Five ways for online fashion sites to display products
Online fashion is growing fast, but as Leon Bailey-Green pointed out in our recent interview, just 6% of the UK fashion retail market is selling online.
This means there is still huge potential for getting people to shop for fashion online. One way to do this is to attempt to recreate the in-store experience as closely as possible, and to help shoppers get a feel for clothes without being able to see them close up and try them on.
Here are a few ideas from online fashion sites that are doing this well, though the advice applies equally to other sectors...
Q&A: lastminute.com's Marko Balabanovic on innovation
Marko Balabanovic won an award for Innovation in Multichannel Marketing at Econsultancy's Innovation Awards last year, and this year he is a member of the judging panel.
I've been talking to Marko, who is Head of Innovation at lastminute.com, about lastminute.com labs, how the team looks to innovate, and some of the products it has created...
Making your site recession proof through better usability
The recession is an extra obstacle to shopping online. To stop it from being insurmountable, you need to make sure you remove all the other barriers you can.
Last summer I asked if the downturn was leading to greater use of e-commerce? The answer then was 'yes'. The answer is still “yes”, only maybe more so now...
What is the best way to display shopping basket links?
Shopping basket/cart links and icons need to catch the attention of shoppers, and should help them to find the link to review the contents and make a purchase.
There are a number of ways of displaying the basket link, from a simple text link to permanent basket icon showing the contents and total value. I've been looking at a few examples from a selection of UK etailers...
Q&A: Matthew Don on Flash and SEO
I'm not exactly a Flash fanboy, largely on the grounds that many Flash-based sites suffer from Rubbish User Experience Syndrome (RUES) and all too often they don't play by Google's rules.
I can never understand why a web-based business would choose to ignore the fundamentals of SEO, or why some agencies push Flash towards their clients knowing that it isn't an especially Google-friendly technology. All style and no substance. But Flash has its place, especially for campaign-based sites, and recent improvements to the way search engines make sense of Flash-based websites have made it more acceptable than it used to be.
I've been talking to Skive technical director Matthew Don, who explains why he thinks Flash and SEO can be happy bedfellows, as opposed to mortal enemies.
12 brilliant 404 pages
A huge part of user experience is ensuring site navigation is as easy as possible, in order to retain anyone who happens to be browsing your site. But what happens if there’s a broken link or a page doesn’t load?
The answer has two scenarios: Either the user will leave, or with a bit
of help, will find their way to the right page. More often than not, in
these situations, it’s the 404 page that will decide the outcome, so how can you maximise their effectiveness?
Dealing with freelancers: five common mistakes
If you're an entrepreneur or run a small business, chances are you've hired a freelancer or considered hiring a freelancer. And for good reason: when you don't need or can't afford an employee, freelance labor gives you access to talented workers who can take care of a specific set of tasks.
But getting the most out of freelance labor is not always easy because freelancers work differently than employees and many entrepreneurs and small businesses don't understand that. To ensure a successful relationship with a freelancer, here are five common mistakes to avoid.
Q&A: Dan Wagner of Venda on e-commerce
Dan Wagner is founder and chairman of Venda, a full service e-commerce platform, which has several big name clients in the US and UK, and recently won the contract to provide Tesco's next e-commerce site.
I've been talking to Dan, who also owns Brightstation and the newly formed Aigua Media, about Venda...
Q&A: BusinessWeek.com Editor-in-Chief John A. Byrne
Journalism on the web requires a new way of thinking. As editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com, John A. Byrne is responsible for guiding the BusinessWeek brand on the web.
In this exclusive interview Byrne, who was previously editor-in-chief of Fast Company and is the author of eight books, talks at length about BusinessWeek's strategy for engaging readers and managing BusinessWeek's web brand.
Five swinish ways publishers put pageviews above people
For online publishers dependent on advertising, few things are as important as pageviews because more pageviews tends to equal more dollars. There's nothing inherently wrong with attempting to boost these numbers; it's to be expected.
But not all pageviews are generated equally. There are a number of swinish techniques online publishers use to inflate the number of views.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
