Web Design


The purpose of this post is to critique a website that was poorly designed. The website I am choosing to critique is LingsCars.com 

Honestly, I think this website has broken just about every design rule ever created and my eyes and brain are in pain having spent some time reviewing the site. The following are just some of the incredible ways this site fails regarding design
  • Easy to understand navigation - NOPE!
Where do I begin? Gazing upon this lit up website of blinking madness, I noticed that everything looks clickable, yet only a few things are clickable and only discovered if you mouse over everything on the screen. Typically, on well designed websites, white space is used effectively to guide the users eyes to the appropriate navigation, yet there is no white space. In fact there is no space. Everything is jammed together. It definitely reminds me of one of those gimicky stores you see in tourist-heavy areas, but at least those stores make it simple to purchase items. They draw your attention by being bizarre, however, in the case of LingsCars, its very challenging to even know how to begin purchasing a product / renting a car.
  • Proper use of color - NOT EVEN CLOSE! 
Color plays a big role in effective web design and often facilitates a particular feeling about a brand or organization. For example, Netflix, uses the color red throughout their branding to evoke a sense being at the movies via red lines found on a popcorn buckets, coke cups, or the red carpet. Additionally, web design that uses white space and subtle colors enable a user to spend more time on website browsing and potentially purchasing items. Colors can be used to direct the eyes to sections of a site that are most important such as "call to action" like a purchase or registration button. LingsCars website uses so many colors and blinking lights that it nearly burns the retina of the user and demands less time browsing. Again, Ling might be doing this for the novelty of it, but this is poor use of color in the design if the goal is to have a customer rent a car.
  • Proper use of animation - Let me think about this one...NO WAY!
Proper use of videos or animation in moderation can be a great tool for web developers to gain the attention of the user and provoke a sense of excellence and professionalism about a website. Usually, no video or animation is necessary, especially for highly functional sites that require business transactions. For example, https://www.nationalcar.com/en/home.html, is a rental car website that uses no animation but very good use of white space and puts the rental process front and center to make renting a car the primary purpose rather than tons of animations and crazy nonsensical fake ads that leave the user a bit confused.
  • An easy to use layout - NOT QUITE.
The layout is cluttered, unorganized and keeps the user guessing as to where they should be looking on the page. There is an incredible amount of columns, colors, animations and information that is not related to the site. 
  • Pleasing to the eye - hmmmmmm...NOT THESE EYES!
The site is quite the opposite of pleasing to the eyes and in fact is quite painful on the eyes. You can only look at the screen for so long before your brain starts to get overloaded with lights, colors, animations, and information. I will say there is a comedic vibe to the site and if that is what they are going for then they at least receive points for that fact. Also, some cultures prefer an abundance of colors, bells, and whistles, however this site takes it over the top. It is also funny and interesting in moderation, but fails to engage the audience to the point of encouraging a business transaction or taking the company seriously.  

Comments

  1. JeremySeptember 7, 2018 at 11:35 AM

    Terence,
    I appreciate the "bloggy" feel of your post. It looks like the site has transformed a little since your post (still optically exhausting) so maybe your blog had some impact... I could not agree more with your website review and I think if people have to spend much tie figuring out how to use a site, they just move on to the next.
    I've never seen anything quite like it so maybe it's so bad it's good? I definitely have some mixed feelings about it and I wonder if some of the look and feel of the site are attributed to culture. I have seen Asian food packaging and TV shows with similar attention-grabbing antics. What are your thoughts on this?

    ReplyDelete
  2. TerenceSeptember 7, 2018 at 12:01 PM

    Yes, the design is definitely a play on the culture, however, I believe LingsCars is actually located in the UK so it is an interesting choice for design. Here is an insightful article about web design for Asian cultures - http://creativetranslation.com/blog-asian-website-design/

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