Web Designer, Entrepreneur

With all the articles, guides and tutorials on how to make a killer website it is increasingly more difficult to make a bad one. When it comes to making some of the ugliest websites, extra attention should be paid to every detail. To help you with the process I put together a list of the top seven important rules to keep in your mind to make sure your website will be as bad as it could get.

Here come the secret ingredients

1. Put colorful/flashy banners everywhere you can

Don’t have a valuable content on your website? Don’t worry. There is an endless number of banners available. They are only a few clicks away and the best thing about it is they cost you nothing. That’s right, banners won’t cost you a penny.
You know how important colors are so try to grab those bright, colorful banners and if they move, blink or give out sounds that’s even better. That way you’ll make sure your visitors will see them. Website real estate is important so use it all.

2. Put your navigation where it will not bother visitors

What is the most important part of your website? Did you say content? Okay, so let’s make some space for it (and of course for some banners too) and move the navigation somewhere where it will not interfere with all the important stuff on your page. Here’s a tip. If you make the navigation text much smaller you will save a lot of space too. Think about it.

3. Use a splash page

Splash page is the first page you see when you arrive at a website. It normally has a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. I know you are a webmaster with good manners and you want to welcome every visitor and since it’s their first time seeing your site you want to show them where to click to get in. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?

4. Link to nonexistent pages

Just to make your website more fun and entertaining throw in some links that go nowhere to let the people work a little bit harder for the real content your site has to offer.

5. Make it difficult for visitors to see where they are

This one is slightly related to #2 and #4. When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they don’t know which part of the site they are in at that moment. This will leave them confused and disoriented enough that they will actually spent more time on your website while trying to find their way out.

6. Loud sounds and background music is cool

Surprise!!! Everybody likes surprises so why not surprise visitors by a sudden burst of loud music or shooting, swooshing sounds? I also recommend to put that 30 second song in a loop so everyone can enjoy it over and over. Just make sure you don’t provide any audio controls so you are completely in charge of the visitor’s experience.

7. Fonts and colors, there’s so much that can be done

This is probably one of my favorite parts. You have tens or even hundreds of fonts on your computer so why not use as many as you can? Even if you run out of fonts add colors and don’t forget about all the available styles (italic, bold, underlined etc.). In regards to colors, many years of testing and experience show, the most effective colors are green, turquoise, red and yellow all combined together. For best results use one of those colors as a background.

Well, those are the main ingredients you can use to make some very bad websites. If you feel creative and want to spice it up a little bit don’t be afraid to throw in some flying envelopes, rotating globes, blinking icons and shaking hands to personalize it all.

Here’s what’s best about making bad websites. No experience is required. Anyone can do it.

If you have some of your own ideas on how to make a website even worse, please share it with us (comments below).