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Search Results for: e-commerce

5 Reasons Why E-Commerce is Important for Small Businesses

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E-commerce has aggressively changed the landscape of the business world. What is e-business? You might ask. E-business is the business model integration on the internet, such as recruitment, buying, selling, payment gateways, production management, etc. Small-scale enterprises have also reaped the benefits of e-commerce in recent years with the global pandemic. The revolution of e-commerce paved the way for the creation, application, and accessibility of online shop platforms to large corporations expanding to small businesses alike. The success of your online shop also depends on the platform to use. Therefore, it is encouraged to search for the best e-commerce platform for your business.

There is an array of reasons why e-commerce is essential for your small business. [Read more…]

This is Why Your Outdated E-Commerce Website is Doing More Harm than Good.

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Your company website is the front door to all of your interactions with visitors. There are sources all over the internet that will tell you the same thing, and that is to make sure your website is as sleek and cutting edge as possible. If your website is still displaying clip art from word art as the only graphics viewable –it really is time to get your internet act together.

[Read more…]

Design Focus: Easier E-commerce

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Whether you’re looking for inspiration to design that next ecommerce project, or choose a tool to sell your own products and services, these sites are definitely worth bookmarking for both reasons.

Designs of the Week

Create unique, extraordinary websites with Squarespace. No experience necessary!

Chec
Chec

I’m a fan of that gradient style, while the hand-drawn icons give contrast to the clean look. Some blocks of text run a little too wide though.

Gumroad
Gumroad

Lovely illustrations and color swatches matching the branding. I also like the animation of the hero text, which swaps out two matching words targeting different audiences.

Soldsie
Soldsie

Clever move to flood almost the whole page with a solid blue background that echoes that of Facebook’s signature color.

Ribbon
Ribbon

There’s a definite Layervault/Flat UI influence to the design both here and the merchant site, and by that I mean bright colors, friendly shapes, and simplified representation of interfaces.

Stripe
Stripe

Gradients and realistic illustrations have not been completely booted out and the vibe here has a very pre-iOS 7 feel.

Shopify
Shopify

There’s ample use of black for accent but also some very refined execution of interface elements with tabs, blockquotes, and menus.

Social Media Weekly

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Business, Design – How to Get the Work You Want
“While there’s something to be said for how designers react to the constraints of their customers, clients, or bosses, unsolicited projects can help round out the narrative of your portfolio when you don’t have client projects to fill in certain chapters.”

JavaScript – What is the DOM?
“In most simple cases, the visual representation of the DOM will be just like your simple HTML. But it’s often not the same.”

Typography – A Pocket Guide to Master Every Day’s Typographic Adventures
“This little guide is for everyone who comes across these typographic adventures or just want to do things right. Mastering the things mentioned in the short chapters below will help you get your message across more successfully.”

User Experience – Infinite Scrolling
“Maybe we should give up on the whole idea of a 'back' button. 'Show me that thing I was looking at a moment ago' might just be too complicated an idea for the modern web.”

4 Tips to Personalize E-Commerce Websites

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E-Commerce

It takes a lot of work and an aesthetic eye to create a well-designed Web site. It also takes expertise to present your e-Commerce story in a way that will attract customers and traffic to your website. With quality images, a simple but transparent check-out process, customer service options and a user-friendly navigation mechanism, personalizing e-Commerce sites with today’s tips is a way to become more competitive in your field of business.

First impressions

For a new e-Commerce site, it’s important to put your best foot forward. This means that everything you do in design should not only be pleasing to the eye, but functional. Web designer have to constantly code a brand’s website with the customer in mind. The site should be hassle-free. Any confusion caused by an ill-thought-out design could cause you to lose customers. There are too many options and too much competition to even lose one customer. It’s the Web designer’s obligation to never create any doubt in the customer’s mind as to how to navigate properly, or, more importantly, how to complete a transaction.

Social integration

By adding the brand’s social network icons to the page, you’re telling customers that you are not only current with today’s Web 2.0 technology, but also that you would like to engage them. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest are mainstays for customers who want to provide brands with feedback on an ongoing basis. Additionally if the e-Commerce site also features a blog page, it shows they are thought-leaders in their field.

Search Engine Optimization

If an e-Commerce site has a large number of products that frequently change, it’s important that the Web designers adhere to the “white hat” search engine optimization rules. These include targeted page titles and meta descriptions. According to SEO experts, “One of the fundamental rules of SEO for an e-Commerce site is you should treat every page on your website as a landing page focused around performing for a single SEO search term and converting the resulting traffic.”
Fastest route between two points

Everyone knows that the fastest route between two points is a straight line. This applies to e-Commerce sites as well. It’s a fact that the quicker a website can get the customer from the landing page to a completed order, the more likely it is to keep the customer. Well-designed e-Commerce Web sites always have that goal in mind.

Personalized e-Commerce

Personalized gift shops are a sub-set of e-Commerce websites. While some of the products these sites sell can be purchased elsewhere, their unique advantage to the customer is that they can personalize all orders in accordance with the customer’s preferences. Personalised Gifts Shop in the UK is well-designed website that provided their web designers with a lot inspiration to not only create an aesthetically pleasing design but one that prompts buyers to proceed through the personalization process in a quick and efficient manner. [Read more…]

Design Focus: Excellent E-commerce Photography

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Here’s a toast to the brand new year and excellent sites that know how to showcase their products in their best light. Add these ideas to your wishlist!

Designs of the Week

Search Optimized, Turn-Key Designs, Unlimited Everything. Start building with the Genesis Framework today.

Eastworks Leather
Eastworks Leather

The landing graphic is one of a wallet spinning on a string, using several images to produce the effect. The appearance mimics the logo, which is clever. The shop is located below, and scrolling to it bumps the logo up to a fixed position on a navigation ribbon containing the cart status. Product names and prices are hidden from view until you hover, keeping the page neat and elegant by focusing on the photos.

Kershaw Knives
Kershaw Knives

I like the inline quick view (something usually done in modal dialogs). The toolbar items also look wonderful though the search box could use a touch of contrast.

More Rare
More Rare

Like the other site, no labels here until hover either, although the tool tips produce horizontal scrollbars if they’re too near the edges. Also similarly, the light brown background on a tidy grid of images reinforces the vintage era these products hail from.

Skinny Ties
Skinny Ties

Love the idea of “hanging” the ties at the top as categories. The menu also has visual fly-out dialogs, from circular color swatches to zoomed-in fabric swatches. On the product page, each nicely-styled tie spec has popup descriptions and helpful tips to figure out which one to choose.

AIAIAI
AIAIAI

More bento navigation over here, all the way to the product pages. The top area stays fixed as you scroll down and adds to the “hiding” effect of the cut-off images. The dot on the top right of each box shows the color of the product.

Olasul
Olasul

I think having a colorful collection really helps with the overall design of a shop site. I like the hover choice here, showing how it fits on a person. Unfortunately there’s no pricing or any other product info here, but even if it this were more of a catalog site, I’d have wanted to know that as a potential customer.

Social Media Weekly

Create unique, extraordinary websites with Squarespace. No experience necessary!

Optimization – Progressive jpegs: a new best practice
“Appearing faster is being faster, and perceived speed is more important that actual speed.”

User Experience, Interaction Design – What Jerry Seinfeld can teach us about interaction design
“Craftsmanship is knowing that the details matter and that getting them just right is the difference between good and great.”

CSS – All you need to know about CSS Transitions
“Letting the browser control animations sequences allows it to optimize performance and efficiency by altering the frame rate, minimizing paints and offloading some of the work to the GPU.”

JavaScript – Visual Event
“I’ve put together a Javascript bookmarklet called Visual Event which visually shows the elements on a page that have events subscribed to them, what those events are and the function that the event would run when triggered.”

CSS – In search of the perfect radius
“Had you ever had to design such a button or in general, a rounded rectangle nested inside another rounded rectangle and wondered what should be the inner radius for a given outer radius or vice versa? That is what we’re going to find out.”

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