Bad web designs
www.tallyhouniforms.com – the most annoying thing about this site is when you first log into it – is the trailing cursor. Its good animation used badly. Other factors are the background which does not really match the product, the background looks more for a gospel website and they are selling flight attendant uniforms and accessories. In addition most of the products which still feature on the website are discontinued. If I was a customer to this website I would have maybe overlooked the animated “eyes†but once I got to a product that was discontinued I would have discontinued my search on their site. In my opinion there is not much that could improve this site other than a complete makeover. It does come across as one of the first experiments with a website in 1995 and therefore would need to be completely redone. If the client insists on animation, rather have a plan flying across the screen but then have the whole site animated, and not just sections of it.
www.lanyardsupply.com – this site is hectic, too much writing, too many colours, too many links, you look at it and actually just want to get out of it. It’s information overload. When you click on one of the coloured links, it takes you to an almost identical page. It took me a while before I realized I had actually moved on. Not to mention it takes a while to download because of the bulk of its contents. As a customer I would wonder if they ran their business with the same degree of professionalism or if I ordered something, would I actually get it. To improve this site, I would recommend they choose a set colour scheme and stick to it, minimize the options on the front page by categorising their products and insert a catalogue to better navigate instead of trying to fit everything on one page.
www.architecture.ed.ac.uk – once opened you have two option, full graphics version or the basic version, decide to enter the full graphics page you get a page where the background is almost the same colour as the writing, this makes it quite hard to read and you get the feeling more is going to happen but nothing does. Click to continue and one gets, in very big bold writing a list of navigational links, click on any link and the page then opens up on top of the previous one. Choose to go back to the options page and select a different option and that page again opens up on top of the other two pages that were currently open. Every option you select opens the next page on top of the previous ones. It just seems a mess, and considering this is a web site for architecture at a university, it would make me decide twice about whether I would want to study there or not. To improve this site I would suggest going back to basics, on the homepage forget the two options of full graphis or basic print version, choose one version and follow it through on the site. Rather have an inviting picture of the university with a drop down menu on the top with all the options to navigate. The idea should be that people will want to go study there. Loose the “layers†of pages that open up on top of each other and give each option its own page. Keep it basic, it’s a university site offering future students information, not a site for experimentation.
