8 ms·
Forget flat design. Design in a 1995 style for full impact
- jacquesm 13y agoShe's got a deLorean for sale, that makes up for a lot. edit: gender corrected, tx.
- harel 13y agoI actually loved that site without seeing the deLorean. Now that I know that its there I like it even more.
- harel 13y agoAha! Below the deLorean is this statement: "This is clearly a joke listing. This car ceased to be made in 1982. For the ASA benefit - this is a j-o-k-e"
- jacquesm 13y agoSpoiler.
- stevejalim 13y agoLing is female, btw - https://twitter.com/lingscars https://twitter.com/lingscars And Lingscars knows what it's doing: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9067-lings-cars-the-art-of-persuading-visitors-to-buy http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9067-lings-cars-the-art-of-p...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ancarda 13y agoClose, but it still doesn't beat Yvettes' [1] [1] http://websitesfromhell.net/view/yvettesbridalformal.com-10/ http://websitesfromhell.net/view/yvettesbridalformal.com-10/ (Site is no longer up).
- timmillwood 13y agoA must watch - http://www.besquare.me/session/the-future-of-digital-marketing/ http://www.besquare.me/session/the-future-of-digital-marketi...
- jlengrand 13y agoMan, this is so enlighting. Much more than most of what I rad on HN for some time. Thx for the link!
- robmclarty 13y agoLing's got some solid points to make. For example, the silly things she does on her site builds trust with her customers because her customers get more of a glimpse into her personality compared to other dealerships. Trust converts more than pretty, or sensible, visual design. It's taking branding in a different direction than what we normally consider and I think it's worth while to think outside the box most of us put ourselves in when considering how to maximize conversions. I don't know if what Ling's doing is optimal, but it definitely sheds light on other approaches that are sometimes ignored.
- glennos 13y agoSimilar colour scheme to iOS7.
- dualogy 13y agoAaaand it's down. lingscars.com will never understood why a scary DDoS from a "Hacker site" hit them..
- harel 13y agoThis made me laugh out loud for real. Like in 1995.
- pdeuchler 13y agohttps://twitter.com/LINGsCARS/status/344424290189455360 https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS/status/344424290189455360
- babby 13y agoPart of me thought this was a practical joke. So many sites back in the day just wouldn't load...
- laumars 13y agoSadly Lin is now blaming Hacker News for hacking her site with the intention of taking it offline - which is just retarded as: a) we're legitimate curious visitors (albeit not maybe not customers - but who's to say that some of us wouldn't be converted from window shoppers to buyers - that's kind of the point of websites after all) and b) her webserver set up to only allow for 500 concurrent connections. Which is just pathetic - particularly given the amount of crap she serves (and thus the countless number of additional server connections each visitor makes to download said content). I used to think that her site was a mark of a genius; where she deliberately made her site to look amateurish to push the site viral and thus give her huge exposure that most other rentals could only dream of. But then I read her rage tweets[1] and realised that she's just another idiot with an internet connection. Needless to say I'm very disappointed - I liked Lin and her site better when I thought it was designed ironically. [1] https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS
- vacri 13y agoHer site is fun. I remember a while ago, you could go to the site map and it'd been laid out like a concentration camp. The visitors at various pages/camp locations would be little humanoids with the relevant browser logo for the head. She sells cars for a living; she's not an elite hacker, just a curious one. Also, being a speaker of British English, she would never design her site 'ironically', because irony in British English precludes intention.
- vidarh 13y agoThis is one of my favorites: http://www.arngren.net/ http://www.arngren.net/ Arngren started out as an electronics and hobby type store in Oslo, and a catalog, and their website looks pretty much the way their massive catalogue used to look like 20+ years ago, when it had toys and household stuff in between pages of IC's with pinouts. On one hand the website is horrible. On the other hand, it perfectly captures the brand...
- sambeau 13y ago<BLINK>THERE ARE PLENTY MORE TO FIND HERE</BLINK> http://www.iamsad.co.uk/ http://www.iamsad.co.uk/
- jdmitch 13y agoThe best part is her cookie disclaimer: "EU cookie law. Piss off Von Rumpy. Me... I hammer visitors to death with cookies, so I can find out what they want. Cookies allow my website to serve visitors the content they need. Get used to it. The EU cookie law is an ass. - Ling"
- ap2002 13y agoTake a look at the sauce - Ling definitely knows what's up! Epic ASCII art right there!
- scrapcode 13y agohttp://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ - Survived the tests of time. I hear it still converts ;]
- kfk 13y agoFirst time I saw this I thought: "uhm, what a nice scammy little site..."
- scrapcode 13y agoRight? Whois checks out, though.
- rimantas 13y agoThat was one of my favorite funny examples, where people with enormous amount of money built such a simple website.
- nicholassmith 13y agoEspecially with the cheap car insurance promo.
- kfk 13y agoDid you actually read the message from Buffet to convince people to buy jewelry? --> http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/message.html http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/message.html Fine jewelry, watches and giftware will almost certainly cost you less at Borsheim's. I've looked at the figures for all publicly-owned jewelry companies and the contrast with Borsheim's is startling. Our one-store operation, with its huge volume, enables us to operate with costs that are fully 15-20 percentage points below those incurred by our competitors. We pass the benefits of this low-cost structure along to our customers.
- quchen 13y agoThe classical text only version of a website in case your bandwidth is limited: http://www.timecube.com/ http://www.timecube.com/
- MartinMcGirk 13y agoIt's not just the small players that preserve such excellent retro-design insight. May I introduce the HBO Corporate website: http://www.homeboxoffice.com/ http://www.homeboxoffice.com/
- drivers99 13y agoWow that is a lot like a site I would have made in 1997. (I'm not a web designer, but back then sometimes there was no one else to do it.) Except that Donald Norman would say that putting directions like "PLEASE NOTE: For GUIDE SERVICES, MEDIA RELATIONS and access to other HBO EXTRANET sites, use the links on the left." means that your user interface is not self-explanatory and should be fixed.
- andyhmltn 13y agoIt's nice how they posted the website opening hours on the website. Really good stuff.
- sp8 13y agoI present you http://www.fabricland.co.uk/ http://www.fabricland.co.uk/ - real shop (with a branch near me) and actually a pretty good place, just with a hideous (and genuine, as far as I can tell) web site.
- retube 13y agoA quick glance seems to indicate they break every rule of modern web design. It's almost too perfect. Like the spec was to to do the exact oposite of what you're supposed to....
- ZirconCode 13y agoIt's titled "New Page 1". It's just so perfect.
- mAritz 13y agoThe title of the mainframe page is "Fabricland fabric shops throughout South of England and mail order service". So, that's good and informative.
- harel 13y agoMy wife buys fabrics from them. Class.
- claudius 13y agoTake note of the white ‘sample’ written over the VISA/MasterCard pictures.
- kryten 13y agoThe customer service is as offensive as the web site. My wife (a regular customer) is always complaining about it. But it's cheap and well stocked.
- barbs 13y agoMSY, a popular computer parts store in Australia, has always had a pretty dodgy-looking website. http://msy.com.au/ http://msy.com.au/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- C1D 13y agoThey're probably the most popular PC parts store in Australia (I've bought from them), yet it looks like they couldn't afford to upgrade their site template they created in 1997.
- robryan 13y agoLast time I went in there I was impressed that they had now invested in a few tables around their counter area.
- vacri 13y agoThe funny thing is that they look more professional since the site redesign.
- dolphenstein 13y agoI think it's a deliberate ploy to seem cheap. They are expanding at a frenetic pace, so seems to be working!
- tluyben2 13y agoMight be something like this http://www.mtechlaptops.com/indexofnotebooks.htm http://www.mtechlaptops.com/indexofnotebooks.htm who actually tell you why that is; http://www.mtechlaptops.com/ugly_web_site.htm http://www.mtechlaptops.com/ugly_web_site.htm . Besides that; the co-founder (from Australia) of one of the companies I built and sold successfully, was always quite focused on making 'ugly' designs. We did split-testing with pixel perfect, really professional designs versus this 1995, quite ugly 'old' stuff and every time the ugly design won at conversions. This is the consumer space we were in. We tested many times it the 'ugly' design always won. Maybe times have changed (this is about 5 years ago), but it always makes a bit suspicious of that cry for the perfect design while it actually, again, at least then, had a averse effect. I still know of a few cases where the owner swears by amateur and ugly. The theory apparently is that a lot of people don't trust slick and believe they will be screwed somehow. Edit: another one I just thought off; marktplaats.nl (Dutch Ebay and owned by Ebay since 2004) has looked like this; http://web.archive.org/web/19991105082644/http://www.marktplaats.nl/ http://web.archive.org/web/19991105082644/http://www.marktpl... for a very long time. Everyone in the web design business thought it was horrible in many ways, but consumers refused to use anything else, including ebay.nl. They hardly touched the design until recently and it is still clear that they didn't want to piss the users off too much.
- simonbarker87 13y agoI loooove Lings Cars - her "nuclear missile" is parked just round the corner from my house Watch her on here on dragons den to understand the nuclear missile quip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM
- C1D 13y agoIt seems the site is redirecting to http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html for me?
- Otiel 13y agoSame here
- hmottestad 13y ago+1 Maybe it is because of my ad-blocker?
- kephra 13y agow-hat are they doing wrong? http://www.lingscars.com/ http://www.lingscars.com/ redirects to http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html Firefox (NoScript) shows: The page isn't redirecting properly Iceweasel has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. Lynx shows: lynx http://www.lingscars.com/ http://www.lingscars.com/ Looking up www.lingscars.com Making HTTP connection to www.lingscars.com Sending HTTP request. HTTP request sent; waiting for response. HTTP/1.1 302 Found Data transfer complete HTTP/1.1 302 Found Using http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html http://www.lingscars.com/_donotsteal.html Looking up www.lingscars.com Making HTTP connection to www.lingscars.com Sending HTTP request. HTTP request sent; waiting for response. HTTP/1.1 302 Found Data transfer complete HTTP/1.1 302 Found lynx: Start file could not be found or is not text/html or text/plain Exiting...
- Hello71 13y agohttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.lingscars.com https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.li...
- kephra 13y agowebcache - so this site worked - and went down by a Hacker News DDoS of only 31 points (3100 visitors) in 56 minutes. /me sings http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE
- beeneto 13y agoI can't link to it now because the site is down, but lingscars has a PDF of 'web design tips' where she explains the design and gives tips on website design. She's obviously got an eccentric public image, and the design tips document is a bit of a joke, but the design here was a deliberate choice to differentiate the site from competitors, make potential customers feel less intimidated and more socially involved. There was even a webcam of the office with a button which apparently played a song in the office when you pressed it. The business is also doing very well.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- anonymoushn 13y agoI really enjoyed the cookie ticker. Here are its full contents: http://pastie.org/8034213 http://pastie.org/8034213 Unfortunately, the site seems to have detected me mucking about (perhaps because I deleted the element containing the annoying flash video?) and redirected me to /_donotsteal.html (which itself was a redirect to /_donotsteal.html) for a while. Now it just serves me a 1-byte file for any URL, except for /_donotsteal.html, which is 4 bytes.
- laumars 13y agoChrist on a bike, there's a lot of weird stuff in there: cookie:sexual_orientation=female; - watches how often visitors make irrational decision changes and identifies those people who are schizophrenic as: FEMALE. cookie:favourite_biscuit=garibaldi; - can detect missed key-strokes caused by crumbs jamming the user keyboard. Compares results over a long period of time to determine typical biscuit type. cookie:favourite_animal_noise=BAAAAA; - monitors any accidentally open audio channels, to determine if the user snorts or chuckles while browsing and then compares the wavelength of the noise with a table of animal sounds.
- 97-109-107 13y agohttp://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ - will bring hours of enjoyment then
- dave_sid 13y agoIt's a pretty funny, retro looking site but as far as I can tell she does pretty well out of it. She might not be an artist but she's great at marketing in her own way.
- janus 13y agoThis one is awesome http://www.wingsandwheels.com/wantads1.htm http://www.wingsandwheels.com/wantads1.htm
- nnq 13y agoThe tutorial for using the website is awesome (and beautifully anti-american): http://www.lingscars.com/chat.php?domain=www.lingscars.com&lang=en&operator=Ling%20V http://www.lingscars.com/chat.php?domain=www.lingscars.com&l...
- alexvr 13y agoYeah. Flat designs are boring -- I never end up on the floor, convulsing, when I scroll through a flat website.
- loceng 13y agoGo big or go home. I like it.
- snappieT 13y agoSee also: http://www.powercity.ie/ http://www.powercity.ie/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bradshaw1965 13y agoThe direct response industry continues to use long sales letters and "ugly" design to great effect. It's the same kind of a/b testing that agile UX practitioners espouse that produced "Red gets read!" lore in direct marketing. Still gives me the heabie jeabies looking at that stuff though.
- swethrowaway 13y agoIs there a good beginner's guide to learning about that sort of thing? I'll use whatever works, even arcane and ugly landing pages.
- harel 13y agoThe best way to learn is to measure. Try one type of ad, measure response and reach, adjust, measure again. Rinse and repeat until you see what works and what doesn't.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- swethrowaway 13y agoSomeone should create a LingsCars inspired theme for Bootstrap or whatever :)
- harel 13y agoHere's Ling's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?authToken=qSpd&id=35433059&trk=prof-sb-browse_map-name&authType=name https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?authToken=qSpd&id=3543... I think there's some sort of genius in there. Its somewhat like playing the piano and faking playing the wrong notes intentionally - its a lot harder to fake playing badly than it is to actually play bad (if that makes sense)
- johnohara 13y agoI go to a large indoor swap meet/flea market near here to check out used computer equipment, tools and other stuff. The aisles are crowded, stuff hangs everywhere, lights are flashing, sounds collide, sellers project offers to you from behind makeshift counters, and you move through it slowly to make sure you don't miss anything. This site gives me the same feeling -- raw selling. Edit: respectfully fixed a typo.
- jwecker 13y agoBrilliant. From the live office webcams page (where you have the option to taunt specific employees): "Are those traffic lights real? Yes! There is another set of traffic lights, hidden to the left of the camera, too! They keep my staff awake with visual stimulation in the same way that my website invigorates my visitors!" The office looks just like the website.
- imohnish 13y agoThis made my day.