How not to design a Web Page

February 22, 2006 @ 10:50 pm

How not to design a Web page:

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/169489.htm

Holy crap – and these guys are a Developer Print Publication… Even funnier that there are about 20 AJAX ads on this page, touting a conference. If this is any indication of the quality... Hard to say if there's any affiliation with the magazine.

Not only is the drop down ad the most annoying thing that will drive customers off a site pronto but when you actually get to the site, there are links everywhere, with no visual focus anywhere. The actual article uses some low quality font that's not very readable...

If you were an advertiser, why the hell would you pay to be a part of this mess?

Web Advertising is annoying as it is without drop down ads like the one shown on this page, but if I see something like this I guarantee you I will not return - at least on purpose.

As it is magazines seem to have some of the worst Web sites that are bloated and obnoxious. Excessive ads with strobe crazy pages that can give anybody epilepsy and the old - sign in to see the full article. That's a good way to lose an interested visitor. Getting my name might be nice for your mailing list, but if I don't give you my name (much more likely) and I decide your site sucks you got nothing.

I'm curious - how many of you are actively buying anything based on ads you see on the Web? Let's exclude Google 'search' advertising for a minute, but for all those busy ads on various sites. Maybe it's me, but most ads feel like annoyances and I can't once remember seeing an ad where I was thinking - yeah that sounds interesting let's check it out. If something's annoying I'm not bloddy likely to click on it and want to find out more.

I suppose there's name recognition. Certainly folks like Telerik are saturating the adspace whereever they can with their controls. Some Ad budget those guys must be running. I guess it's reflected in the price of their controls (no kidding).

Ads in search areas are a little different - to me at least that seems affective because at least in that context the ads are tightly targeted rather than this loud and obnoxious. And even some of the Google advertising on many sites is reasonable in terms of being non-obnoxious and in many cases actually fitting in with the content.

I've been wanting to play around more with advertising on this site, because it get a fair amount of traffice through this Blog, but I'm very hesitant to slam ads into pages and have it look like crap. Or worse be annoying. ... Apparently not everyone's quite so considerate in the rush to 'cash in' on advertising revenue.

Feedback for this Weblog Entry

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Kevin Wright February 23, 2006 @ 12:29 am

> I've been wanting to play around more with advertising on this site

Perhaps we all read it because of the good content and lack of spurious rubbish...

Kevin

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Martin Brice February 23, 2006 @ 3:32 am

re getting the name to read the article
One acronym. GIGO. :> Gotta love it when they think the postal code 90210 (yup from the tv show) is in Alaska! :> haahah And as for email checks, nope@NonOfYourBusiness.com seems to satisfy the regex checks. :>

Now if I need to reply to email confirmation? Well, this way is just the modern version of natural selection. :>

re ads?
I have one of those new MS 4000 keyboards, and I have the bottom two buttons programed to close a window and one to close an app. I LOVE them for crap advertising/popups!

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Peter Bromberg February 23, 2006 @ 5:00 am

Rick, I UnBlogged about this very subject recently. A snippet:

"Frankly, I wish there were a way to automatically ban these sites from my browsing experience. You know, some kind of a webservice that automatically puts them into your hosts file pointing to 127.0.0.1 or something like that! That would do the trick quite nicely."

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Darrell February 23, 2006 @ 6:02 am

The site "design" for that page is a joke. Could they possibly add anything more to that page? Not only are the ads annoying but check out the mess of about 40 text links all packed together at the bottom of the page. That page definitely shows that more often is NOT better.

re: How not to design a Web Page
by steve February 23, 2006 @ 6:19 am

Today's sites are killing me -- lots of stuff going on the the margins and you try to block it out as you search for what you need in the middle.

You could perhaps try something like larkware.com. You may want to distinguish between products you recommend vs. stuff you are just selling space to.

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Bertrand Le Roy February 23, 2006 @ 8:48 am

:) I have a small laptop with a very small screen at home that I use for web browsing, and I know a (useful, unfortunately) site that has so much ads and "navigation" on top of the screen that I actually have to scroll down to get to the actual contents (when there isn't a big Flash ad on top of it). Don't even get me started on video ads with sound on by default.
What I don't understand is that this must actually be efficient if they're still doing it.

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Craig Berntson February 23, 2006 @ 9:45 am

Rick,

You've expressed something I've been complaining about for sometime. These companies just don't get it. But it is worse than just the ads. Try www.nbcolympics.com and try to read the main article before 1) the ad above it slides either up or down or 2) the article is switched to a different story. Or try cbs.sportsline.com where they blast you with a video, "stay tuned for a story on Tiger Woods after an ad". Multimedia capabilities have greatly enhanced the web experience, but they've also hurt it.

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Doug Dodge February 28, 2006 @ 10:05 am

Rick,

Remember though, the audience you are asking this of is going to be HIGHLY sensitive to these issues much more than most. For the casual web user perhaps not and perhaps they are more prone to respond to ads.

I cannot remember ever purchasing something as a result of a web page ad. I have, on very rare cases, clicked an ad to see what it was about. Maybe 5-10 over the last 2-3 years.

I suppose there are numbers somewhere that would indicate that advertising DOES make a difference.

So, is the money spent throwing good money after bad? I suspect not but the value 'per hit' must be extremely small.

What about a site that, for 'members', displays no advertising or ads in a location users' SPECIFICALLY go to (say for discount coupons, etc) and for those who choose not to 'join' they get a few more.

Still, most are more of an annoyance.

Best,

DD

re: How not to design a Web Page
by Bean March 02, 2006 @ 10:26 am

hate em...so much so that even if I do see an ad I have some interest in I will copy the root link into another browser window just to bypass any recognition of what site I was at when I saw the ad. Ha!

That is a bad site, but most annoying for me is about.com...

DotNetSlackers: How not to design a Web Page
by DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News November 26, 2006 @ 11:02 pm