How to Ruin any Website Design
One thing that many designers like to avoid is having their work torn apart by the company, individual, etc… that hired them. What is the easiest way to do this? Throw up a nice, big 728×90 ad right above your header in a white/grey/black space. This is what happens when you stop worrying about the user experience and begin to focus on how you can sqeeze every dollar out of your site.
For example, Technorati recently released a new design. It’s good, too. Unfortunately on most sub pages that people (especially bloggers) view the most: the “reactions” and links, or basically anything having to do with a single blog, you can expect either a big orange self promoting ad, or another various eye sore. One example of these pages is this page, which is my own page for the blog reactions to this site.
Why does Technorati need to do this? They are the 202nd most popular website in the world (according to Alexa) and with all that traffic, you would think some more subtle private advertising would be used over making hundreds of thousands of people’s eyes hurt everyday. Could you imagine how much they could make if they listed over at Text Link Ads? Huge traffic, tons of pages, PR8. What more could you ask for in a TLA?
Alexa on the other hand, isn’t a very well designed site to start with. Especially on my resolution (1680*1050, or any high res for that matter) things on the traffic graph side of things don’t look too good, especially when there’s a huge, contrasting banner ad above their site.
So the moral of the story is: Don’t ruin your design with ads. I’m not saying you can’t monetize, but think about before wielding an ad as big as 728*90.
Leave a comment
Mike
May 27th, 2007 at 11:58 PM
I agree, recently tutorialized was sold and the new owner has put about 8 different add blocks on the site check it out when you have a minute..
Connor Wilson
May 28th, 2007 at 7:16 PM
Yeah, Tutorialized is another great example. This isn’t to say monetization is a negative thing, but all things in moderation.
Dave
May 29th, 2007 at 10:43 AM
Connor thanks for the article. Your site has some good info. I’m trying to set up my new site so it works for both purposes, provide some info and make some cash in the long run. I’m trying to avoid any design that uses huge ads and I’m trying to design it so the ads can be displayed in several small locations.
Mathew
September 8th, 2007 at 12:48 PM
One of my pet peeves is when I supply a nice design to a client only for them to copy and paste some advert in the middle of it to render it totally useless. Saddening
Login »