Why Your Awwwards Website Sucks

I talk about why some Awwwards websites annoy me as a web designer, and as a user.

All but one of the websites shown in this video are all found on Awwwards. Most of them are businesses that ideally want inbound inquiries from their site. I speak about some reasons why they make it hard for users to do just that.

[kelindrawn]

Context is everything. Do you expect your users to have a lot of time (e.g. in a Museum, at the Gate, browsing real estate) then I do think these designs have a place as long as the information can still be found. However, if your visitors simply want to buy a ticket or need to know the phone number of their dentist... then yeah, this will just make them angry.

[anguluth]

This is like comparing haute couture and ready to wear fashion.
One is made to be practical, the other is made to express an idea and push the boundaries of creativity and technology

[jcjch]

Same thing is happening to magazine / booklet design. I once went to Design Singapore Council to check out the print design exhibition. They were displaying local young designers work and also has a rack with the old books. I ended up only reading the old books. The modern designers ( At least in Singapore ) tend to use vibrant and Colorful, 2D/3D Mashup, Experimental Typography ( Basically ugly font ), Riso Print Style, Holographic Design and so on. I often think '' what does this bubbly distorted font serves? '' ''' Why does the circle is overlapping with a rectangle? ''. Nothing, They serve nothing but to look COOL and to make people eyes tired. At the end of the day they are unreadable and no one will care to observe and appreciate your work. It also brings up a sad phenomenon how similar they are.

[amarinofranca]

You are kind of right, but UX is what the name itself indicates: User Experience - and sometimes this might be whatever you want to serve the users. In order to do better experiences you have to be willing to break some rules. That's how we evolve. And I really think so called "UX rules/patterns/practices" are destroying most creative work and in the process ruining a lot of experiences by making them very similar, boring and weak in passing through a message. The standardization of things, even though it might feel comfortable and like the best option, is a dangerous concept.

"The proper User Experience practices" are always changing, because all of UX is very subjective and a victim of change. Sometimes interactive storytelling is the only way.

I hindsight, in my opinion if you only follow the rules, you'll never leave your mark in the world.




This isn't an attack on your opinion, as I agree with most things and I definitely feel like some experiences are simply ridiculous and pure show-off.

[ianciamarra]

Not that there's enough concrete evidence based on 1 website, but i ran an A/B test on one of my clients websites for a month last year. Site A was a traditional wordpress site, built beautifully, clean code (even for wordpress), only 2 plugins, etc. The child theme i developed myself too. Site B was a awwwards style clunky animated ecom website (with a loading screen). We had both sites completely google tagged so we could track everything. For that particular 30 day period, the 3D style website did have a 2.1% higher conversion rate with an average time on site to be 21% longer with roughly 8, 000 visitors. I've been meaning to run another test like this, but thought i'd want to share my findings.

[oscardasilva]

Think about it, if shiny object syndrome have tricked Chad to think that this fancy design is good, don't you think that the same will happen to the visitors of the website, when they see all those fancy visuals, it will make the business seems more appealing to them and they will be more likely to interact with the CTA ?

[denizbinay]

That's exactly how it was for me too. I thought I wasn't a good webdesigner until I could build such pages, because I believed those were the good ones. And yes, there are indeed a lot of cool ideas in there, but the stuff is confusing and slow.

[UnchainedEruption]

These modern websites fucking suck. All of them. Not just the "out-there" ones you find on some computer geek's avant-garde website or award show. The normal everyday ones like news sites and search engines and company sites. I don't see what is so "boring" about a normal fucking website where navigation is easy, clear, intuitive, and obvious, and information is fit comfortably one a single screen, or 2-3 at most. Images are the right size not taking up the entire screen (or even more than the screen sometimes). Websites today are so cookie cutter in how predictably bad they are. Let me give you a typical site:

1st: You see a giant picture of some stock image nobody cares about, followed by the title of the article. That one line alone takes up the entire screen.
Then you scroll down and you see 3 giant boxes, each containing a handful of words, usually filled with meaningless information. Then that is followed by a row of icons representing major news organizations...because apparently that means something? Was the site featured in a news article? What did the article say about the site? For all you know it could have been featured in an ad or an article critical of the site!

In the corner of the screen you have an annoying button for a "chat" button, blocking anything on top of it, hindering your ability to read what is on the page. I see these abominations even on US Government websites now! These chat buttons are fucking stupid, and I will NEVER use them. I'm not going to talk to a chat bot which is basically a glorified FAQ page, and if I'm connecting with a real human, I'd rather just talk on the phone which is way faster and easier to explain my situation than typing it up in a tiny chat window. At that point you may as well send an email to the company!

Then way at the bottom (about 100 screen sizes below the top of the page) you will get a giant ass footer that takes up the whole screen.

The way I remember websites being back in the stone ages when they were actually functional...you know, like barely 5 years ago, was you had a series of maybe 5-6 links either horizontally across the top of the page, or vertically on the left column of the page. Clicking one of these links takes you to a site for generally doing something, or you can hover over to reveal many more links that take you to sub-topics of that larger/more general topic. There is a clear hierarchical structure to the website, where pages are actually PAGES one can read like pages in a book, not massive scrolls that require endless vertical scrolling (or even worse, horizontal scrolling).

Animations are fucking stupid. Stop trying to turn your website into an art magazine. It's not supposed to look bad, sure, but style must always complement and serve the substance. Anything that gets in the way of a logical organization/flow from end-user perspective is just bad and ought to go!

[Tai]

I agree with you on the point that this website does not have the best UX
And I can't tell what most of them are about
But we are missing the point that also most of them are made to show the skills and have specific visitors not to give information

[darialyphia]

These are just websites made by artists under the DELUSION that they are designers, of course it's gonna be crap

[AntonyNorthcutt]

The websites on Awwwards generate massive rewards for the site owners, just ask them. Surely that's the most important factor, not whether you like them or not.

[thechosenone]

If i have to choose between white plain website with black text and some overdesigned bs i take white plain website with black text... i get info, no waiting, readable and easy to work with.

[tarekgarir]

Definetly agree with you on this! I think one can even say that this are actually bad designed websites because they are hard to use. As you say in your video: Websites are (most of the time) about information.

[evykramer]

I feel like in recent years, if you really look at it, it's also a sham to sell their courses.

[rickblackdog]

Couldn't agree more - so many incredible designers shitifying their sites because they want the shiny toys

[GoldenVulpes]

The mental image of a baby web developer is so funny. Someone input that into midjourney

[chriswilcox]

Awards you have to pay to stand a chance of winning? I know who’s winning there, and it isn’t the web designers paying to enter…

[BrentMalice]

lmao PREACH BROTHER id like a series of these in quick react format form of you shitposting on these artsy sites. it makes me so mad when i wanna buy something, and theres something annoying i gotta do.especially where im a programmer and i buy art stuff, artists gotta have somethin annoying as a sort of portfolio.

[hyde]

Was half expecting some petty hate, turns out it was some exceptional advice instead.

[PhiBuuNguyen]

you're the website structural engineer