How to Build a Bad Website

In the business world today, having a website is a must. But why should you strive to have the best website ever when it is much, much easier to build a bad website than a good one?

There are several benefits to having a bad website. For example, you can leave behind the stress of the "Web Race". Your customers will tell you that your website stinks, but will not necessarily be able to tell you exactly WHY it stinks, and because of this your web team may not be able to tell you how to fix it.

The result of this serendipitous confusion is that you can simply put your feet up and do nothing. No wasting your time snooping on competitors websites, no sending your web team to expensive continuing education seminars, and no worries.

Here are some tips to help you on your way:

1. Pick a nice dark background for your web pages, and use a color wheel to pick a nice coordinating color for the text. For example, navy blue and brick red go nicely together, so do royal purple and mustard yellow. This will showcase your excellent color sense, and keep your information secret from all but those with the best vision.

2. Make sure that your nice colorful text is small enough that your entire frontpage is visible without scrolling (Size 6 or 8 is nice). You don't need headlines to get attention, your subject matter is interesting enough all by itself.

3. Place high-resolution photos on every page. Photos should be at least 300dpi and have a file size of at least 1.2MB. This will ensure that only urban customers with broadband will use your site.

4. Add a nice long flash movie to your landing page. A commercial for your company is most appropriate, and will get your customers excited about you. Make sure that there is no "skip ad" button, so you can be sure everyone sees the whole movie.

5. Use music liberally throughout the website. Everyone loves music! It should play automatically at a good volume, so customers can get the full multimedia effect.

6. Ditch your navigation plan. The longer it takes for customers to find what they want, the longer they will stay on your website. Many studies have linked the amount of time customers stay on a website to the amount of money they spend on the site. Also, it looks really good in website statistics reports.

7. Stay away from homogeneous page layouts. Be creative. Customers don't want to see the same thing on every page. For example, it's just boring to have the links in the same place on every page, or the same number of columns on every page. This will also help keep your customers on the site longer.

8. Add lots of ad links and popups. These make the website more visually interesting. Make sure the links are broken, however, so customers can't actually leave your website.

9. Avoid frequent updates. You should think of your website as similar to a print ad or book. You put a lot a thought into your web content, and unnecessary changes could confuse your customers. A couple updates a year will be enough to keep things fresh.

10. Keep your site off the search engines. You know they send Spiders to your website? You don't want spiders. Your customers don't like spiders. Spiders bad. Ok?

Remember, anyone can have a good website, but a bad website is better.