There’s no single standard for beauty, and that’s good because it makes the world a more diverse and interesting place. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t hold true for the world of websites, because there is a standard and people just can’t put their finger on what it is.

1. How Not to Make an Ugly
Website

2. • There’s no single standard for beauty, and
that’s good because it makes the world a
more diverse and interesting place.
Unfortunately, the same doesn’t hold true
for the world of websites, because there is
a standard and people just can’t put their
finger on what it is.

3. Ke e p Up With Yo ur Brain
• People often say the human brain makes a conscious decision
on whether something is appealing or not in the first three
seconds of coming into contact with that thing. That sounds
about right – if you place a decimal point in front of the number
three.
• Humans are incredibly perceptive of their own wants and
needs; most of the brain activity that goes into everyday
decision-making goes unnoticed. Making it all the more difficult
to identify to predict what style or type of website design
businesses should incorporate.
• Instead of trying to pin down what works, which is tantamount
to playing darts blindfolded, why not avoid all the things that
proven to drive visitors away. The internet is full of examples of
digital eyesores, and knowing what to avoid, will give a website
an edge to becoming a visitor hub.

4. Ke e p Up With Yo ur Brain

5. G e t That GIF O ff
• The Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format introduced
in 1987. People have used GIFs in the past for logo design, storage for low
sprite data, and low-resolution clip animation. These days GIFs are used as
bite-sized clips of humorous events.
• GIFs are a good tool for gathering interest and keeping people amused, but
it doesn’t work on business websites. They’re much too informal, and
frankly, having to look at more than three unrelated GIFs in a page is taxing
on the eye.
• Not to mention that if websites started stuffing their pages with GIFs, it
would put enormous strain on the bandwidth. Visitors would navigate away
from the site while the home page hasn’t even finished loading.
• Theres a tendency for new companies of stuffing as much content into their
websites as they can, and this is a misguided interpretation of ‘everything
at your fingertips’. People don’t want everything, they just want what they
came looking for, if they can’t find that immediately, they’re gone.
• Scan the website, and decide what visitors will want to see the most. Put
those things up, front and centre, and the site will overflow with traffic.

6. G e t That GIF O ff

7. RESOURCES:
• http://effortlesssites.com/portfolio
• http://birdsontheblog.co.uk/looks-arent-everything-but-
performance-might-be/
• http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html