I did a little project for the National Theatre, to look at two very different “Inspire Me” tools with the view to implementing a similar functionality on the NT’s website. The first tool on the Royal Opera House website is an advanced search tool, visible on the homepage and the What’s on page. As the […]
Despite having worked in ecommerce for over 7 years I had never shopped online for groceries. Not due to any of the typical fears about quality, delivery times or card security of course, but simply because I really enjoy my weekly trip to Lidl or Whitechapel market. I do also occassionally shop in Sainsburys, so […]
The Venda contract expired 1st June 2011, and I successfully launched a new website using Magento two weeks before this. The cost? Around £4,000 (using a freelance Magento developer), including integration with our backend systems; exactly the same as the monthly cost to Venda. The monthly cost? £500 for technical support, ongoing minor improvements and […]
I’ve recently started working for LINLEY, and was excited to gain experience of the Venda ecommerce platform. Knowing that it powered some major ecommerce websites (Heals, Wickes, Laura Ashley, Tesco, Monsoon, TK Maxx… in fact £1 out of £50 of non-food online transactions in the UK), and having read about their sophisticated merchandising and Software […]
I liked this tip about improving conversion rate by blurring your website: by blurring your site you avoid the temptation to read the text on your website and can focus on the design. So in was interesting to be asked to comment on the usability and SEO of an Israeli website, in Hebrew. Through Google […]
This site, launched in 2007, is run by a subsidiary of Zara parent Inditex, ITX e-commerce Ireland. The site apparently made a loss of €692,000 during the year to the end of January 2009. Homepage/ general Initial impressions; the design is on-brand, nice and colourful. It’s clearly an online shop, and you know you’re shopping […]
This is a question I’ve been asked recently, and the easy answer is anything from £200 up to £2,000,000, with most sites I imagine costing between £2,000 and £20,000. A key factor is the scale of the site (do you have 10 products or 10,000 products) and obviously there is a wide spectrum of ecommerce […]
Hearing it might snow again, I thought I would try and buy some firewood online… It’s interesting to compare the delivery strategies of these two sites, which both appear top of the organic listings; neither website gets it right in my opinion. The first site, Onlinelogs.co.uk has good call to action (big buttons to “buy […]
My local bakery in Stepney looks as if it hasn’t changed for decades, so it’s pleasantly surprising to see them embracing the online world with a modern-looking website, in fact two websites for trade and retail customers, and a Facebook page updated several times a week. When I first discovered the site they were actually […]
This is an unusual use of .gif product images on a patterned background in an online shop – perhaps inspired this trend for web design inspired by poster design. I also like how the price (and all product text) is only shown when you mouse over the product. Not very search engine friendly, but a […]
This is a fantastic article – So true, I could have written it myself… I particularly like the closing paragraph: Management must realise just how complex a job it is [managing a website] and ensure you have time dedicated to its execution. Perhaps you should print off this article and give it to them.
With a specialist website, selling one product or category of products, thinking early on about the best way to present products can be beneficial. Not only will you improve usability and conversion rate from the start but it’s an opportunity to make the site stand out from competitors, both the not-as-well-designed specialist shops and the […]