SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

  • Design
  • Showcase
  • Inspirational
  • Tutorials
  • CSS
  • Resources
  • Tools
  • UX
  • More
    • Mobile
    • Usability
    • HTML5
    • Business
    • Freebies
    • Giveaway
    • About SpyreStudios
    • Advertise On SpyreStudios
    • Get In Touch With Us

6 Popular Sites That Went Viral Despite Poor Design

April 25, 2016 by Spyre Studios

twitter old site

Every single one of the most popular web applications in the world today was once a fledgling startup. Without product and engineering teams composed of hundreds or thousands of people, the founders of these companies had to find ways to build amazing products with a minimal budget. Pop culture now regards many of these creators as technical geniuses, so you might expect their early products to reveal their incredible talents.

In reality, early products from these visionaries were incredibly simple, and also… kinda ugly. Building a website with older design trends does not necessarily mean that the product must be ugly. These sites simply did not follow design principles. Somehow, they gained a massive following anyways. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, even advocates for this approach: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Less is More: Best Minimalist Website Design Principles in Display

All of these incredible teams had one thing in common: they built a product that users absolutely craved. They were able to help their early adopters so much that the users were willing to look past their questionable design decisions. These examples will reveal the shoddy design decisions you can get away with if you focus on building a product that users love.

Note: If you want to check out the day-by-day history of any website, check out the Wayback Machine! It has screenshots of every change that a site has made since its inception.

Example 1: Facebook

popular websites poor design

This is a snapshot of Facebook (Thefacebook, at the time) from 2004 when it was only available to Harvard University. The design calls for many questions.

Whose head is on the top bar?

What does “popular consumption” mean in the second line of the main section?

Why are there brackets in the title?

Regardless, Facebook was a revolutionary way to connect at that time and included some key product decisions that could separate it from Myspace and Friendster. The intimate focus on the Harvard community helped create an active user base. Mark Zuckerberg and his team worried about solving one problem for one community and did not scale until they succeeded. Facebook was capturing real human interests in an online social network, and that helped users push past early design flaws.

Example 2: Buzzfeed

popular websites poor design

This is Buzzfeed from 2006. You will notice that their model seems to be fundamentally different than it is today. They seem to be aggregating content from other providers related to popular news topics while their model today focuses on producing content with clickbait-style headlines.

While this actually does a little better in the design principles category, it is pretty generic and could be for almost any content-oriented website. There is nothing to give you a clue about what you will consistently find on the site. This could easily be some random blog. The info box at the top right even declares that the content is “worth your time”. You cannot convince a user of that fact by stating it… you have to provide actual beneficial content!

Contrast this with the current Buzzfeed main page. The current main page does an excellent job of capturing the emotions that it wants users to feel, like surprise, disgust or humor. The old Buzzfeed site is dry and emotionless, which is the opposite of the main value proposition of the company!

In 2006, this one stop shop for popular and viral content was still a relatively open space, and Buzzfeed was able to provide enough valuable content to keep users coming back. Once they created a site that would help these early adopters, they had the time and money to bring on more talent and prepare their site for a larger audience.

Example 3: Reddit

popular websites old design

Reddit initially launched to the public with this interface in 2005. The exceptionally minimalistic approach provides almost nothing to criticize… because there are so few features! There is no concept of subreddits or comments, two incredibly useful features of the current site. In fact, you can only really do three things with this version: upvote/downvote, click links and submit links. Any developer could build this site!

Keep in mind, there was already a 500-pound gorilla that was succeeding in this space: Digg! They had money and a large user base. But, Reddit was able to outline one way to beat them- a rich community that defined the site. It focused on community-building, which slowly attracted Digg’s users. Reddit had a consistent stream of interesting links, and early Reddit users could look past the minimal feature set because they could easily browse all the interesting content.

Example 4: Uber

popular websites old design

Remember that when Uber launched in 2010, smartphones were not nearly as common in the United States. Since many users would need to hail their on-demand cabs via SMS/text, Uber needed to find a way to visually explain how their product was superior to cabs. They built a web interface to accomplish this.

Compare this to the current Uber experience- instead of using an app to find the distance to the nearest car and then instantly ordering, you had to use a much less obvious text interface, and use a computer to check for real-time updates.

But it was good enough. Uber was able to survive and grow with their limited SMS and website combination. By the time smartphones became popular, Uber was well-funded and ready to capitalize.

Example 5: Twitter

twitter old site

My goodness, look at that green sidebar! It appears to be a tactic to draw the user’s eye to the sign-up section. Interesting approach. Also, check out all the Tweet examples that they offer. All are pretty straightforward and focused on sharing little life details. Today’s version of Twitter is used for all sorts of things, but it is rarely used for little life observations. It is more often used for news, sarcastic remarks or provocative statements.

Nevertheless, Twitter famously exploded in popularity after the 2007 South by Southwest festival. The microblogging tool offered a casual, informal way to read about news and share personal anecdotes. This was a unique offering, and early adopters were not going to let a strange-looking green sidebar stop them from joining.

Example 6: Linkedin

linkedin old site

LinkedIn is a little older than the other sites since it was started with the first big wave of web companies in the early 2000s. This is a user’s personal page, rather than the other examples which were usually landing pages. Compare this version to the helpful visual features and infinitely scrolling newsfeed in today’s version.

The big orange box encourages users to invite connections and update the profile. That is crazy! Users are not visiting LinkedIn to update their profile or invite others, they are doing it to stay in touch with their professional network.

The designers decided to dedicate a large portion of the screen to these secondary concerns. Also, you will notice that there is actually nothing immediately valuable on this page. Everything is at least one click away! Today’s LinkedIn has a stream of updates and potentially interesting stories that are immediately available. Stories are broken up by individual members so you can get instant notifications on the movers and shakers in your network.

The Only Reasonable Conclusion

Certainly, creating a well-designed website is important, but it is secondary to building a product that helps users accomplish their goals. When you are trying to gain a user base for your product, you do not need to worry about making the site perfect for all potential users. You just need to find a way to make the early adopters happy. They will be willing to look past some design flaws if they truly value the product. This is great news for you as a product creator- don’t be afraid to launch early and start getting feedback!

This post was written by Kevin Kononenko, the founder of Manual, a site where developers have been voting on the most helpful coding and design tutorials on the planet. He is also a self-taught web developer. You can check him out on Twitter, Quora, and Medium.

Filed Under: Design, Showcase Tagged With: showcase, website design

Recent Posts

  • 31 Fresh Design Elements for Spring and Easter
  • 10 Templates for Music Concert Flyers
  • How to Build a Web Scraper Using Node.js
  • Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2022
  • How to Get Your First Web Design Client

Archives

  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008

Categories

  • Accessibility
  • Android
  • Apps
  • Art
  • Article
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • Bootstrap
  • Business
  • CSS
  • Design
  • Development
  • Ecommerce
  • Fireworks
  • Flash
  • Freebies
  • Freelance
  • General
  • Giveaway
  • Graphic Design
  • HTML5
  • Icons
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Infographics
  • Inspirational
  • Interview
  • Jobs
  • jQuery
  • Learning
  • Logos
  • Matrix
  • Minimalism
  • Mobile
  • Motion Graphics
  • Music
  • News
  • Photoshop
  • PHP
  • Promoted
  • Rails
  • Resources
  • Showcase
  • Tools
  • Tutorial
  • Twitter
  • Typography
  • Uncategorized
  • Usability
  • UX
  • Wallpapers
  • Wireframing
  • WordPress
  • Work

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

SpyreStudios © 2022