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Once you decide to put together a list of bad design examples, the temptation is just to throw in all the stuff that’s been annoying you for years. Designers feel real pain when they see bad web design. But the designers are also a bit nerds, so we couldn’t avoid a detailed explanation of why each particular example is not good.
As a professional UI/UX design agency, we prefer avoiding calling design “bad” or “ugly” by just looking at it. We need to know the context.
Stereotypes about bad design
When you are asked to think of an example of bad design, the first thing that comes to your mind might be something like this:
This is what our designer Dasha brought up as an example. In our context of a SaaS design agency, this design can be considered bad. But what do we really know about the objective, the audience, the context of this website? Not much.
To be honest, we can’t read a single word in Chinese. What if the picture is a cult image? What if it is a postmodern irony? What if this website is about the history of bad web design? In such cases, the design would be rather efficient, meaningful, and serve the objective better than any of our designs would have served.
What’s more, “ugly” designs can become trendy and compete with those clean UIs, polished and perfectly usable. To learn more about the brutalist design and how it became fashionable, read our article UI/UX Trends: Balancing on the Dizzying Path Between Unique and Usable.
By the way, a website dedicated to bad web design really exists! Here is what it looks like:
The story of bad design could have been finished with this picture, but wait… We look at negative examples not just to laugh, but to learn something. That’s why we want to focus on the examples that are not that obviously-bad, but have some common flaws. That way we can learn from others’ mistakes and avoid making our own.
We often bring up the FANG products as examples to look up to, but nobody is perfect. In this case, we bring the Facebook dashboard as a negative example. Since most of us are so used to seeing it every day, looking at it with a fresh view is hard. Here is what a professional UI/UX designer (and amateur Facebook user) Kseniya sees in it:
“Facebook is very complicated and overloaded, both visually and navigationally. There are too many features and functions, some of them are even hard to understand. When there is so much unclear stuff, people don’t use most of these features, and even if they would like to, it is hard to find the thing that you would really need.”
This is the case when you have to fit in too many things at the same time and it results in the situation when different parts of the product are “living their own lives”.
These are some of the issues that are frustrating to the users:
- scrolling through the feed goes smooth only when you have at least 16Gb of computer memory
- photos and videos lose a lot in quality when uploaded
- the system of audio messages is very uncomfortable
- the search system is… well, unbearable
- the system of “unsending” messages is badly developed
- chat windows pop-up and clutter the screen, distracting and annoying (especially when you don’t want to answer them).
Have you noticed that we haven’t said anything about the visuals? UX designers often evaluate design based on user experience rather than anything else. There are so many cases when the user interface is beautiful, but the usability is not great: to find out how it happens, read our article Good UI, Bad UX or Not All That Glitters is Gold.
Designs that make us get lost
Sometimes we open the page and our eyes start wandering around the page: not because everything is so beautiful, but because we can’t find what we came here for: the “contact” button, gallery, or pricing page.
While page data might say that users spend more time on the website (which is good) user testing will reveal the truth: they spend this time trying to orientate and it doesn’t make them happier.
And here is an example of another common mistake that affects usability: a website where you have to scim over 10 options that look very similar to find the one you’re looking for.
Clear website structure and visual hierarchy are the main design principles that help users navigate with comfort.
Designs that make us squint
Texts on the websites have to be easy to read. Why don’t designers always follow this commandment? Why do we see (or rather don’t see) those small fonts in light grey so often?
There are two main reasons for that: first, designers need sharp eyesight for their work, so even if they need glasses, they would make sure they are at 100% precision, while many non-designers can live totally fine with their eyesight being at 70%.
The difference is clear when they have to read that light grey text. Light color is good for establishing hierarchy and focus attention on the main, but it is overused a lot. Can you read the second line in the picture below?
Second reason is that professional designers’ screens are typically much bigger than the average. During the working process, designers see the interface bigger than users will see it. Designers might simply not realize that the text is hard to read. That is why user interviews are so important.
In some cases, unreadable text is a part of the design concept, but more commonly, it is just a design flaw. A website or app that serves a clear objective, needs to have a decent font size and high type/background contrast to be readable.
Design that doesn’t mind the spacing
To perceive the information well, humans need some free space around the important points. Designers often say that the white space is just as important as the rest of the page. It gives the eye some rest and allows to distribute the focus.
Using the right spacing between the objects is not as easy as it sounds. Many websites fail at this.
Not only do you have to make enough space, but also take care of not leaving too much space between the elements: for example, if the textbox is placed too far from the explanatory text, our brain doesn’t connect them into one group and thus the user gets confused.
In the example below, the spacing is not adjusted and the hierarchy is weak: almost all groups of text have the same size. Moreover, the CTA button is in the upper right corner, which is not the best place.
This reaction is based on the Gestalt principles, the habit of our brain to perceive the objects that are placed close as belonging to the same group. This is one of the basic psychology principles that is used in UX design.
Design that tries to fool us
Have you ever gone through a long process of online shopping to find out that there is something else added to the price that wasn’t clear before the checkout? This is a highly annoying trick that some website owners use to attract people with “lower” cost when it is not really that low.
Naturally, disappointed users won’t come back and from the point of most businesses, this is a losing strategy. However, the e-commerce shops that are targeting one-time buyers don’t care much about it.
And here is another example, more subtle: a checkout page that’s hiding the delivery part implying that people would skip to paying without checking different (potentially pricey) delivery options.
This one is more about user experience than visuals. But we noticed that the websites using it also tend to have less attractive designs: a coincidence?
To sum up
We can say that using the word “bad” regarding design is not really correct, but the reality stays the same: we judge websites and apps anyway for their design. Our brain needs less than a second to bring up a judgement, and way more time to rationalize on the topics of “bad” and “good”.
In the end, the important thing is to be able to learn from both bad and good examples (and not to get upset when the design is not perfect).
So, now that you know how to make a bad website… Learn how to make a good website or app!
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Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean. A Practical Guideline on Your Business Strategy
At first guess, the terms blue ocean and red ocean seem to have something to do with geography, biology, or even marine life. But in fact, they were introduced to bring some clarity to the types of market spaces, especially during a new project launch.
This concept of the blue and red ocean was first introduced by Renée Mauborgne and Chan Kim in the early 2000s. They published a book under the name Blue Ocean Strategy that was expanded and updated 5 years ago.
Based on real-life studies, the book provides insights into business strategies called blue and red oceans. The authors cover such fundamental issues as creating demand, facing competition, and even conducting market analysis.
The terms blue ocean and red ocean are actually indicating types of market spaces. The analogy with the natural environment demonstrates the characteristics of contrasting market environments. The blue ocean is the name for a newly discovered or created business, while the red ocean indicates an already existing industry.
To tell the truth, it is quite challenging to come up with the idea of a completely original and unique project. It seems that everything that could have been invented, is already there. That is why most SaaS rely on the red ocean strategy when entering a market.
Eleken has designed products for startups entering both blue and red oceans. We know what threats and dangers are awaiting a SaaS in oversaturated industries. But at the same time, we understand that being the first one to establish a new market space and build it up, is also a huge responsibility.
If you want to know what’s hiding in the depths of red and blue oceans to strategize the most efficient development plan for your SaaS solution, let’s look closely at both types of market spaces and see what they have to offer.
Red ocean vs blue ocean
The main idea behind the names of blue and red ocean strategies is color associations. The blue color is calm and relaxing, it also symbolizes depth, stability, and even intelligence. For SaaS, such an environment is advantageous and promising, with lots of new opportunities.
On the contrary, red color is associated with strong emotions, such as passion, hate, and, of course, love. Such an industry is characterized by strong competition and tension, which makes it difficult for new SaaS solutions to coexist and compete with other projects. A more direct parallel is that of bloody water with fish eating each other.
Strategies
When you start understanding the difference between red ocean and blue ocean, a natural question arises: why would you ever dive into the red ocean when blue is so much more promising? Personally, it made no sense to me that people bring new products to an already saturated market. Why do they want to fight with all the competitors that are already successful?
Well, what we often don’t get is that blue ocean does not guarantee you success. Having no competitors doesn’t mean you have to try less: it’s the other way around. If you are lucky and you have an idea for a product in a blue ocean, there is still so much to do: develop a product from scratch, create a new market, and try to do all of it before someone else outpaced you!
Having no competitors means that there are no one else’s mistakes to learn from. You have no reference regarding design, pricing, marketing… It’s a blank page that is so easy to screw up.
To succeed in a blue ocean, products have to analyze the market, do the research, go from problem to solution, and test it well in advance – because when you bring something completely new, be prepared to have a long series of iterations.
Now that you think of it, jumping in a red ocean, where many products have already proven to be successful, is not that much work. You can rely on existing cases, study them, and find what exactly you can do better to differentiate and win over the competition. Or, if you don’t have any strong differentiation, you can always get your chunk of the market by setting prices lower.
These are the basic differences between red ocean and blue ocean strategies.
Now, let’s get straight to business and compare red and blue ocean market spaces by analyzing their most crucial features.
Market space
What is a market space? To put it simply, it’s a unity of sellers and buyers who, accordingly, are purchasing or offering their products and services. For each product, the market space will be different, with its pros and cons. Knowing how the industry for your SaaS application operates, is essential for creating a successful development approach and reaching product-market fit.
The red ocean approach applies to the market space which already exists. It has its rules, patterns, and major players. If your SaaS solution debuts in such an environment, you have to adjust to it and try to push through your service. Examples are the smartphones or online messaging tools industries.
With a blue ocean method, you create a market by presenting a completely new and original project. Being a pioneer, you can establish all the rules for this market yourself and make it work for your benefit. However, as an explorer, you have to learn customer behavior, pricing models, and other meaningful things using the trial-and-error method.
Sometimes, the price for such knowledge can be high but as an innovator, you need to experiment, take risks, and, what is more important, be ready to lose. With more mistakes comes more experience, so, within a short time, you can become a professional player in your market.
For example, Eleken helped Handprinter, an innovative startup, to design their product and website. This company tracks the positive impact on nature and the environment with such little things each of us can do daily as choosing a bike over a car or planting a tree. In other words, the app visualizes your carbon footprint and motivates you to decrease it.
This project turned into an enjoyable challenge for the Eleken team. Handprinter started in 2013 but its visitors were not converting into users. Changing the design was rather risky because there were no templates or similar SaaS on the market. With our creativity and passion, we managed to improve customer experience and draw attention to the application.
Competition
Competition is one of the most significant characteristics of any market. You build the strategy, improve your solution, and even modify the price for your services depending on your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, competition can serve as both stimulation and demotivation for your future development of the product.
Back to the color analogy, the red ocean method suggests that the market space is oversaturated with various products. Some of them may be of high-quality while others may fail to meet the demands of the end-users. Nevertheless, the choice is already big, and the red color signifies harsh competition coupled with tense conditions for your SaaS growth.
Zoom, for instance, has become the most popular video conferencing tool within a few months. Its history started many years ago, but this SaaS was mostly used by people in the IT-sphere before corona lockdown. Due to its simplicity and free service, the number of daily users for this product has risen more than 20 times already in March 2020.
Zoom’s story is a vivid example of the red ocean strategy. Despite resisting intense competition for years, this project drew the attention of its end users because it satisfied their major need: a simple and free of charge tool for holding conferences online. Therefore, Zoom managed to win the competition in a bloody red ocean.
If you are implementing a blue ocean strategy, the situation is quite the opposite. You introduce a new application and establish a newly-developed market space. Consequently, there are no competitors in the beginning. That is why you can play with your SaaS design, functionality, pricing freely, and do not have to follow any existing rules, because you are the first one to set all the rules.
The blue ocean market space is like a blank page, which can turn either into a disaster or success. You have to be careful with each step when introducing your product. Fortunately, if you are the only one in the market, it is quite easy to fix your mistakes and start all over again.
Demand
If your SaaS application makes its first appearance in the blue ocean type of market space, you are building demand from scratch. For sure, it is a very risky and uncertain thing to do. You cannot predict or foresee if targeted users will like the product or just ignore it.
Depending on how effective your service is, the demand will be either growing (and encouraging the emergence of similar products) or lowering (which means that your product didn’t meet the requirements of the particular market segment).
Once your SaaS solution is in the red ocean, you are exploiting the already-existing demand. This strategy tends to be safer as you can already look at both companies that succeeded and failed to learn from their experience. Moreover, you can even check their features and pricing plans to build your own product.
For example, Apple decided to operate within the red ocean market for smartphones and launched its first phone back in 2007. Despite a large number of competitors such as Nokia and Samsung, they managed to attract customers and offer the desired features and design. More than a decade after, each new model of the iPhone turns out to be a great success with unprecedented demand.
Value & Cost
The most common strategy for navigating the red ocean is offering lower prices or adding some value that the competitors don’t provide. That way you manage to gain customers without inventing a whole new wheel.
In a blue ocean, you can’t swim without providing a completely unique value. So, does it mean that you can spike up the prices since there are no competitors? Not really. When the market is not established and the demand is not clear, high prices can scare the potential customers away.
Most people are unlikely to spend money on getting something new that they didn’t yet feel as valuable. To nurture this emerging market, you have to set prices relatively low.
Netflix is often brought up as an example of a blue ocean strategy. Everybody knows well how they disrupted the TV and cinema industry and completely changed the rules. Now, let’s see how other fish enter the ocean of Netflix.
While Netflix has an enormous number of films in the catalogue and they are popular in many countries around the world, many new streaming services come on the market. Some of them provide local offer. For example, Filmin hosts independent cinema and serves mainly Spanish audiences. At the same time, they provide lower cost: as of 2022, monthly price of Filmin is €7,99 vs €12,99 for Netflix.
Similar strategy takes niche streaming service Mubi. To fight the genius AI-powered recommendation Netflix system they use… Human-powered recommendations: they ask curators to make programs and promote one new film a day.
Comparison of SaaS products using red and blue ocean strategy
Now, let’s look at the examples of famous SaaS products that implemented both red and blue ocean strategies in real life. Both of the projects we will talk about are very successful, so we can learn from their decisions and approaches in different market spaces.
iTunes — blue ocean strategy
We can look at the story of iTunes — a product that marked a revolution in both musical and technical spheres. 20 years ago, we did not purchase any songs. What we did, was downloading music from the Internet, putting it on CDs, and, quite often, damaging both CDs and our media players as a result of such tricky manipulations.
No wonder that all these procedures did not make looking for music or listening to it enjoyable. Indeed, it took time, effort, and reliable friends to exchange CDs with. In 2001, Apple introduced iTunes — a service that has simplified all these processes and appeared to be an irreplaceable one.
iTunes is a great example of implementing a blue ocean strategy. It was the first product of its kind in the market: unreliable in terms of profit and with no analogs. Consequently, it was stimulating a demand itself as nobody could guarantee whether users will pay for such a service if they can download music for free.
With time, iTunes got new features such as playing audiobooks and connecting to special devices for listening to music such as the iPod. The product keeps changing itself to adapt to the new demands of the customers.
YouTube Music - red ocean strategy
YouTube Music, probably the newest music streaming service was announced back in 2015. It seemed quite impossible for this product to compete with Google Play Music and other strong rivals such as Apple Music, Spotify, and Deezer.
Despite the harsh competition and saturated market, music streaming services were in high demand, so YouTube Music decided to give it a try. Additionally, due to millions of YouTube users, promoting their new project — YouTube Music was much easier.
Another interesting thing is that YouTube Music will merge with Google Play Music by the end of 2020. Most users of the last service will likely shift to YouTube Music because they can easily add their old records and playlists to the new application.
As with all the other products that are using the red ocean strategy, YouTube Music had plenty of examples of how to design the application, what features to offer to the users, and even how to build marketing strategies. Currently, this service already has more than 20 million users.
Red or blue?
Both red and blue ocean strategies have their pros and cons. The secret to understanding which market space will be the most beneficial for your SaaS is knowing the needs of your customers.
If you know that despite large competition you can still offer a valuable and useful SaaS solution, you can enter the red ocean bravely and even learn from your rivals. Read our article for even more hacks and approaches to rock the red ocean strategy.
If you are sure that your brand new service with new analogs will hit the industry and create huge demand, dive deep into the vast blue ocean. Our blog-post on blue ocean strategy with more useful techniques and advice will help you not to get lost and survive in a newly-discovered market space.
Product Adoption Process: How It Works and How to Fix It
One of the most common requests we receive at the Eleken design agency is to redesign SaaS products that don’t make users say “wow,” but make them leave and never come back.
Take the example of the Handprinter. The company reached out because the previous version of their platform was unable to convert visitors into users. In about four months, through UI/UX, we managed to fix the breaches in Handprinter’s new product development and consumer adoption process.
In this article, we want to help you better understand the way your customers adopt your product so that you stop losing them along the way.
Product Adoption Meaning (and Why You Should Care)
How awesome it would be if your Ideal Customer fell in love with your Ideal Product, at first sight, and forever. However, love at first sight exists in fairy tales, love songs, and Disney animations, but not in the world of SaaS.
It takes time and effort for both you and your customer to move your relationship from meeting each other to building long-term relationships. The process by which users become aware of a product, realize its value, and start using is called product adoption.
The broken adoption process for new products reminds dragging water in a leaky bucket — no matter how many potential clients you acquire, most of them disappear before the adoption stage, leaving you with nothing.
How Product Adoption Process Works
The AIDA formula, coined over a century ago, breaks the adoption process marketing into 4 steps: attention, interest, desire, action. To give you the feeling of how the AIDA can be applied to decision making, here’s a recent story of one croissant.
- Imagine you are walking home when a new sign grabs your attention. It's saying that a bakery is opening in your house.
- You go up the stairs to your room and google the bakery's offering — you're interested and wish to know the details.
- The next morning, half-asleep, you drag yourself out and suddenly you catch a scent of fresh-baked croissants. For the next couple of minutes, a croissant becomes your only desire and you follow the scent.
- You break into the bakery and ask to take your money and give you a croissant.
Four steps for the croissant adoption process.
All good, but I bet that your product is more complicated than a croissant. For selling complicated software products, we've got an AIDA modification that consists of six stages.
What are the six stages of the product adoption process? Let’s unlock them one by one.
1. Awareness (Introduction Stage)
Before the first stage in the new product adoption process, potential users are definitely unaware of your brand. They may be also unaware of the solution it offers for a certain problem, and they may not even know about the existence or importance of such a problem.
At this stage, the consumer looks for a crisp and clear answer to the question "what is it, and how it can be useful for me?"
Here's how Basecamp introduces its audience to the problem it solves.
Before Basecamp, you’re sitting in a wind tunnel with projects, emails, and questions flying at you. After switching to Basecamp, you get more work done, quicker, and better.
Okay, Basecamp, sounds interesting. Tell me more.
2. Interest (Information-gathering Stage)
“Interesting”, I think, and next: “how does it work?”
I collect information from your landing page, customer reviews, media publications, ask your customer support or colleagues that already use your services. I try to find out everything about features, functions, alternatives, risks, prices, colors, and shapes.
If the answer is unsuitable, information is irrelevant or unavailable, or difficult to understand, high chances are that I’ll leave you at this stage. It’s not you, it’s always hard to explain innovative products in an intuitive way.
Moreover, those products are usually for multiple audiences. In the Handprinter’s product design process, for instance, we discovered three types of users: individuals, companies, and communities or organizations.
It makes your job harder, since any product that is optimized for one group is missing out on a group of another, or overloads it with irrelevant information.
Check out how Canva breaks the tie by asking their newcomers one simple question. That information helps them personalize the following experience.
3. Evaluation (Consideration Stage)
‘To be or not to be’, I ask myself. That is the question. Time to consider whether trying the new product makes sense.
The voice of reason says from one shoulder: It will help me to reach my goals and break down silos. I should try it, I don’t lose anything after all.
Inertia says from the other shoulder: The product looks interesting, and it probably solves the problem I have, but I don’t want any changes in my life. What if something goes wrong? The old way of doing things is still good enough.
Look how Zuora forces its users to choose the changes and give its products a try.
“The subscription economy is here. The way we do business has fundamentally changed.”
It's the first line of the video. Next, Zuora shows that the change is inevitable, using reliable data. It shows how the change will rock the world, and what opportunities it provides for those who are ready.
Opportunities = 79 trillion dollars waiting.
Ready = adapted Zuora’s solutions for subscription-based business.
Okay Zuora, I’m with you.
4. Trial (Sampling Stage)
From what I hear from you, the product is worth trying. But I want a test-drive.
I get a free trial, or even freemium — a free experience with no time limit. Such a SaaS pricing strategy is called to remove any friction from getting end-users to sign up and try the product before they buy. Paywalls should come only after I’ve seen the value in the product.
How do you say, Canva? 23 seconds to learn, no payment needed? Oh, Canva, what are you doing with me. You win, I’ve signed up.
And here comes the million-dollar question: how do you convert free users into paying customers?
5. Adoption / Rejection (Buy or not Buy Stage)
If everything goes as planned, I feel your app’s value, come to you and say: “take my money and give me your new adorable feature!”
But it happens that something goes wrong — companies acquire massive amounts of freemium users, but never able to convert those users into paying customers. How can something you give away for free bring you revenue?
It all comes to upsell. Take YouTube. People can watch unlimited videos for free, but there’s one irritating thing that makes watching uncomfortable. The thing is advertising. It’s not irritating enough to abandon YouTube at all but makes me pay a couple of dollars every month to forget the advertising exists.
6. Post-adoption (Surprise!)
If only you’d sell refrigerators, you’d call it a day after the adoption stage and make a cocktail party in this honor. But having a SaaS business, you have to sell the same product to the same user all the time. It sounds like Groundhog Day, doesn’t it?
For SaaS, adoption never ends at the moment of purchase — I can easily top up your churn list next month given that your competitor offers a better product at a better price.
The first few things you teach me to do with your app is something simple — to help me get the most out of our product as soon as possible. But most likely those features are not unique and don’t make me stick with you. Any competitor, a better price, and I’m leaving.
The next logical step for your post-adoption strategy then is to think about your stickiest features — something deeper, more sophisticated, and, therefore, harder for adoption. Those features are where your true value lies, they make your app difficult to reject and replace.
Here’s how Slack manages to introduce its in-depth features.
Onboarding tips are conveyed through interactions with the Slackbot, which teaches you how to use the platform as you go. For instance, when you share a Google Docs link in Slack, you get a tip on adding integration with Docs to make sharing more convenient.
Wrapping Up
Okay, now how that generic product adoption curve can help you succeed?
If you want to change adoption curve, you first have to track it. You may sit with a Customer Success team and try to apply those 6 steps to your specific consumer adoption process.
Next, why don't you collect customer usage data? Data about churned customers may give some insights on the red flags that prevent product rejection. Data about renewals will provide some common patterns correlated with successful upsell.
There’re a few ways to track usage data:
- Instrumentation of your product from within — to track and analyze user experience.
- Real-time data collection — to see specific activities, like pushing the “submit” button.
- Asking your clients about their experience directly, giving them a call, or making a survey – to get feedback.
As you collect the data needed to see where users convert and dropoff, you’ll be able to fix points of friction to understand users better, make them move faster to immediate action, and improve customer experience.
If you guess there’s a design problem, let’s talk about it. Maybe we can help you with that.
Where do you start?
Okay, now how that generic product adoption curve can help you succeed?
If you want to change adoption curve, you first have to track it. You may sit with a Customer Success team and try to apply those 6 steps to your specific consumer adoption process.
Next, why don't you collect customer usage data? Data about churned customers may give some insights on the red flags that prevent product rejection. Data about renewals will provide some common patterns correlated with successful upsell.
There’re a few ways to track usage data:
- Instrumentation of your product from within — to track and analyze user experience.
- Real-time data collection — to see specific activities, like pushing the “submit” button.
- Asking your clients about their experience directly, giving them a call, or making a survey – to get feedback.
As you collect the data needed to see where users convert and dropoff, you’ll be able to fix points of friction to understand users better, make them move faster to immediate action, and improve customer experience.
Once you've got user data up and running, you can understand your adoption process better, reduce churn and grow your business.
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