Posted by: Nick
The folks over Meer.li have setup a new mini-site to highlight some of the best examples of mobile application design. It's more or less another echo-chamber where other designers can spend their time showing off their work to other designers, but it's always nice to have a compartmentalized hub to go to see what others in the industry have been developing; especially in the mobile space, where we've only recently started to see uniform standards and REAL design innovation start to emerge.
Head on over if you're interested in gawking at the work of others, or if you want to sign-up and get your work gawked at.
May 19, 2012
May 6, 2012
Another One Bites the Dust...
Posted by: Nick
While I'm not one to make flippant, short-form blog posts, there are times when I'm so absolutely thrilled with a sea change in our industry that I cannot help but only comment on it due to overwhelming glee.
As both an independent consultant and an agency suit, I will not have to support IE7 anymore. That's right, folks, Internet Explorer 7 is dead to me.
IE 7 currently eats up around 2.5% of the browser market with IE 6 (the step-child of the family) covering approximately 0.9% of the market. In total, that's 3.4% of the market that's using browsers that are so outdated and bereft of any support for modern web technologies, that they may as well be functionally useless at this point in time. And while I'm not necessarily thrilled at the prospect of having to drop 3.4% of the market, that 3.4% represented countless hours of support, workarounds, and a level of hack-fu nonsense that made supporting them impossible to sustain and costly from a development and post-launch support perspective.
In the end that means far fewer headaches during the development cycle, quicker turnarounds on projects, and lower costs for me and my clients. If some of the biggest websites (Facebook, Gmail) and some of the biggest development platforms (Drupal) refuse to support that beast, then I'm more than happy to follow suit to retain my sanity.
While I'm not one to make flippant, short-form blog posts, there are times when I'm so absolutely thrilled with a sea change in our industry that I cannot help but only comment on it due to overwhelming glee.
As both an independent consultant and an agency suit, I will not have to support IE7 anymore. That's right, folks, Internet Explorer 7 is dead to me.
IE 7 currently eats up around 2.5% of the browser market with IE 6 (the step-child of the family) covering approximately 0.9% of the market. In total, that's 3.4% of the market that's using browsers that are so outdated and bereft of any support for modern web technologies, that they may as well be functionally useless at this point in time. And while I'm not necessarily thrilled at the prospect of having to drop 3.4% of the market, that 3.4% represented countless hours of support, workarounds, and a level of hack-fu nonsense that made supporting them impossible to sustain and costly from a development and post-launch support perspective.
In the end that means far fewer headaches during the development cycle, quicker turnarounds on projects, and lower costs for me and my clients. If some of the biggest websites (Facebook, Gmail) and some of the biggest development platforms (Drupal) refuse to support that beast, then I'm more than happy to follow suit to retain my sanity.
Apr 18, 2012
Service-Oriented eCommerce Design: Part 1
Posted by: Nick
If you read my post on page load times, you may already be privy to the understanding that there are a myriad of factors that can negatively affect the experience of your users. With eCommerce websites these minor idiosyncracies and headaches can pile up quickly, and given how notriously fickle web users are, this can invariably affect the bottom-line by driving them (and their dollars) away from your site.
For a number of companies, online shopping carts have "quick buck" appeal because they represent the ability to sell products to a wide-audience with minimal overhead and support. But this simplistic understanding is what kills many small eComm sites and hinders much larger operations. The fact of the matter is that good, successful eCommerce sites are more than databases filled with products; they're service-oriented experiences that are designed from the ground-up to minimize frustration, remove needless steps, and maximize consumer visibility.
So what does this all mean? A lot, actually. Conservative estimates claim that the average cart abandonment rate hovers somewhere around 59.8%. That 59.8% figure represents users who have added something to a cart, dropped out of a site and never came back. Having a cart abandonment rate sit at that level across a 11,000-site sample speaks to a larger systemic problem in the way eComm sites have been handeled up to this point; poor design choices, poor management, poor direction.
Below are some of high-level issues to be mindful of when thinking about your online store.
Good carts don't anger consumers or try their patience. While many would see this as a "no, duh" insight, it's not the prinicple itself that people have a hard time understanding; it's the execution.
One of the most common examples of poor execution is the boiler-plate checkout process. For users it's long, arduous, and loaded with potential pitfalls. Worst of all, users who get frustrated during the checkout process are users who have already decided that they want to give you their money. When you have people who are ready and willing to throw their money at you, making their lives difficult is the last thing you want to do.
So how do eComm sites get it wrong? If the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line, then most checkout processes are winding, branching roads. Between pushing users down a different path by forcing them to register an account to making them navigate through page-after-page-after-page of forms, standard checkout processes do a horrible job of providing clarity and keeping the customer motivated.
The ideal checkout process requires no more than two pages; one page being devoted to information gathering and user assessment, and the second page acting as a speedbump for confirmation purposes.
If you read my post on page load times, you may already be privy to the understanding that there are a myriad of factors that can negatively affect the experience of your users. With eCommerce websites these minor idiosyncracies and headaches can pile up quickly, and given how notriously fickle web users are, this can invariably affect the bottom-line by driving them (and their dollars) away from your site.
For a number of companies, online shopping carts have "quick buck" appeal because they represent the ability to sell products to a wide-audience with minimal overhead and support. But this simplistic understanding is what kills many small eComm sites and hinders much larger operations. The fact of the matter is that good, successful eCommerce sites are more than databases filled with products; they're service-oriented experiences that are designed from the ground-up to minimize frustration, remove needless steps, and maximize consumer visibility.
So what does this all mean? A lot, actually. Conservative estimates claim that the average cart abandonment rate hovers somewhere around 59.8%. That 59.8% figure represents users who have added something to a cart, dropped out of a site and never came back. Having a cart abandonment rate sit at that level across a 11,000-site sample speaks to a larger systemic problem in the way eComm sites have been handeled up to this point; poor design choices, poor management, poor direction.
Below are some of high-level issues to be mindful of when thinking about your online store.
Problem #1: Minimize Frustration
Good carts don't anger consumers or try their patience. While many would see this as a "no, duh" insight, it's not the prinicple itself that people have a hard time understanding; it's the execution.
One of the most common examples of poor execution is the boiler-plate checkout process. For users it's long, arduous, and loaded with potential pitfalls. Worst of all, users who get frustrated during the checkout process are users who have already decided that they want to give you their money. When you have people who are ready and willing to throw their money at you, making their lives difficult is the last thing you want to do.
So how do eComm sites get it wrong? If the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line, then most checkout processes are winding, branching roads. Between pushing users down a different path by forcing them to register an account to making them navigate through page-after-page-after-page of forms, standard checkout processes do a horrible job of providing clarity and keeping the customer motivated.
Solution
The ideal checkout process requires no more than two pages; one page being devoted to information gathering and user assessment, and the second page acting as a speedbump for confirmation purposes.
There is little reason for not allowing users to quickly review their purchase and enter their billing and shipping information on the same page. It removes needless steps, minimizes wait time and allows users to quickly assess and enter any information that's relevant to their purchase in one area. The one-page method can also accomodate secondary, lead-generation functionality like user accounts and newsletter sign-ups. In fact, with some clever design tweaks and a sharp eye, there's very little that you can't do within the context of a single page.
 |
| In the left column are all of the cart items, in the right column is the checkout form. Now was that so hard? |
Next Up
Next up, well address other oversights and ways to easily address them with very simple, straight-forward solutions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)