During a recent visit to a department store, I took a moment to review a current trend among young men’s clothing—ripped and worn pants, battered hats, low-slung shorts, and clashing colors. To keep your website investment stylish, shouldn’t you keep in step with today’s fashions? Take a cue from the current “look.”

First off, holes and rips in clothing are a predominant feature in the style. To be fashionable, make sure your website has several links that don’t go anywhere. “Dead-end links” are a simple and certain way to show your website has gaps. Similarly, include at least one page include a header like: “This Page Under Construction. Coming Soon in 2002!” Doing so will clarify that your website content is incomplete and will be so in the future.

Second, mismatched patterns and styles are essential. The most effective method to follow this trend is to ensure your website has no consistency whatsoever. Use a variety of fonts randomly throughout the pages. Liberally use bold colors and an assortment of low-resolution images to further increase the confusion and disparity between pages. You can be confident that visitors will be unclear as to whether they are looking at a section heading, a key point, or general text.

Third, if untucked shirts and sagging pants are in vogue, do the same with your website. Show your casual approach by sprinkling a random assortment of grammatical and spelling errors in your text. Include clumsy mistakes like misusing “to, two, and too.” If your website uses any sort of code like Javascript or PHP, keep your website relaxed; let some run-time errors occur at critical points.

Fourth, follow the footwear lead of loosely-laced shoes and flip-flops. Keep your website cumbersome and something visitors trip and fumble through. Don’t follow any sort of industry-standard conventions such as a navigation bar; that would help in getting around your website. Make information on your website difficult to locate. It also helps to pack text together in long, wide paragraphs in eye-straining fonts.

Finally, remember the retro clothing look. Current and innovative is definitely not included in this style. Employ a web developer who hasn’t used new web development techniques for the past decade. You need someone who makes websites using Microsoft Notepad. Shy away from the one who drones on about terms like “keywords,” “design,” and “maintenance.”

If after reading all this, you still want to be unfashionable with some crisp and complete website, have at it. I’m certain someone can help you.

Tom Urbanowicz is the owner of DataDesignIT, helping businesses operate efficiently and communicate effectively. Tom can be reached at tom@datadesignit.com or at 530.513.1691.