The Most Baffling Web Design Decisions

• By Sarah
• General News
• 1716 Views
• 08th April 2022

The most effective website designs take full advantage of the decades of established good practice with web design to enable businesses to showcase their content in the most effective and appropriate manner possible.

This is what web designers and white level development teams strive to do by taking an idea and ultimate end goal and providing easy to use solutions tailored to a particular business need.

However, as the World Wide Web and the first website are both only thirty years old, the technologies and right way to make a website have changed considerably, which is why modern websites no longer use frames to display menus or showcase dynamic content using Macromedia Flash.

However, some websites have, through programming error, broken updates or bizarre methodology made some truly baffling choices with their web design that makes their website not as effective a marketing, sales and communications tool as it perhaps could be.

 

Arngren

Of all the types of website that need to get their web design correct, eCommerce must have it as their high priority. An unintuitive, slow-to-load website or one with a poor search function can cost a business an untold number of sales.

However, even the most poorly optimised WooCommerce shopfront looks like the Argos website in comparison to Arngren, an electronics and gadgets mail order website based in Norway that is similar to the old Innovations Catalogue.

Whilst many immediate flaws leap to mind as soon as you see it, almost all of them come from a lack of structure; wherever a product will fit on the homepage, it is added with no rhyme, reason or consistency.

This is why it can be a true shock to the system when you first see the page, and given that their blog notes how infamous their web design is, there is a chance it will never be updated to a new format.

 

Typeset Design

Setting aside that the website was not designed with a mobile-first approach, Typeset Design’s website is not necessarily that bad, with a simplistic approach that has some elements of good design.

The big problem of course, especially on their portfolio page, is in the bizarre white and off-white colour scheme they have used, which serves to make it a considerable struggle to read due to the lack of effective contrast.

Other brands, particularly those with lighter logos and colours schemes have suffered similar problems, but it is important to ensure that all of the elements on a website are readable.

 

Interrupt Technology Corporation

It is difficult to say whether this is a profoundly missed opportunity, a brave act of defiance or a work of genius, but Interrupt Technology Corporation’s anti-website consists of just three short paragraphs of plain text that almost literally tell a potential customer to look elsewhere.

The reasoning behind the lack of any details is simple; they do not want a website, do not want outside business and only have a website so they can have an email domain.

Amazingly enough, the web domain was registered in 1986, and it seems that, even 36 years later, they have not quite been convinced of the value of a website.

If you have a small, dedicated customer base that is enough to sustain your business then this is an acceptable approach to take. Otherwise, you need to put a bit more effort into your web presence.