Web Site Design by David Rutstein from A to Z

eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website.

Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
2. Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
3. The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the statistics they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at a specific book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well.

An eCommerce web design is also about the layout. One important aspect is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced eCommerce web designer will know how to create designs to meets those demands.

If you are about to open an eCommerce website or you are already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with eCommerce websites.

Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.

Teasing your curiosity

“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!

Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.

Simple integrated design

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?

Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.

Take part in the action

Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.

Back to Black and White

Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.

Get Out of the box

Have you heard about the webdesignoffice.us ? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the webdesignoffice.us got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10×10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.

What about the next trends

What the next trends of banner design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It’s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.

Have you ever considered that your website may be annoying? When it’s comes to website design, knowing what visitors hate most is a must, unless you don’t want them to visit you again. This article describes what you should exclude from your website. If you know about an annoying website, feel free to send this article to its webmaster.

A few weeks ago I received an email from a colleague asking me to check one of the website he had developed. He is a web designer and his client wanted a nice attractive flash header. The flash header was great. You can’t miss it at all. Some nice graphics elements were flying in while sound effects created just the right atmosphere. However, after starting to explore the website, the header became very annoying because every time you clicked on the website the header restarted. What was pleasant initially became very annoying very quickly, disturbing your concentration and making it difficult to read what was on the page.

He is not the first to create what I like to call – “annoying website design”. Many webmasters, especially new webmasters are totally “in love” with their ideas and tend to go overboard with their design in one way or another. It’s nice to have an attractive header, but is it really necessary to assault the visitor’s mind with it? In my opinion, absolutely not!

Webmasters sometimes forget that their website design should send a message to the visitor that should reflect the website topic and not the programmer’s skill level.

Is Your Website Design Annoying?

Well…. It’s not that hard to be annoying. However, some webmasters are much better than others at annoying their visitors. Check my top 5 list and decide for yourself whether you have been annoying your visitors.

1. Background music – Unless you are operating an online internet radio station or sell music CDs, why play a midi/wav file in the background continuously on every page?
2. Huge font size – If you are designing a website for people with a disability then you are doing the right thing, but if not then you are shouting. People don’t like it when someone shouts at them.
3. Small font size – Do you want to be heard? Keep a normal tone, don’t shout but “speak” in a reasonable volume.
4. Overlapping layers – Layers can be very useful up to the point. But not when they are being used to put an annoying message in the visitor’s face. Don’t try to force your visitor to read your messages. Try persuasion instead of brute force.
5. Popup windows – Even though popup windows are now blocked by many add on tools, webmasters keep using them. The annoying part of popups is sometimes we actually miss important information because of those anti popup tools. Haven’t you heard the old phrase “if you can’t beat him, join him”? Don’t use pop up windows. Put your important messages in a central place on your website.

Most likely each one of us has our own private top five lists. You probably have many more annoying design cases in mind. Well, you’re right, the list is much longer then that. I just wanted to describe some of the highlights in order to bring this important subject your attention.

Some of you are probably reading those lines and smiling while some others have a feeling a deja-vu. Keep in your mind that as a webmaster the last thing you want to do is put lots of effort into your website and then find out that your visitors hate it. It’s not a matter of taste, it’s more about being the same polite person we all try to be when we go to a party.

I tried to point out a few things that might be useful to some web designers and webmasters. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to send this article to my friend, hopefully he’ll send it to his client

Whether you currently deal with a freelancer website, or are just looking for the best place to find a freelancer, the biggest problem you face is how to find a good reliable freelance, one that will do the job properly with good quality work and finish it on time.

Many sites offer you, the webmaster, a place to post your projects to be bid on by freelancers. All of these sites let you contact offshore workers that live in countries where wages are only a fraction of what they are in the more industrialized nations. This allows you to keep your project budget low and save money by keeping your full-time staff small.

So, how can you find this “diamond in the rough”? You know, that reliable individual who delivers quality work on time and within agreed upon budget? There is no simple answer. The best you can do is using the tools provided by the freelance website to try and minimize your risk.

Unfortunately, most of the existing freelance websites use a very poor rating system that only allows a webmaster to rate a freelancer on a scale from 1-10. This system doesn’t take any of the more important variables into account, such as the complexity of the project.

The complexity of a project is important. A freelancer doing many simple and inexpensive jobs may have an excellent rating and do very good work for that kind of project. But, there is no guarantee they can handle a more complex project. Since the more complex projects cost more to get done, at least one freelance website has developed a rating system that takes complexity into consideration by using the dollar amount of the project as part of the rating formula to provide the webmaster with additional information. Thereby, hoping to make the webmaster’s decision a little easier.

Here are a couple of additional suggestions for hiring a freelancer:

Do Not Post a Budget !!!

“Why not?” you ask. If you post a budget, most freelancers will bid based on the budget amount. Unfortunately, a reasonable cost in one part of the world is insanely high or ridiculously low in another part of the world.

For example, you want someone to create a logo for you. Any decent graphic artist should be able to do that. So, it probably is safe to go with the lowest bidder. But, suppose you need a sales letter written for an Australian audience, do you really think someone is Eastern Europe or China will be able to do as good a job as a native Australian? Probably not, but, the cost of living is a lot higher in Australia and that individual would need to charge more for the same amount of work.

Do Not Hire Outside of Your Expertise.

But, you say, “If I was an expert, I wouldn’t need to hire someone else!” While that may be true, you do need to be sufficiently familiar with the area of work to be able to accurately describe the project, to know what and isn’t technically possible and know whether the bids you receive are reasonable for the amount of work involved.

If Necessary, get advice from someone who does know the area of work. Most sites provide a message board for you to negotiate with the bidders anonymously before you select one of them for the project. Pay careful attention the freelancer’s reaction to the project. The ideal candidate is one who loves his work. Ask them to describe similar projects they have done in the past or to provide samples of their work if feasible. Graphic artists, web designers and writers will be able to provide samples.Programmers and some others may not be able to provide samples but they may be able to provide references if they haven’t already been rated by other webmasters.

Following the steps above and keeping the lines of communication open will dramatically increase your chances of having a successful experience with your chosen freelancer. It can save you both time and money as well as help you manage your business in the most effective manner. After all, you face all of the same challenges in dealing with freelancers as you face in dealing with any employee, plus the additional challenges created by being in different geographic locations.