Hello Fadtastic people. Being a designer I am always being inspired by fellow creatives. Every now and again I like to “take my hat off”, (figuratively speaking), to other people work. In this post, we are showcasing 14 e-commerce websites which I think have great aesthetics. We are not just looking at functionality, but also in brand presence and key messaging. All of the below websites have personality, and a real unique shopping experience. We hope you will be inspired as much as we were…
So there we are - well designed websites offering a unique shopping experience! If there are any we have missed off - pop them in a comment below!
Also posted in the Attitude Design Journal.
Check out this nutty video for ‘Szamar Madar’ by Venetian Snares. Gotta love the BSOD half-way through. It’s by genius Irish animator David O’Reilly. He also recently created this iPhone Hologram video which caused much debate as to it’s realness.
If your website looks, feels, or sounds like an ad, you are losing sales.
I read a great book recently, Web Copy that Sells, and she had a great formula for providing information in a way that will 1) get read and 2) make sales.
"Your website should provide the solid information that your prospect is looking for, and should have an editorial feel to it. Above all, it should be free of hype. Why? Because people usually go online to find information. Few people log on saying, "I can't wait to see ads, and I can't wait to buy stuff!" No, that usually doesn't happen.
People go online to find information . That's why they call it the information superhighway. Even if they are shopping for something - say a DVD player or a hair restoration product-they are generally seeking information, not advertising about those products."
We've said it before and I'm sure we'll say it again, but good content is what will bring more people into your site and ultimately make the sale over any other gimmick or marketing ploy. Just follow the three steps above:
For sometime now I’ve dreamed of creating useful software for my fellow designers and developers. Recently I’ve spent my time turning that dream into a reality. I’m not an expert or a billionaire, just an average guy wanting to share my experience with you in hopes you can take something valuable away from it. Enjoy.
Somehow the three letters — C-M-S — when put together bring about completely opposite feelings in people. Some adore them and some abhor them. I’ve always been somewhere in between.
One of the main reasons I was never sold on any Content Management System was that last word: System. As a designer I don’t like having to hack up my beautiful design to try and get it to work with -fill_in_the_blank- CMS. It is the rigidness in the idea of a “system” that never seemed to work with me.
Enter the CMT (Content Management Tool). Three years ago when all of my clients started needing “dynamic” websites that they could update themselves, I was forced to spend all my free time writing my CMT. It worked great, extremely hacky, hardly any features, but great. As my client list grew, so did the amount of hacks and feature additions for my CMT. Over the course of those two and a half years I had re-designed the interface twice. Eventually I realized, “Hey I really have something here.” And in January of 2008 I started re-designing and re-developing my CMT from scratch. All code thrown out the window, and built from the bottom up. Today it is know as: Firerift.
Firerift is in my answer to the CMS problem. I took the way I normally develop a site, from Photoshop all the way to deployment, and built something that compliments the process. Not something that constrains me to work within a certain “pre-designed” system. Let’s take a deeper look at the way I feel a CMS works best (especially for all of you designers and developers who share my thoughts on this CMS problem).
For this next part I am going to need you to forget about what the typical CMS does, because Firerift works differently. You see, Firerift is a Template Independent CMS. That means you design and/or develop how you want, and then plug Firerift into the portions of the site where you want it to manage that content. Firerift will scour your code looking for any Firerift Code Snippets and convert them into the corresponding function.
For example, the following is a simple blog page using Firerift:
<html>
<head> <title>My Site</title>
</head>
<body> <h1>Welcome to My Site</h1> <p>I hope you enjoy my Blog</p> {{blog}}
</body>
</html>
Firerift will find that “{{blog}}” reference and convert it into a full featured blog that is 100% managed from within the Firerift admin. Now this example is very simplified, there would be more parameters added to the “{{blog}}” (like which blog to pull down). But for simplicity sake, this is pretty much all it takes.
So you can see the flexibility that Firerift offers, you designate what gets to be managed in the admin. This lets you design and code however you want, there are no limits or template restrictions. Also, you have access to the XHTML structure of every function (blog, galleries, etc.) from within the admin. Allowing you to output the data in any fashion. Alternatively you can create “Pages“, allowing you to manage the whole site inside the admin, rather than just portions. It is this “anti-system” that enabled me to easily build truly custom websites for my clients.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Content Management without template restrictions.
A big problem I think CMS’s are prone to is “feature bloat”. You look up in the menu and there are ten links, and each links has 454 sub links (a mild exaggeration). One way I think this can be solved is by creating a CMS “Core” that is powerful and offers only a handful of great features, but also give the core the ability to be extended. This eliminates feature bloat out of the box and gives users a powerful but simple interface. Then if you decide you need more functionality, you can install extensions or plug-ins. This gives you the ability to determine the complexity of your CMS.
Firerift enables any developer (really … any developer at all) to create plug-ins or extensions for Firerift. Developers can then package up and post these plug-ins or extensions on the Firerift website to share with the community. Thus making Firerift a CMN (Content Management Network - watch out I’ve got a lot of these acronyms). What does an extension do in Firerift? It literally extends the functionality of the software itself. Meaning, you can add features to Firerift.
I can’t say all this and act like I came up with the idea, because I didn’t. Many people before me have used this great idea, and I have to give a shout out to Shaun Inman. What he has done with Mint perfectly demonstrates this.
Ease of use is huge if you are going to be spending a lot of time in a particular application. Also, let’s not forget about the fact that some small business owner is the one who will be updating his website everyday. Good, intuitive design is a must if you are going to be handing the reigns of a CMS over to your (technically UN-inclined) client. That was a top priority on the latest re-design of the Firerift admin. By keeping the design similar from page to page, using panels for information sets, and by using clean and clear design the end-user will feel comfortable and know where he/she is at all times.
A Template Independent CMS is the best CMS in my opinion. Firerift was developed as a solution to my problem, making it a very useful piece of software for me. I understand that Firerift may not be for every project, because some people prefer the “system” architecture. But for those who develop like I do, I hope Firerift will be as big of an asset to you as it has been for me.
Going solo and creating a new web app is always fun and exciting. You are the boss, so you decide how things work, what goes where, and when things need to get done. Exciting, challenging and fun. Then the preposterous idea of selling your creation to others who may find it useful pops in your mind. Your brain immediately takes you to a magical land where you have an infinite amount of money, a 400,000 sq. ft. home, and you never need to work again because your creation generates “passive” income. Suddenly you snap back into reality with even more determination to make your project the greatest app ever put into code.
Now to clarify, I am not all about money or anything. In fact I love where I am in life and I know for a fact money will never bring happiness. But that&rsqou;s not to say that at some point we don’t all have a passing thought like the one above!
After the “high” of developing your own web app wears off and you are stuck in front of your computer writing the (what seems like) 1 millionth line of code for the fourth time over, the question hits you, “How am I, -your_name_here-, going to distribute, support, market, and sell this app all by myself?” The task can seem daunting, and here is how I went about it.
I started creating Firerift, a template independent CMS, about 3 years ago with no initial intention of releasing it to the public. I only used it for my client’s websites. As things progressed I decided I wanted to release it to the public. “But how?” I thought. “The code is too hacky. What if someone looks under the hood? How can I provide support for users? How am I supposed to legally protect my app? What kind of lawyer knows anything about the web industry? How do I market this to my target market?” All these questions and more were on the front of my mind.
One thing I knew for sure, I needed to get some help developing this app so it can be rock solid and expanded upon in the future. I am not the greatest developer, I was not even using a framework for Firerift when I started out. I was just using the “Drew Wilson Framework” (which basically involves a lot of embedded MYSQL). I knew this was not as solid as something Google would do for example, and I wanted it to be. Luckily I know a genius developer fluent in pretty much any language, not limited to just web languages. Basically if I could have anyone in the world write Firerift with me, it would be him. He already had a great job, and I didn’t have any money to pay him. But I knew it would be well worth it to have his expertise. So I went looking for some money.
“How much should I get?” I had no idea. But I knew that I did not want to get into serious debt over this. After all, I have an amazing wife and not so amazing mortgage to take care of. I knew that any advertising at all would be the dumbest waste of money. My target market is web developers. They are on the web 24/7 and you don’t need an ad on TechCrunch to get their traffic. There are plenty of other free alternatives. Design Gallery sites, ask others to blog about it, etc.
I knew I would be doing part-time freelance work on the side while doing Firerift at the same time. So I figured I needed the amount my developer would charge plus 2 months of full living expenses. Why only two months? Because before I would take the money I would get as much done in my spare time as possible, while still freelancing part-time. This really helped a ton. I built the Firerift public website, wrote some documentation, did all the final design for and basic XHTML/CSS, everything I knew I could do on my own and didn’t need extra money for. That way I could take out a smaller loan. Then I started the final development phase with my developer for the next 2 months. It worked out great. Oh there were bumps, and not everything went as planned, but that is just fine when creating your first app. It should be a learning experience. I now know a ton more than before, and have a very solid idea of how to approach my next app.
The bottom line when taking out a loan or borrowing money is: make sure you are comfortable. There is always going to be an element of risk (that’s what makes us entrepreneurs), but be smart about it. Ask advice from every successful business person you have a relationship with. And when selecting a developer/designer/whatever make sure it is someone you trust and is better than you at whatever you are hiring them for. Hire up, not down.
During those 2 months I had to get the business side of things built up. One of the items I went for first was licensing. Art Neill and his team of lawyers at New Media Rights were awesome at helping me get the licensing issues all worked out for Firerift. They specialize in the tech and media industry, so it was a perfect fit. I was lucky enough to meet them at the San Diego BarCamp. BarCamp is a great way to meet other web industry peeps.
One important tip is to ask. Ask other people in the industry you respect what they have done. It can be very helpful to get knowledge from people who have already experienced the trials of developing a business.
I want Firerift to be easy to use for developers of all skill levels. One of the most frustrating things for me when I started out developing was the lack of documentation or the unfriendly way the documentation was written on various apps or software. If I had it my way, there would have been someone there to walk me through step by step.
Enter the “screencast”. An awesome way to help developers of all levels understand and better use your software. I will be creating literally as many ScreenCasts as I can for Firerift, to help make using and customizing Firerift as simple as possible. It can be very time consuming, but worth it I think in the end. The best ScreenCast software out there is ScreenFlow, hands down.
So by creating Firerift I have solved my CMS woes, and hopefully yours as well. All this being said, soon I would like to declare Independence Day for all of my fellow designers and developers. Because soon Firerift will be available available at: www.firerift.com
We all know content management systems (CMS) can be beneficial for most websites. However, they do come with five hidden costs.
Many think of a content management system as a magic bullet that solves all of their content woes. Unfortunately the cost of a CMS is greater than its price tag. Before making a decision about whether to adopt a CMS, or indeed which CMS to choose, you first need to be aware of the hidden costs. These include:
It is important that you understand the impact of each beginning with the cost of training.
Probably the most obvious hidden cost is that of training. No matter how well designed the application or how good the documentation, some level of training is normally required. In my experience training is particularly important with free open source systems. These tend to have less documentation and the interface is often designed by programmers rather than user experience experts. The result is a great learning curve.
The more content production is delegated, the more people it is necessary to train. Whether this is done through onsite training or video tutorials it is still a considerable cost.
Although training maybe an obvious expense it is not without surprises. Organisations often fail to consider that training has an ongoing cost. The more people using a system the higher the likelihood somebody will need to be replaced. This carries with it a cost in both time and money.
This ongoing cost is not limited to training new CMS users. Existing content provider also require refresher courses if they are not using the CMS regularly. I have often provided training for an organisation only to receive a call six months later because people have forgotten how to login. This is because they used the system so infrequently.
Unfortunately the price of having a lot of people editing your site is the cost of increased training. However, that is not the only cost that grows with numbers. So does the cost to quality.
In some ways, what a CMS gives with one hand it takes away with the other. Quality and control are classic examples of this. Enterprise level content management systems have complex workflow tools that prevent new content from going live until it has been checked and double checked. This is designed specifically to ensure the quality of content being posted online.
The problem with this is two fold. First, this kind of functionality is only normally found in more expensive systems. Second, few organisations implement this kind of quality control because it creates a bottleneck in the approval process. This bottleneck is precisely the kind of problem a CMS was supposed to solve.
I think this highlights a substantial problem with content management systems. They are often implemented in the hope they will solve what is an organizational rather than technical problem. Unfortunately technology cannot solve everything.
At one extreme you can open up your CMS to allow anybody to post to your site. This will lead to a decline in the quality of your content. On the other you can limit access and create a bottleneck where only one or two individuals can make content live. The technology can offer you lots of options along that sliding scale. What you need to do is find a happy medium.
Of course, at least a CMS offers this control. That is more than an HTML driven website can. However, a non CMS driven site does allow more flexibility when it comes to functionality.
When you have a website that is not built on a CMS the possibilities are endless. Because you have complete control over your code, it is possible to build any additional functionality you require. However, once you commit to a content management system things become more complex.
Although it is possible to build additional functionality that sits alongside your CMS there can be problems with integration. For example, if your CMS does not have a forum and you wish to add one, you may have to ask users to login twice. Once for the site and once for the forum. Equally you may find it hard to tie your CMS in with other systems that you later purchase.
Some content management systems provide plugins to add additional functionality. However, often you are forced to either compromise or wait until the next release of the CMS and hope it supports your requirements.
Although you may find yourself frustrated by a lack of functionality, it is equally possible to be frustrated by too much.
Unless you have a bespoke content management system, developed to your exact requirements it will probably contain functionality you do not need. That is because off the shelf solutions are designed to appeal to a wide audience.
Not only does this mean you pay for unwanted functionality, it also adds complexity to the user interface. The more functionality, the more complexity, the more to learn.
It is a problem that applications such as Microsoft Word have suffered from for years. Word is very powerful and provides an enormous range of features. The problem is that the majority of people only use a fraction of what is available. The result is that most pay for functionality they do not use, and struggle to learn what is a complex application. This is the problem many content management systems are facing.
The reason people have not stopped using Word and move instead to something simpler, is that they are invested both financially and in time. This brings us to the final drawback of content management systems.
Content management systems demand a high level of commitment on many fronts. These include:
The third area can be particularly tricky. Once your content is in a content management system it is not always a simple matter to get it out.
With such an investment in both time and money it is important to make the right selection of system. Changing your mind later is expensive.
So am I suggesting you should avoid content management systems entirely? Not at all. The benefits they provide are real and cannot be ignored. However, I am saying that you should go into the process of selecting a content management system with your eyes wide open. A content management system is not a magic bullet that solves all your content woes. However, it can be a useful tool is selected carefully.