The Apheus Blog

Run away – far, far away! Bad web design is everywhere. I was just looking up the website for a well-respected local company that has been in business for well over 100 years and I was horrified when I saw the site. As soon as I opened the homepage, I saw the tell-tale signs of an old Microsoft theme – Sherlock Holmes would’ve had an easy time solving this case. Taking a quick peak at the source code proved my suspicions.

A bad website is a poor reflection of an organization and it could be greatly hurting them on several levels. Research has shown that most people will research a product or service online before actually making a purchase. Many potential employees will research a potential employers before applying for a job. Donors wanting to make contributions to non-profit groups will often research potential donees long before making a donation. Most people now use the internet to make their travel plans to historic sites, museums, and tourist attractions.

I spend a lot of time in the online world. After all, I work here. In my time, I’ve seen my share of bad websites with varying degrees of badness. Some are just so bad that you can’t even attempt to view them. I can understand personal websites since those are usually created by an amateur and I overlook the coding mistakes, poor graphics, and lack of navigation. But I have an entirely different opinion about websites for businesses, non-profits, and other organizations.

A commercial website should be treated as a mainstream component in any business or marketing plan, but I feel like many groups treat their websites like red-headed stepchildren. There is no excuse for bad web design these days – there are thousands of good designers in the world who will gladly offer their website design services – usually at a very affordable rate. Businesses and groups of all sizes cannot afford to neglect their websites. Forcing visitors to view ugly websites is cruel and unusual punishment and should be against the Geneva Convention. The online community deserves better and I am on a mission to make the internet a beautiful place to visit.

There are thousands of great web designers in the world today. Each designer continues to “one up” the next designer with easy flowing web pages, eye-pleasing graphics, and solid programming. Unfortunately, there are also thousands of bad web designers and “wannabe” web designers in the world. They make common mistakes that can ruin a website from a visutal standpoint.

Bad Color Combinations

How many times have you tried to read red text on a blue background? Take a look at the image below:

It’s pretty much impossible to read the text and it hurts the eyes trying! Staying clear of bad color combinations is paramount. A good designer can find different combinations of color to really make your text stand out, and make it easy to read. By making the blue background slightly darker, changing the title to yellow, and the paragraph to white, we can make the same text much more visually appealing:

Bad Linking

Another bad web design practice is bad linking. There are many ways to mess up linking. Almost everyone knows that blue text with an underline is commonly looked at as a link:

Website Design Services

Go ahead, click as many times as you want, it will not take you anywhere! Another bad linking practice is to hide links. A visitor to your website has to see the link in order to click on it.

Also, keep an eye out for links that don’t go anywhere. Every link on your website should go somewhere. If you don’t have the page designed yet, then there shouldn’t be a link. A good designer will not have any 404 page errors. If you’ve redesigned your website, then make sure you put in plenty of URL redirects to minimize these 404 errors. Bad linking can be very confusing for visitors when they are trying to navigate your website. If they can’t find your links, or become frustrated trying to navigate they probably won’t stick around for very long.

Broken Image Files

If a website designer doesn’t properly code your HTML, you may get broken image files that look like this when you view your website in a browser:

Don’t worry, it’s just a graphic of a broken image and not a real broken image (I wouldn’t dare create a real-life broken image!) Broken images are easy to fix, but occur quite often on the internet. Its very unprofessional and can detract from your overall design. When you view your website, you should never see broken images.

Blinking Text

Sometimes, you can use animation or Flash to draw attention to a particular spot on your website. This is OK if its done correctly. Blinking text should almost always be avoided in modern web design, mostly because it is quite annoying. Look at the blinking text example below:

Aliquam risus metus, egestas sed, convallis sodales, gravida ut, lectus. Bad Web Design. Vestibulum et tellus tempor orci porta vehicula. Proin blandit luctus diam. Bad Web Design. Mauris consectetuer, odio non hendrerit lobortis, orci orci bibendum mi, at pretium risus justo at mi. Curabitur tristique. Bad Web Design. Sed tristique ipsum et est. Vestibulum eget mauris et dolor sagittis lobortis. Integer mollis fermentum erat.

Frames

Some web designers rely heavily on frames for navigation, advertising banners, content, etc. Frames are (in one word) bad. They are hard to handle in some browsers, never look quite right, and are another “old technology” that should no longer be used in modern web design. Frames are also bad for SEO and should just be avoided. The first website I designed utilized frames, but thankfully, I’ve moved beyond that! Unfortunately, I still see a lot of websites out on the internet that utilize frames. All I can do is scratch my head and wonder, “why?” CSS is a much better way to go if you want to create blocks of content that don’t move on the screen.

KISS

One basic rule of thumb applies to website design – Keep It Simple Stupid! A good web designer will always try to keep everything looking good, have good code, and will make suggestions that can improve the look, feel, and navigation of your website. An overly complex website can become a monster that is impossible to maintain and will drive visitors away rather than bringing them back.