In my mind, there’s not much difference between a bad web design and a bad company. I usually associate the former with the latter; if your website is shit, I’m not going to bother. I make these judgments universally — be it with a store where I am a potential customer or a company for which I am a potential employee. I will not bother.
There are four big tip-offs that I shouldn’t mess with a company. Three of these have to do with web design. The last has to do with professionalism. I usually don’t take into account how pretty a website looks. The prettier the better, but I’ll take a plain website over a garbage one anyday. Qualifications for garbage websites (and therefore garbage companies) are:
If I can’t read your website because of the contrast of colors (or lack thereof), I’m not going to try. If your website is completely in Flash, I’m not going to try. Goodbye. (You heard me right, I’ll never work for Dior.)
If your website is cluttered, I will be annoyed. I might trudge through it if I don’t have to think too hard about where to look.
If pixelated graphics are laden throughout, I will be peeved. It’s not that hard to make sure a picture fits. I would like to point out at this time that you should not stretch your graphic non-proportionally; IT WILL LOOK LIKE SHIT. And don’t use *.gif files. You really don’t want God to kill all those precious kittens.
And finally, if your website has grammatical errors, I will not think twice about hitting that great big “X” in the sky to eternally banish you from my web browser. Even if I forgive you for all the other times I wanted to gouge my eyes out, I can’t forgive unprofessionalism. Even if you don’t know how to build a website, you should know how to write. Goodbye.
I would like to point out a website that passes the readability test — unfortunately — but does not pass any other test. I won’t even forward you to the home page; how’s ’bout the About page: http://www.mensusa.com/page1.aspx … Just read the first three sentences…
You can tell something’s wrong when you see /page1.aspx instead of /about for an About page.
Just browsing around the site, you can tell that it belongs in some sort of hall of fame.
I know this site got ragged on by Photoshop Disasters, but I can’t resist.
So ends my spiel. Learn from it.
We’re in need of really good PHP and site design freelancers to develop a number of gay adult sites. Do you have any recommendations?
I’m the only one I know who does websites… just shoot me an e-mail at gayhacker [at] gmail [dot] com with what you’re looking for.
On the note of full disclosure, you also need one who can redesign the page your name links to (premeirco). Huge flash animation and music you can’t turn off? *tsk tsk tsk*… :-)