1. Use too many colors
Let’s put brown, purple and orange in the same place and see what people think. I don’t know who designed some sites, but they must have never learned about complementary colors on the color wheel. Or if a designer hasn’t chosen non-complementary colors, he chooses to put too many colors on the page. It’s almost like a rainbow has been thrown up on your computer screen. There are colors everywhere. If you want an ugly website, put as many colors as you can to design, go crazy. You could win a ugliest website contest.
2. Use too much movement
When I first started designing websites in 1996, one of the best things people did on sites was have scrolling or blinking text within the page. I worked on a site last year that had three eye-catching animated .gifs. I was able to convince the customer to lose one of them, but it still creates havoc in the eyes of a visitor. If you want an ugly website, you can be sure that you have at least three graphics that are moving in some way.
3. You do not have good navigation
There are sites on the Net that do not have navigation on each page. You have to use the back button to go back to the previous page. Other sites also have different navigation on the pages so you get lost. So if you want to have an ugly website, have inconsistent or non-existent navigation. This will surely irritate your visitors.
4. Use images that are not optimized
Website graphics need not be more than 72 dpi (dots per inch). Some people create graphics on their site that have enlarged graphics from small graphics. This creates jagged edges on the graphics. There are also sites that don’t optimize their graphics to make them appear washed out or pixelated. They have run the graph through an optimizer, but it didn’t quite work. Feel free to use any of these tips if you really want an ugly website. By the way, you can also scan poorly scanned photos that are too dark or have dirt on them.
5. Don’t keep in mind that people have different sized monitors
People have different size monitors and have their displays set to different resolutions such as 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, and 1600 x 1200. They are all in pixels. Some ugly web designers set their width to 100 percent, which can really make the site look ugly for people who have their screens set to a higher resolution. I usually set the width of my pages to 765px wide (so it displays fine at 800px wide resolution). I also like to center it, although you can create gaps on either side. There are some that set the width to wider and it can cause scrolling or bunching of graphics in a weird way. If you’re serious about designing an ugly site, set your width to 100 percent.
6. Have a distracting background
I have a client who sends me emails that are a template from his Outlook. When I reply, the template gets mixed up with my words and makes it hard to read. The same thing will happen to you when you have a distracting background. Some ugly web designers like to put a watermark of some kind in the background. I don’t mind these if they’re not too dark. The times I’ve done them, I’ve set them to an eight percent gradient and then have them in a neutral color. It can look great if you finish typing. And it usually helps if it’s a stronger logo or image. But if you want to have a really ugly website, have a darker background that is distracting.
6.5. Have a dumb splash page that does nothing for your site
Most of the people I talk to about websites hate Flash home pages. It usually doesn’t add anything to the site and just wastes time. Nobody wants to waste time on something useless. I like to reserve Flash for the top of the page, navigation, or a tutorial within the site.
So, I think you are ready to go out and create an ugly website. Just use my easy six and a half steps, and you’ll be the proud owner of a really ugly website in no time. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
