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Have you ever come across a website that made you laugh out loud, Not because of the actual content on the site, but rather the design itself because of how terrible it is, it takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to properly design a website and there are many sites out there where the designers just haven’t learned about any design principles at all. Let’s look at a few of the design principles. I’m referring to easy to understand navigation, proper use of color, proper use of animation and easy to use layout pleasing to the eye, appropriate to the topic. Design elements don’t get in the way of the content and great content that’s easy to find navigate, consume and share before diving into the list. I wanted to let you know that. I’m actually basing this off of an article from our blog. It’s important to mention this. Because some of the sites are no longer active for whatever reason, and some of the designs have been updated. Also no disrespect intended. The goal of this video is to offer feedback. Some of these sites are designed by beginners and some just haven’t been updated in years many years. Anyways, let’s look at some bad Web sites. Number One. Blinky com. This site sells things that blink or glow in the dark. They have actually updated the website since the Post was made. But first. Luckily, thanks to Wayback machine. I was able to retrieve the original design. There are several issues here for one. The images are just too small. The products should be the focus of the site and also everything’s animated which you know a few animations here and there is OK, But when everything’s animated, the site becomes too busy. Another problem is the colors like colors don’t. Get me wrong, but take a look at the text and see how long you want to read it against a black background. An e-commerce site should make you want to stay and look around. And the items for sale should be from Center. The site focuses too much on its flashing in the dark gimmick and the purpose of the store is to sell items. But this web design just makes me want to leave. Here’s a look at the current design, and although it is an improvement, it definitely still needs some work Number 2 high school sports in Mississippi. This is the default 100% zoom on my browser at this setting. I can’t see the whole site. Luckily, I can zoom out, but the viewer shouldn’t have to do that. Also, the color combination hurts to look at lots of information are scattered all over the page and the page Scrolls on forever and ever, and really, it just keeps going. This layout just doesn’t work. First of all, each of these blocks could be its own page. You don’t have to provide all the information on the home page. The content itself is good in the navigation menu at the top is fine, but clicking on one of the links tasty to another page with a similar layout that contains individual boxes of information placed onto the page. This site needs WordPress with a magazine theme. You would have to search hard for a WordPress theme that will let you have a layout. This bad number three US. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. So thankfully, this page, which is just really an article, doesn’t exist anymore. The site itself has a nice design. It has a clean layout with good navigation. It looks appropriate for the US. House of Representatives and with all of the pages of political jargon. This article made me do a double-take animated Gifs are cool, But the presence of Jennifer Lawrence saying what on a page for the US. House of Representatives. Made me ask what then I scroll down to see Michael Scott and several others, which is just really random. None of these animated gif craziness fits the topic of the page. I mean, really, is this A Buzzfeed article? This article is a 10-point numbered list. What’s it about? I don’t actually know something about legislation. I couldn’t read it. Maybe that was the point, and in that case it worked, but nothing on this page fits the theme of the site and looking at it Just makes my eyes hurt. The text should be larger. That’s the content you want your visitors to read, so why not make it stand out? But right now it’s so small that it gets lost in the distracting gifts. The images should be further apart to give the text a little bit of breathing room. It’s safe to say this case is closed. Number four. Suzanne Collins, books surprise. This website is still active anyways. This site is for Suzanne Collin’s books. You know, the lady who did hungry games and things like that, you know this site? I don’t think was meant to be this zoomed out. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like whitespace but this is just a little too much, so I’m just gonna help her out here and I’m just gonna zoom in a bit and that looks a little bit better still not great now looking through the site, you would imagine, you know, seeing the book cover. You could click it and actually buy the book, but actually, nothing happens, so that’s a missed opportunity right there. I clicked on the work’s page and I clicked on Mockingjay. And there’s still no way to buy the book, so I went back to the works page, and I clicked on another book and this time clicking on the actual image brings me to a Scholastic page now. I should mention the page. It’s just white. I don’t think it’s actually a working link, but it’s better than having no link also on our site. There’s a word document where you can actually look at all the Children’s Choice Award nominations, and that’s great and all, but why would the viewer want to actually download a document rather than just read it on your site at the bottom of the page in the right corner, There’s a list of online stores where you can buy her books. But instead of taking you to her author page or a page with her books or even including an affiliate link, the link just takes you to the home page of the store clicking. Amazon goes to Amazoncom. Literally, that’s it. Another missed opportunity. Number five. Patty mechs or padam acts from a jittery graphics zooming in and out of the screen words fading in and out and some text. This website is quite unique. It doesn’t help that the content itself is really small, but at least the navigation works fun. Well, except for the company’s logo, which does nothing but palsy. I have a pulsing logo That brings attention to itself that you can’t even click on. Possibly the best part of this websites comes down to an asset that isn’t very common on websites anymore. And that is the music, yep. This website has custom jingle that loops forever. [MUSIC] It’s actually pretty catchy and equally annoying Either way. It’s pretty smart. Marketing number Six Yale University School of Art. This site is another one that has changed since the original blog post, And although I couldn’t get the exact version from the Wayback Machine, I did find a very similar one. You would expect a college art school to have a nice website that reflected the kind of education you would expect to get from the college well. This was yell’s site. Yeah, seriously, this. Web site is made using Ruby on Rails and it is actually a wiki that students and faculty can change to some degree. It gets updated quite often and faculty adds lecture times maps, the classes, etc. But how did it get this background? When using a repeating photo as a background, it’s generally a rule that it should be subtle, the fact that it’s repeating shouldn’t be too obvious. And, yeah, this one’s a little bit obvious. Thanks to the animation. Also, the page content could be expanded to use the rest of the screen, but instead we’re left with only having content on half the screen navigation actually works as expected and the color choice in the haphazard layout sometimes makes it difficult to follow and other times. Not maybe this website is art purposely made to look bad as a joke or its. Just yeah, it’s just a bad website. Number 7 Lea’s cars! This site is the gift that just keeps on giving literally. Everything about it is just crazy. I mean, from the background to the flashing colors to the animated Gifs to just everything really. Everything about this site is crazy. It’s safe to say that this site is definitely bad on purpose and they did a great job at it. It has fake ads karaoke, a car quiz, a game you can play online and even a live stream for their office, which is really creepy. I mean, you could even see Ling up in the top left corner. It’s a live feed of Ling. Why, why is there a live feed of her? The purpose of the site is to lease a car, But I didn’t look at a single car, though. If you’re interested, Ling has her own trust pirate. So you know, you’re getting a good deal? The problem is, the craziness gets in the way of the site itself. All those distractions arm the usability of the site. One thing for sure, it’s not boring. I think the word I’m looking for is random. Number 8 the final website penny juice yet again. This site has changed since the blog post was written. It’s better, but it’s not really saying much since this was the original design. Penny juice is a fruit juice, concentrate. That’s made specifically for child care centers, preschools, etc. On the main page. You’ll see a simple menu along with floating clouds behind the rainbow spinning coins and many words and a copyright notice for 2001 to 2002 Yeah, maybe that explains it. All this looks innocent enough until you click a link in the menu and then your monitor explodes. I get the design choice for a penny juice as it’s a rainbow of exciting flavors, but don’t just don’t. There are better ways to use clever marketing points in your website design for one, you can use the colors along the side diffused into the background so that they don’t make your eyes bleed, do not use all of them At the same time on the same screen, all design styles and copyright dates make people wonder if the site’s been updated and they question the prices and the information about the product visitors shouldn’t have concerns about your product just from looking at your website design. That was fun! Taking a quick look at hilariously. Terrible websites is a great fun way to learn what not to do every now, and then it’s a good idea to look around and see what you find annoying and then find ways to improve on it. Learning what you like and don’t like will give you insight on what visitors want and what your clients need. Okay, now it’s your turn. Do you know of a hilariously terrible website? That should be on this list did. I miss your favorite. You disagree with my assessment of a site. Do you have something to add? I’d like to hear about it in the comments below with, that said, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.