There's never a loss of ugly web sites. But some rise above others. Check out SeattleGrapeVine.com.
Immediately one sees the haphazard nature of the site. It approaches a ransom note: different fonts, colors, backgrounds, and effects as one goes from region to region on the page. As one clicks around, you see a ton of ads spread around a tiny bit of content: a few events here, a classified there.
Why would someone want to stick around on this site, much less use it? It hurts my eyes just to try.
Wait, it gets worse. There's apparently lots of Grapevine sites out there. Including ones worse that this one. Check out RochesterGrapeVine.com. Or don't. It crashed my browser a few times.
Why do sites have to be this ugly? And for those running these sites, why do they think this is an acceptable user interface?
I'm not saying web site design is easy. But that's no excuse for living with a bad design.
6 comments:
Ughhhh. Must... look... away... The worst part to me is the COLORS of the fonts and backgrounds. Teal test on white? I have a headache now. Can't imagine that meets the contrast requirement for accessibility if it hurts my rather decent eyes. And what's with the gratuitous use of serif fonts?
Boy are you two, behind the times. Try to keep up if you can. The grapevine sites went through a complete new build and over haul in September. Not only do they look great, and are easy to use, they have more to over the local and web communities then this site does. Really more then most web sites do. They have combined the best of Craiglist, MySpace, YouTube and more, into great, all in one, local, one stop web sites.
Good luck with slamming web sites, but the Grapevinesites are not ones to dish on, they rock.
I took a fresh look and the site's still quite ugly. Way too many different fonts. Harsh color combinations. Misalignment of elements. I can go on...
I just checked out the grapevine site. I think it is quite nice, informative, and useful. And guess what, they have one in my city, PittsburghGrapevine.com
It is very similar, and just made it my home page.
I site like yours is easy to make, there isnt much content and just runs ads. Hard to compare the 2.
The site is nice. We have a ClevelandGrapevine. I just joined as they have the best news feeds i have seen. Will comment more once i use it for a whileausnesse
Look folks, I'm not talking about the content of the site. I'm talking about the appearance and design of the site. And after visiting the ones mentioned above, I still contend they are quite bad. Read some of these guidelines for starters, and then look again at your sites. http://psdtuts.com/designing-tutorials/9-essential-principles-for-good-web-design/
There's a ton of good web design patterns to follow out there - you don't have to reinvent the wheel. The result will be a site easier to navigate and consume information from, which should boost your traffic. If you haven't hired a good web designer, do so. If you already have one, consider getting a new one.
By the way, readers, I'm getting a lot of traffic from a forum post on http://www.thegrapevinecommunities.com which, you guessed it, has a web site owner's forum. My guess is these posts are coming from the owners of these various grapevine sites. If so, owners, I beseech you: fix your web site designs!
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