
www.britishsoapawards.tv
This week the British Soap Awards website 2010 website went live – built by me and designed by the good folk at Anywhichway! The site is built using the CodeIgniter framework and includes a basic vote authentication function and a reporting back end utilising the PHPExcel plugin. The voting aesthetics are coded in JavaScript.
Traffic on the site is extremely heavy and as of this post has attracted more than 9000 unique voters (in two days). With more than quarter of a million expected by the end of voting it’s, with the exception of the Orange Intranet (which doesn’t count), my highest profile and most visited work so far.
Get on there and vote people and make me look good.
Viral revolution or webvomit?
Thursday, April 15th, 2010Recently I’ve been coming across sites that utilise such hideous design and nightmarish HTML that i’ve felt compelled to bring them to the attention of a wider audience and, in many cases, that’s exactly what i’ve done.
Recently as I prepared to Tweet this gem – it occured to me that perhaps lurking behind this terrifyingly poorly executed facade is in fact an ingenious and fresh viral marketing idea. After all it only takes one smug, superior media type (i.e. me) to stumble across it and publish the link on some social network somewhere and bingo – instant traffic.
Of course there’s a danger, as in this instance, that you take the concept too far and all your content is hidden behind an impossible to navigate front end awash with random, blindingly garish links. Handled in the right way, however, this could be rather effective. Imagine a website which on first glance is pure HTML abortion, hideous enough to get an instant mention on media boards across the web, and yet on closer inspection incorporates a surprisingly intuitive navigation which in turn leads to well designed and structured content. Food for thought my friends, perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new viral phenomenon – one that will eventually result in a mass turnaround in the way we design and build websites. Retro web design – God forbid!
Anyway, sorry for the almost actual blog like nature of this post. Back to standard postings next time. In the meantime here’s another one for you to point and laugh at. Look at his ponytail – LOL!
Tags: comment, Design, HTML, media, scriptic, Silas, viral marketing, Website
Posted in Viral, Web, Website | No Comments »