eCommerce Bloopers and Mistakes

Easy to make design errors from the semi professionals

Building a website is a difficult challenge. There are many programs on the market today that allow anyone with a personal computer to create html content. But the problem with these programs is that they transmit a sense of entitlement to the user, conveying to them that they have the tools to build anything they want, often leading to disaster.

Let's take Home Depot for Example. They sell DeWalt Tools, such as saws and drill motors. Anybody can go in to the store and get the best tools possible, and a batch of wood and drywall, but that doesn't mean they can go out and build a cabinet, or let alone remodel their house. It takes years of education and practice to build a cabinet or do a room or kitchen remodel.

We participate on several forums in which the site author will ask for a web site evaluation. We freely identify the mistakes and suggest solutions towards the correct procedure, or images to use. Many of these sites come from semi pro's in the business. Let's take a look at some of the sites.

We shall remain nameless, and offer contructive help in diagnostics. Before you read our remedies, plase take the time to see what you come up with first before reading our input.

 Pearls of Wisdom

When designing or building your store, don't get caught up the programming or try to convey too may messages all at one time. The end result will be a Landing Page that is confusing, causing a bounce back to the search engine.

It's best practice to create a color palette first, or create a monochromatic page, and then go back and fill in the colors.

Before going to html, its best practice to use a program like fireworks or Illustrator, and do a storyboard of each page. Then test the storyboards against people and measure the reaction or response.

eCommerce Design Mistakes with Diagnostics

Blooper Example One

This website designer complained of a high bounce rate of 99%. People would land on the page and quickly leave. The store has generated a handful of sales, despite the great effort of SEO Optimization and expense of advertising. The designer was not able to identify the problem, and came to the forum to seek help in diagnostics.

The red award circles flash on the website, with a discount message in white text. This signals the brain to trigger a get out of here response.

The image at the top conveys an incomplete story. It's trying to say I'm safe, even with muggers in the background. A more suitable image would be one that focuses on just the stun gun, in operation with a rectangle aspect ratio below the navigation.

The colors on the left are annoying to look at. Should of stuck with the dark gray background, and let the images provide rich color. They need a color pallete  to design to.

The text at the top of the red circles is an attempt to inject keywords. Eliminating the red circles, and just describing the product in text should suffice, and condense the marketing message into a easy to understand format.

Basically, the designer wanted to say so many things, but went about it a chaotic way. The best solution would be to build the ad campaigns into standard size containers, and then fill in the bottom and right hand side with extra messages. The eyes naturally flow from left to right in English, so it's best to stick to that eye flow.

Blooper Example Two

This was just a rate my site request. At first look, I thought it was a marine cellular phone company which I could get reception anywhere along the coast. After further investigating, I learned it was a call center. You can pay to have your phones answered 24/7, and that the image represents the end result of using the services.

That kind of image is used in before and after marketing. The first image should be a bank of call center operators wearing headset, typing on the computer an answering the phone. The menu system and logo should be a block of solid or gradient color at the top, or a special image with a solid background in the upper left-hand corner to integrate the image and menu system together.

I like the footer. It could some more polishing in terms if style and color, but the concept is correct. Using footer like that gets a ton of frequent information on every page. Search engines also love them, because it gives them more information to work with.

Blooper Example Three

This is another rate my website. This website sells little tiny cameras that can be placed inside stuffed animals, toys, and carry a wide selection of remote viewing devices.

The website designer has the right idea; it does look like a successful store in a way. I personally think that the elements on the page could use relocating and organization for better flow.

The colors used are pretty close to a harmonic balance, in which they go together without clashing. It contains logos indicating payments accepted, social media sharing, and is PayPal verified.

There are many things that I would change, but overall, it just needs to be polished out about 5 or 6 times until it's just right.

Blooper Example Four

This is another rate my website. The construction quality is fine, but I don't personally associate scented candles with pink and maroon.

The design has all the basic elements, but the space is not utilized 100%. It's a 3 column design, but I would expand the page out to 980 px to give me some room to work with.

I must admit that the color palette meets the harmonic test in a monochromatic way, but you need rich images to bring life to the design.

This site just needs to be passed through the hands of a designer. It could be so much more, in terms of confidence when shopping, and offer much more warmth in terms of scented candles.

I envision the inside of a cozy home with dim lighting and scented candles to set the mood, and the use of black to ease any tension.