’ll be published in galleries, you’ll be talked about, you’re links will be passed around like a bowl of potato chips. Play it safe and shoot for a bad website design. (see: How to Make the Worst Website Ever) [...]
Great list, but some people are never gonna learn.
Michael, like I said before, this is more of a joke than a guide. But if someone will benefit from this, it’s worth posting. Thanks for your comment.
Hi, I just want to say that I found this site because when I was stumble… and by the way, why do we need to put our email if it will not be published?
thanks for the tips.
Any site with those annoying animated flash people which start talking as soon as you open the page.
A good way to make a sure you website isn’t readable, is to screen shot it, paste it into PS, and desaturate it. if it is all the same shade of grey, you have succeeded.
of course this technique can also be used in the opposite way.
Strongbad gives a good tutorial of what makes the worst website.
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html
You’ve captured the heart of bad webdesign perfectly!
Now many designers are designing much more clean designs but then ruin it all with a 600+ pixel tall header. If you need more than 150 px for a header and nav, you’re doing something wrong!
Luis, just standard procedure. It’s for contact information. Thanks for your comment.
Jacob, yes very annoying. Thanks for your comment.
kiwee, yes the lower the contrast the better (or worse really). Thanks for your comment.
Deathnutz, nice tutorial. Thanks for your comment.
Too Many Haters!
HTML Tables = only way to go for calendars, good for actual tables.
Background music can be great if volume is not 100% and it’s ambient and fits with any click/event sounds and has an obvious speaker icon.
Let us see what it’s like to spread negativity:
Your content background of this site is obnoxious, and behind your content you use only slightly contrasted grunge with symbols, it’s like a double background, no contrast.
Then your navigation has a smooth light source, it’s totally out of place, even playing it safe and using neutral tones your site still looks bad. See, not very helpful to point fingers.
too many haters, thanks for you comment.
Lol. Sounds like you have some issues you need to work out hehe - I hope you mentioned my personal pet-hate the tag!!!!
I love it
Really great work, humorous yet the truth. Anyway ,you do end up commiting any one of these while creating a website.
Shaun, I guess so. Thanks for your comment.
cachi, I’m glad. Thanks for commenting.
pythongeek, thanks. Maybe we better start using this page as a reference then. Thanks a lot for your comment.
Nice layout and comical article. As a web designer I can firmly agree that those are definitely some great ideas of what not to do.
gary, thanks for your comment.
Hmmmm…I measured 512 pixels from the top of your website graphics to the first word “Creating…”
What about your rule “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.”
Most of these are right on point. But you mix in the comment about using css rather than html tables. Users (readers) don’t give a darn about that — only if it cause an unacceptable slow-down in page loading.
This is funny (and great marketing too!)
Fun list. Though I have to say Popups are great for businesses because, like it or not, they’re effective. I hate the things though which is why I have NoScript and AdBlock.
You forgot about all the fancy, pointless “Ajax” effects that are going on now!
You forgot:
* make your text colour grey instead of black so it’s harder to read.
* Beg for Stumbles, Floats, Diggs
Scott, there are 280 pixels above the post title. That is where the content starts (images are content). The reason I mentioned HTML is because they load slowly.
Doc, thanks for your comment. Actually I recently made a post more specifically about marketing titled, “How to Attract Zero Visitors.” Yes, another sarcastic post.
Crazy675, 1 falls under legibility. Thanks for your input.
fantastic i’m a web and graphic design lecturer and i just printed your page to show my students thank you so much
Silent_Ctrl, I’m glad I could help. It looks like this world wide web is well on its way to become as ugly as possible. Thanks for your comment.
lol this one was pretty funny. I have tried to warn several clients about some of these things and they just don’t seem to believe me…
One more thing to make a terrible website. Make it fixed width so that people with high resolution screens, get to look at a little tiny strip down the middle of the page.
Matt, some people just won’t get it. And I have 98% of myspace pages to prove it.
Wayne, thanks for your input.
these are all great points, and spot on accurate
Sir, thanks for your comment.
I’m glad someone keeps track of making cr*p websites! Well done!
Yes, I thought it was time to address this issue. Thanks for your comment.
This is hilarious. I haven’t read everyone’s comments, but did anyone mention that if you do have any content, make it impossible to print from in any way. Use the lime green/hot pink color scheme and make it so that even if you select the text and paste it in Word you can’t change it to something legible. Make it so the frames are aligned as long columns or have there be a scroll bar so the only way to print is a screen shot that only shows the text that’s on the screen at that time. Also, put some of the text into a PDF that cannot be printed because it is read-only. (note to Alec Rios: if this is redundant, feel free to not include it.)
Hi Rebecca, some of those points haven’t been mentioned yet. Thanks a lot for your input.
By the way, SpoonGraphics recently published an article featuring The 5 Worst Website Designs in the World..
Had a great laugh.
What I *love* too is when websites put these award gif’s, like “best website design of the year”, and it makes it even fancier when they put as many as possible. Cuz if it weren’t for the awards, I could go thinking the website is not worthwile, but with awards, you bet I’m sure I’ve fallen on a goldmine.
My thoughts exactly. Why have a page, that says ENTER…didn’t I already ask to enter by coming here.
Brad
Hahahaha, that’s so true!
neuroxik, Brad, Lol, thanks for your comments.
Smileys…. or worse, 3D Smileys that yell out “cool phrases”.
Pretty much on point, except for one thing. You may want to take your own advice on the header. You are pretty close to pushing 500px from top to content yourself, lol
Wolfie, yes sometimes those can be annoying.
Derrick, thanks for your comment.
Yeah I’m sad to say that I don’t know anything about this subject, lol j/k. Great post I think that there are a lot of things that people forget when designing their sites and in order to keep them looking decent they should follow some basics.
Great post! Thank you for it.
Very true, thanks for your comment.
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hahaha, love it…
Funny, and so true…
Glad I’ve StumbledUpon this site. Quite true. Thanks for the advice and the humor.
According to this, the worst website is microsoft.com :)
The Best and the Worst Website
Can someone send this to whoever was in charge of what Squeak looks like?
this was very funny. interesting, too. lots of myspace layout sites have those things you talked about. ^.^
Firehazrd, Louann, Mike, thanks for your comment. Much appreciated.
Kolof, funny but I don’t agree. But I do agree on Google being the best. :)
website design, I don’t understand what you mean.
Kaylee, yes they were my main inspiration for this post. Thanks a lot for you comment.
I stumbled onto this and about 5 stumbles later i get to a Christian rock website that automatically starts playing music. I guess thats why no one likes them.
Good list, Funny responses but I don’t think anybody mentioned the most important thing.
It’s all about content. If there’s some good content people may still stay and read even if the design isn’t top notch.
If the content sucks, and the design is terrible… suckorama
Pat, thanks for your comment. :)
PT, very true. I’ve spent a good amount of time burning my eyes reading excellent articles on neon-colored websites. Not visually pleasing, but the content was worth it.
this is amazing , i workin on college project talking about the worst web design hierarchy this post help me a tonz.
thankies mister! and wait a minute ur 15?? o.O holly cow awesome
Glad it helped, Zee. Yeah, I’m young - talk about a fresh eye for design. :)
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