Good Design vs Bad Design: 4 Web Design Examples That Separate the Two

Jonesen TeamCase Studies, Industry Insights

38% of all web users will stop engaging with content if the content or layout is unattractive. Bad design on your website will do serious harm to your reputation as well as your traffic numbers. But if you don’t have a formal education or history of working in design, it can be challenging to tell good design from bad.

Luckily, today’s internet is full of examples of both excellent web design and bad design that could use a tune-up.

Four Examples of Bad Design (And Solutions)

Of course, just seeing a website isn’t enough to tell you what’s wrong with it, especially if you don’t have a background in web design. To solve this challenge, we will be providing you with examples of poorly-designed websites and a quick explanation of what’s wrong with them.

Let’s dive in.

1. J&L Plumbing

http://jlplumbing4u.com/

While the words on this website are compelling, the design clearly needs some work. There is no cohesive color scheme – we see white, gray, light blue, red, and a green color mixed together with no real purpose. There is also far too much text on the navigation menu, making it feel busy and crowded.

Solution: Make the navigation menu less crowded and busy, use a more logical color scheme.

2. Water on Wheels

http://water-on-wheels.com/Water-on-Wheels/Welcome.html

This site appears to have been designed with a mobile device in mind. Loaded on a laptop, there is ample gray space on either side. The color scheme also seems to be random, featuring white, gray, red-orange, and hot pink.

Solution: Incorporate responsive design so that the site loads properly on every device, not just smartphones. Stick to just a few colors that aren’t hard to read.

3. Space Jam

https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

Okay, this one may deserve a pass since it’s from 1996 and represents one of the most beloved movies of all time. But the classic Space Jam website is a great example of some design concepts – frames, animated GIFs, and busy page backgrounds – that should stay in the 1990s.

Solution: Fewer frames, better text and background color choice.

4. Widmayer Company

http://fredotech.dscloud.biz/~widmayer/index.html

The Widmayer Company has a great story – it’s just told with poor design. This Maryland-based roofing contractor uses a clashing theme of orange, black, white, and red, making it hard to read even large headlines on the site. Below the main splash, the intro paragraph is bunched up and lengthy – it feels like the reader has run into a wall of text, literally.

Solution: Change the color scheme to something more pleasant. Space out text a bit more to give readers a break.

Don’t Let Your Site Fall Victim to Bad Design

It’s relatively easy to see what bad design looks like, but if you are building a site, it’s sometimes tough to tell if you’ve made a design mistake. The above websites should give you some inspiration and help you determine what not to do so that you can ensure people enjoy your page and visit it frequently. For more information about website design trends, contact our team at Jonesen Design.