I believe that many of us visited one or more of Microsoft's website before. We may want to know what new products Microsoft has presented, or we may be developers who want to discuss some Microsoft products on their forums. I have to say that Microsoft has presented many amazing products to the world such as Windows OS, XBox, Office etc. But for its website, I don't know about you guys, every time I visit Microsoft's websites, I wonder whether they lack of UI designers or not. Their websites are not so attractive compared to their  products.

Why are Microsoft websites unattractive? The reason may be 1). They lack of UI designers; 2). It's not necessary for them to put much effort on UI design since they are confident of their products.3)....

Actually I prefer to believe the second reason. If they lack of UI designers, then how can they create some websites which are actually very beautiful. For example, the website they build for the Office Mac products . But let's loot at the MSDN website, it looks like amateur website compared to the Office Mac one. So I guess their websites are not designed by the same group of people, they are designed by the people from different product department. Among different departments, there are no many relationships.

For the second reason, since Microsoft has Windows series operating system which has a market share of 85.01% globally as of Feb 2012 according to NetMarketShare .So they no need to worry that they have no users. Also for other products such as XBox and Office series, they all have huge markets. People will visit their website if they want to seek help from Microsoft. Their design may also relate to their culture, their approach to the web is that they want to put the stuff there and make them accessible and help people get what the want instead of spending much time on less function related components such as UI. Or they may have other considerations?

As of today, many users including customers and developers are tending to like the websites which have cool UIs. Many other websites are not like Microsoft which has their market dominant products, they need to put efforts on UI designs when they design their website if they want to attract more visitors. My suggestion is that if you are building websites for products which are used by many people, then you can put less effort on UI design, otherwise, you need to consider to have more UI designers with you.

Do you have any opinions about Microsoft's website design? Please share with us by commenting below.