Website architecture is an expansive and technical subject which can have a real effect on your websites’ usability as well as your search engine visibility and rankings.
In this post I will attempt to explain some of the more important elements of site architecture which when implemented can lead to real benefits for your business.
Good bounce rates are the target of any website, but particularly to sites hoping to sell their products to their visitors. Essentially, your bounce rate is the number of visitors who land on your site, but do not go onto visit any other pages within your site, or who leave immediately. This means that for whatever reason, your site has not managed to capture the interest or imagination of the visitor so they have not stuck around long enough to investigate further, meaning they are missing out on the great things your pages can offer them. Ultimately, they are not present on your website long enough to buy anything. But with good e-commerce website design you can begin to successfully reduce your bounce rate and convert visitors to sales.
As a developer trying to make his way in the world, I strive to keep my little patch of the web a clean, tidy, happy place. So it grieves me when I see the things that some retailers are doing that seemingly laugh in the face of an enjoyable user experience. Here’s three things that have been grinding my gears recently, and aren’t difficult to fix. Continue reading →
If I were to say to you; “There is a formula for creating beauty” – would you believe me?
A poll was conducted to decide who was more visually attractive, Kelly Osbourne or Kate Middleton. The public voted a massive 95% in favour of Kelly being more attractive than Kate. Does that surprise you? Me too! You will be unsurprised to know that it is not true. Our surprise at the fake result in the bogus poll suggests that beauty is something that the majority of humanity agrees on. Kate is conventionally visually appealing and Kelly well, not so much. Continue reading →
As visual web designers, we are always looking for that wow factor to make our work stand out from the rest. When working in E-commerce, having the wow factor can be the difference between making sales or not. Sometimes visuals engage our audiences well and other times we struggle to get something that looks right. At times it can feel a bit hit and miss. In this post we are going to explore one of the ways we can more effectively capture our audience’s imagination by the power of understanding our audiences’ philosophical contextual background. Continue reading →
I thought since James posted his thoughts on recent work designing a mobile site, I thought it’d be good to look at it from the other side of the process. I’m going to be writing this article from the point of view that designers design and a developers code; this includes HTML and CSS. It’s not too technical, so don’t panic. If you are looking for a little more technical information, check the links at the bottom of the article. Continue reading →
Gamification has been a much talked about topic over the last year and even made it onto the shortlist for Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2011. In a nut-shell, gamification is the application of gaming theory, concepts and techniques, in to a non-gaming context. For the most part this normally involves setting a series of challenges for your users, and rewarding them once they’ve completed them. Continue reading →
With the amount of mobile devices used to access the internet increasing exponentially, there is ongoing debate as to the best way to serve up content to these users. Google recently moved to clarify their position on the matter by issuing some recommendations.
Consensus of opinion seems to be that a responsive design is the preferable way to serve up content to different devices rather than a mobile-device specific version of your site. Which makes sense right? I mean who wants to design a website and then have to completely redesign another version of it, or even multiple versions of it for mobile devices, along with which goes managing duplicate content? Whilst there can be much more to it, a simple responsive site will restyle the HTML structure to better fit the user’s device using only a style-sheet. Continue reading →
I recently found myself thinking about all of the stupid rules that somehow touch our lives. For example, as a child my father forbade me coughing in bed. I can’t really give you a good reason for this but I can tell you that even though I’ve been in my own place for many years, I still find myself stifling the reflex to bark out when beneath my duvet. Continue reading →
Adobe, the graphic software giant has been with us for 30 years. Through development and acquisition they have built up an impressive portfolio of over 130 complementary graphics focused tools. Each of these tools is designed to tackle a specific challenge. Continue reading →
