I roasted 4 random websites (they were bad)

So, what actually makes a website good and what actually makes a website bad? Today, I'm going to show you exactly what that is by going through four different websites and giving you my first impressions and exactly how I look at them as I do that. Should we get to it? Let's let's go do that cuz that's more interesting than me just talking to you about this, isn't it? Come on then.

One of the things I immediately like about this website is it literally says plumbing and heating company in Newcastle upon time. as if you had any doubt whatsoever as to what this company was going to do or be, it says it straight away. Now, I love a website that does that. Whenever I work with a client, I always encourage them to put right straight at the top of the website who you are and what do you do. This website doesn't get it wrong.

So, that is one of the things immediately that I liked about this one. You know, it doesn't really look much different than the plumbing website, but there's some things immediately that's really offending me on this site more than the other one did. It says at the heart of the recruitment in Birmingham. I mean, I couldn't see it because the message has just disappeared already. In fact, the messages are changing so quickly that I can't actually read what they say.

The first thing that hits you on this website straight away, at least what hits me, is the excellent but cryptic phrase transform operations to exceed customer requirements. Now, if you remember the first website that I was talking about, I praised it because it said exactly what it did on the tin. And I think when you have a website, especially a business website, the website should immediately say what you do. This website here attempts to immediately tell you what they do, but actually tells you nothing at all about what they do. And this is a kind of gobbledegook business cryptic speak that we see on many websites all over the internet.

It says, "A digital marketing agency, that's dot dot dot in gigantic text. Got your back." Got whose back? What back have you got? the back of me, my back, my physical back, my metaphorical back. I I don't know.

I don't know what it means. The phrase irks me to be honest. Let's scroll down. Welcome to Bell Cornwall Recruitment. For a start, again, the company isn't based in Cornwall rather confusingly.

It's based in Birmingham. But this website is making the mistake of uh what I like to call the welcome to my website mistake. I made my first website when I was 13 years old and I was so excited by the fact that I'd made my first ever website. And trust me, it was terrible that the first thing I wrote on that website was welcome to my website. Now, that's not really a thing that you put on professional websites, but I often find that clients and other professional businesses alike seem to love putting at the top of the sites, welcome to my website, or a variant thereof.

Now, this website here, welcome to Bell Cornwall Recruitment has exactly that. It has welcome to my website, albeit in another guy's right at the top of the website. Now, nobody cares about this. It's not a welcome m your website. It isn't one of those cheesy things that say welcome in front of your door when you get to the house.

Your website, in fact, isn't a house at all. Your website is a place for people to find information about your business. So you don't need to welcome people to it because that's not how people use websites. Websites are there for people to find information after all. So the whole phrase welcome and anything after that is completely redundant and in fact you've wasted space and precious words with something that's completely pointless cuz those words there that big capital welcome to Bel Cornwall recruitment could have been something that was actually useful to people and might have helped people understand what kind of recruitment that they do, what industries they work in.

It would have been better for SEO as well because it's the first key statement on the website. So they've ruined all that by putting welcome to my website essentially. So well done Bell Cornwall recruitment based in Birmingham. Trusted maintenance professionals. And the design of this by the way is horrendous.

This section it looks terrible but there's a genuine photo of a van there on the right hand side. And as soon as you see that you know right these are a genuine company. Cowboys are not necessarily going to pay to brand their van. It's such an easy thing to do. It isn't an AI generated photo.

It clearly isn't a stock photo. It's clearly a real photo. Again, when you're using photos on your website, please, please, please make sure they're genuine photos, especially for a service like this where your entire business is built on trust and nothing else. We provide proven technical expertise, capabilities, and blueprints to guide manufacturers through the challenge of transforming their IT and OT environments and addressing the complexities of digitizing and modernizing their plant floor environment. What the does that mean?

Oh, what's going on here? Oh, but the the site's scrolling sideways even though I'm scrolling downwards. Oh dear. You see, this thing here is a thing I absolutely hate on websites. is something called scrolljacking and many websites do it.

Scrolljacking is when you start scrolling downwards or upwards and something happens that isn't just scrolling up and down the page. It's a bit like using a door. So imagine you walk up to a door for the first time and you pull on the door and the door begins to open, but instead of the door opening, it flies up and over your head and lands behind you. That's an unusual thing for a DAR to do. And especially if you're experiencing that for the first time, you won't have any idea what's going on.

That's what scrolljacking does on websites. It takes an expected experience, which is as you scroll down a website, it should be going up and down, and taints it by doing something completely random. It has no business in websites unless the website is clearly inexperienced from the beginning. Don't do this. It's wrong.

Don't do this. We pride ourselves on our hands approach. Couldn't count on my hands how many times I've heard this phrase because so many websites include such a generic piece of content. When you say we pride ourselves on our hands-on approach to recruitment, you are literally saying nothing. In fact, you may as well not even put the words on the site.

You could be saying, "We pride ourselves on our hands-on approach to grave digging." as an example. We pride ourselves on our hands-on approach to buttering the bread correctly. We pride ourselves on our hands-on approach to assassinations. It it doesn't mean anything and doesn't say anything. Everybody is hands-on in what they do because they are doing the service.

This site is so full of generic content that actually the content on the site isn't serves no benefit of even being there. And it's I'm stumbling over my words because it's making me increasingly angry looking at this website. It provides sources for the the things that they've got on there and it actually provides figures and facts, but the facts and the figures and the sources and the the percentages are all total bollocks and they don't mean anything. So, it was nearly a good idea, but it's turned out to not be a very good idea because what they're presenting is boring, uninteresting, and no one will understand what it is. Right.

Where are we based? We're based in Birmingham, right? Okay. So, let's get a photo of Birmingham. Right.

Here's a photo of Birmingham. Birmingham's a hole. It looks terrible. So, how can we make Birmingham look a bit better? Well, let's do the photo at night with a slow shutter speed.

That'll make it look better. Okay, now it looks better. Yeah. Let's just darken it down a little bit, though, so people don't know it's Birmingham. I know.

I've got one more idea, though, to make sure that everybody knows that it's Birmingham. We're going to put the phrase at the heart of Birmingham across the site. done. Fast, reliable response, hassle-free service, and no cowboy builders. They're great things to try and ease someone's concerns in a time of crisis.

Those three things should be higher up the page, though. They should be right at the top of the page. And in fact, you could make the entire homepage only about those three things, and you would have done a good job, and you wouldn't really need much else on the site other than those. Bell Carmal Recruitment is not your average recruitment agency, right? Okay.

So, does that mean you're above average? Does that mean you're excellent? Does that mean that you're just slightly better than your other competitors that are average? I don't know. Because the phrase means absolutely sweet all.

I don't think there's an industry too complex out there that you can't simplify so you can say it to an 8-year-old. I've yet to find it if it is, but this one here, presumably an IT company, isn't one of them. IT companies often suffer from the lurgy of not being able to talk in plain speak and it comes through most strongly when you look at the website. However, on their website, it's where it should be coming through the least amount because someone coming to your website is glancing at the content. They're scanning the content.

They're not looking at all of the detail. So, you have to be very clear with what you say and not use any jargon. The content on your website is there to provide information about your services. It isn't there to provide comfort in some way. It isn't there to be witty.

It isn't there to be a poem. It isn't there to say love, work, be happy. It's just there to provide information. And this website does such a bad job of it that we're going to move on to website 3. It's generic to the point that it makes it difficult to understand what's trying to be said with the website.

It thinks it looks really good. And this website, in fairness, is actually quite nicely designed. But because it doesn't say anything, the design doesn't even matter because the content is generic and because it's talking about the company rather than talking to the customer. Even if the photos and the video is nice and pretty like it is, there's nothing that can be done with this website because the content is fundamentally flawed right at its base level. This stock photography that we're looking at here isn't actually too bad because they're fairly generic images.

You know, it's an image of a sink, a boiler, and some kind of electrical equipment digy doo dah that I don't know what it is. However, as soon as you see them, you immediately think that the website is fake. What I would have preferred in this section here, worse images, so even just iPhone images, but images of the people who work at the company doing the actual job. If it was them with their logo on their polo shirt smiling at the screen or something, it would have looked more genuine straight away. I don't think this is a stock video.

It looks too good to be that. But the video looks too good that it actually looks like some kind of dystopian movie trailer for an alien film that hasn't been released yet. Yeah. You'll notice throughout the entire video I've spent very little time talking about design rather than talking about the content, the words, the first impressions. Because the first thing that someone's going to do when they come to your website is read the words rather than look at the photos.

They're going to of course glance at the photos and the video that's on there, but the first impression is going to be based on the words that are on there. And if things are spelled incorrectly, not talking about the customer and talking about themselves, that's going to have the worst effect rather than a couple of photos that's wrong or rather than a really nicely designed website. If you have a really nicely designed website, and of course I think you should have a really nicely designed website, but the words are rubbish and the website is pointless. And I know that's harsh to say, but it's true. The website becomes pointless if the words are rubbish.

And if you enjoyed me roasting these four websites, I've got other videos pretty much exactly like this one. They're popping up right here, right now. And if you'd like to go look at it, I'll wait around pointing at it for a few more seconds so you can go click on it.