Have you stumbled across the world's ugliest web site? Have you encountered a site so hideous that the owner should be fined for a lack of standards? If you have, you may wish to consider nominating them for this year's Mud Brick Awards!

The Mud Brick Awards -- also referred to as the "Muddies" -- celebrate the worst the Internet has to offer. Covering the categories of big business, medium to small-sized businesses, and government organisations, winnings sites generally boast problems such as unprofessional graphics, poor graphical consistency, weak branding, poor navigability, and poor overall usability.

Now I know what you're thinking! How can YOU go about winning such a fabulous award? I knew you'd want to know, so I've put together a list of twenty easy steps that you can follow to develop the most hideous web site in the history of the Muddies!

To win this honour you need to do the following:

1. Make sure that your web address is obscure and difficult to remember. You wouldn't want people to be able to find you again, would you? If they can locate you again, they might be tempted to make a purchase... and we certainly wouldn't want THAT! And really, why spend the money on a catchy domain name when you can have a FREE web address that is long, confusing, and totally obscure?
2. Make sure that your web site lacks focus. Do not, under any circumstances, gear your site towards a specific target market. Visitors might be tempted to come back if you do that. Instead, be sure that your site contains gobs of information that has absolutely nothing to do with your product or service. Some pictures of your dog and Aunt Martha at last years family reunion might be a nice touch.
3. Clutter is best. Keep your visitors distracted by cool spinning graphics and an abundance of images, and you can be sure that they will never actually get around to reading your sales copy. Plus, if you include enough useless junk, your site will take so long to download that visitors will never actually bother waiting for your entire page to appear. They'll get frustrated and click away.
4. Be sure that your sales copy is poorly written. Vague, rambling copy chock full of spelling and grammatical mistakes is best. And at no point -- under any circumstances -- should you ever actually reveal what you are selling. Let them know that it is expensive... but never actually tell them what it is.
5. Never reveal yourself. Do not give out personal information of any sort. Including your name, your business address, your phone number, or your e-mail address anywhere on your web site is simply unacceptable. These are the kind of mistakes that could actually cause your visitors to TRUST you! And we certainly can't have that!
6. Make sure that reading your sales copy is a challenge. If your visitors are patient enough to wade through the useless clutter to your copy, then it's time to pull out the big guns. First, be sure to choose a font that is exceptionally hard to read. Then, bold EVERYTHING, while putting every other word in italics. Once you've done that, choose about 20 different colours, and make every letter of every word a different colour. Finish the whole extravaganza off by using a rainbow background. Why make life easy for your visitors by choosing the standard -and proven - black text on a white background with strategic bolding and italics? You might actually make some sales if you did that!
7. Frames are where it's at! When it comes to frames, my philosophy is the more, the merrier! Visitors will be utterly confused and have to work hard to read your content, using BOTH the horizontal and vertical scroll bars. Don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you that frames adversely affect the navigation of your site... They clearly don't understand what you're trying to achieve here!
8. Be sure that your site content is useless, irrelevant, and completely outdated! You certainly don't want your site to be informative... Giving away good, free information might accidentally draw visitors back! For added frustration, you should consider adding links that are either completely irrelevant or totally outdated. This extra special touch will let your visitors know that you really couldn’t care less about them.
9. Be sure that your site is impossible to navigate! Think maze... Your links should lead your visitors further and further away from your sales content without providing links back to your homepage. Links to other web sites can be a great way to herd visitors away from your site. Do not, under any circumstances, provide a site map!
10. Always be sure to upload your web pages without testing them on different browsers. You'll be thrilled with the results! Problems appear like magic... Netscape is particularly well known for holding up the loading of an entire web page because something as simple as a closing tag is missing. If they can't view your web site, they can't purchase your product!
11. Use plenty of large graphics and animation. They're the perfect visitor deterrent! If you make sure that your GIF files are always well over 50K, you can be sure that anyone with a 28.8K modem won't bother waiting for your web page to load. It will just take too long!
12. Capturing visitor's personal information is never a good idea. You might be tempted to actually use this data to increase your sales by following up with your visitors. Worse, you might consider getting customer feedback that you could use to improve your product, service or sales process.
13. Focus on yourself rather than the customer. Be sure to spend plenty of time tooting your own horn... and steer clear of discussing how your product or service will benefit them. This might accidentally generate some interest!
14. Avoid interacting with your visitors. If someone stumbles across your e-mail address and has the nerve to send you a question about your product or service, be sure that you take at least a week to answer. If you DO finally decide to respond, be rude, obnoxious, and totally unhelpful. Timely replies only serve to create trust by developing a solid relationship with your visitors.
15. Credibility is highly overrated. Think about it. If you start building relationships with your customers they will trust you. If they trust you, they are probably going to buy from you. Do you really want that? In the long run, fantastic offers and promises that cannot be backed up make for far less sales! And look out for those effective testimonials... they'll build credibility and increase your profits every time!
16. Don't provide a guarantee. We've all been burned before and every time it happens, it becomes harder for us to trust anyone. Take advantage of existing fears by avoiding those confidence building, money-back guarantees.
17. Put zero effort into developing your headlines. Headlines that have been tested might accidentally attract attention!
18. Be sure that visitors are forced to use both the vertical and horizontal scroll bars to read your content. It drives them absolutely crazy!
19. Make sure that your ordering process drives away any of the remaining die-hards. Merchant accounts are completely out of the question -- these could increase your sales by as much as 300%! Instead of secure, online ordering you should insist that customers call you long distance to place their order. Insist that payment be sent via snail mail... and be sure to keep bizarre business hours that make it impossible to contact you.
20. Be sure that your visitors leave your web site totally overwhelmed and confused. If they shudder at thought of ever returning to your site again, you know you've done your job! The Mud Brick award is all yours!

Remember though: There are unfortunately only a few Muddies given out each year... and there are thousands of sites that likely deserve this honour. So why should you lower your standards and set your sites on a Muddie? Well, if the thought of making zero profits and operating at a loss appeals to you, then this is the goal to strive for.

On the other hand, if the thought of creating the worst web site ever does not appeal to you, then you may wish to consider checking out The Webby Awards at http://www.webbyawards.com where the best of the web are given the recognition they deserve.

Whatever award you decide to pursue, best of luck to you!