Ugly Web Site Contest - About the Contest

About the Contest

Register and login (Don't worry, you'll remain anonymous so your boss doesn't fire you.)
Read the Official Rules (So you know what you'll get, and no, it ain't cash.)
Submit your company's site (Only your own company, not someone else's. That's just rude.)
Rank other submissions (It's okay to point and laugh, but we'll know if your trying to rig the contest.)
The 10 highest ranked ugly sites will be judged by a professional panel (People who do this for a living.)
The winner will be announced New Years Day (As if you won't be partied out already.)

Why an ugly contest?!

The dog may be cute and the premise silly, but the purpose of this contest is serious indeed. Visitors to your web site are judging your company and the quality of your products, usually within the first three seconds. In short, your site IS the face of your business. Fair or not, people are making decisions about your business based on what may be an outdated or neglected site. Even those companies that spent the time and money to do it right the first time often leave their sites unattended and out-of-date for years. Potential customers, investors, and even employment candidates are clicking away and moving on due to your lackluster, tired, and all-to-often ugly web site.

The Ugly Web Site Contest is open to residents of the 48 contiguous United States.

Submissions must be for companies or organizations. No personal sites, blogs, or social networking site (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) pages.

Submissions must be for your own company.

The submitted company must be headquartered in the United States of America.

To win, you must be able to show proof of employment at the submitted company.

The site itself must be live, accessible, and must have launched before the beginning of the Contest.

The site must have at least four pages.

Sites residing on eBay and similar communal e-commerce services are not eligible to win.

No porn. No filth. No hate groups.

Please, no hackers. We're trying to do something nice here.

And now, a word from our sponsor

As the creator of the Ugly Web Site Contest, owner of Zazen Digital Studios, and a web designer for more than a decade, I've seen one pervasive problem that pops up again and again: site owners don't understand that their company's image is defined largely, sometimes exclusively, by their web presence. This is true of many organizations, regardless of size. It isn't enough to have a great product if people can't find it, learn about it, and then buy it easily and intuitively. I've seen product lines fail and companies go out of business because they couldn't figure out how to reach people. It's not entirely a web problem, but bad sites certainly don't help.

I feel so strongly about this issue that I have put my time, energy, and my own money on the line to help raise awareness of it. This contest is a humorous way to shed light on the appalling state of affairs on the web. It's not as bad as it used to be out there, but there's still a lot of ugly places on the web. Hopefully, this helps, even if it's one site at a time.

So login, submit that ugly, old site of yours, rate other submissions, laugh at the bad ones, and hope no one is laughing at yours. Good luck, and may the ugliest prevail!

David C. London

President & Creative Director
Zazen Digital Studios, Inc.