“User success rates on e-commerce sites are only 56%, and most sites comply with only a third of documented usability guidelines. Given this, improving a site’s usability can substantially increase both sales and a site’s odds of survival.” From Did Poor Usability Kill E-Commerce? by Jakob Nielsen.

He also writes that “E-commerce sites lose almost half of their potential sales because users cannot use the site. In other words, with better usability, the average site could increase its current sales by 79% (calculated as the 44% of potential sales relative to the 56% of cases in which users currently succeed).”

Related Post:

Good web design is all about achieving your goals

Magento 1.4 comes built in with a wysiwyg editor that is there to make it easy for less savvy users to edit rich content on their store’s home page, content pages, product descriptions etc without HTML knowledge.

There is also an option to hide the editor in case you want to use external code and paste it there or if you want to edit the HTML directly.

If you know HTML, you’ll probably want to use your favorite editor and only paste the code in the admin when you’re done (with the editor hidden). The problem is that the editor gets very buggy if you do that and then try to make a small edit directly in the admin – or even if you load the edit page in the admin and save again! That’s because the editor is not hidden by default and when loaded it adds <p> tags everywhere and removes empty divs. Depending on the code you have this will either destroy your content’s formatting on the front-end or make it disappear altogether.

Keep reading for a simple way to solve this annoying issue with the Magento editor! (more…)

When developing a new website or web application, you should choose to work with widely used web technologies that are popular on the internet. Why is this a smart choice?

Large pool of talented people.
If you work with widely used technologies, you’re aiming at a large pool when looking for talented people to work with. That’s really important. When working with technologies that are more rare, you are tying yourself to the companies or individuals you’re working with. By using more popular technologies, you’ll have a choice if for whatever reason you need to find other people to work with. And all the past work done will not be in vain because other people will know how to work with it.

Cost effective.
It is usually more expensive to work with technologies that are more rare. Of course it’s not the rule but it’s often the case. Again the pool of competitors is smaller so that usually means higher prices.

Access to resources.
In addition, it is much harder to find resources, frameworks, platforms, and in general open source software when you use technologies that are less popular – so you miss out on a lot of shortcuts and powerful options. Basically everything has to be coded custom – again that’s much more expensive and is not sustainable.

Prepared for growth.
Working with the wrong technologies will interfere with your company’s growth. Any web application needs to be regularly updated, maintained, and carefully secured (especially when it comes to Ecommerce for example). By not choosing a route where you can use popular software and platforms that are themselves regularly updated by the community, you are signing up for a long relationship with your developer and will end up being too dependent. It’s not a smart choice.

Don’t forget! Subscribe and follow!

Be sure to subscribe to the feed and follow us on Twitter for more tips, resources, and giveaways!

Related Posts:

• Web Design Explained
• Top 5 Questions To Ask A Web Design Company

If you change your site’s URL structure, you’ll probably need to redirect entire directories of your website to ensure that no links are lost.

This is very important for SEO and to not loose any incoming links to your site. So here’s how it’s done: (more…)

I found this really great article on using different style sheets for differently sized browser windows when designing a website or web application, potentially significantly enhancing the user experience. Enjoy!

It’s obvious than having the right tools at your disposal can make all the difference in your work. You’ll be more productive but as you are able to focus more on what you do (rather than how to do it) you’ll create the right context for your creativity to thrive!

I decided to start a new series of posts on this blog dedicated to the tools I use every day that transformed the way I work and made it possible for me to achieve better results and produce more work, while spending less time in front of my computer!

For some of work that I do, file comparison and folder comparison is absolutely essential. I use Beyond Compare every day. In fact, it’s probably the single software I use the most when working on any web design or web development task. I even often prefer it to the operating system default functions when copying files, creating backups, etc. I highly recommend giving it a try!

Finding a good web host is no easy task! There are so many options out there that you could spend days, if not weeks, researching the industry, comparing web hosting companies, reading reviews, and trying out different hosting services.

Luckily for you we’ve worked with dozens of hosting companies over the years, and we have some good suggestions! (more…)

Every time you’re considering working with anyone on a project, ask yourself “why would this person work for cheap?” It is particularly true when it comes to web design and web development and this is something I tell pretty much anyone that inquires about working with us.

You’ll be able to find cheaper companies to work with. But you won’t be able to get the same value. Every dollar you invest here at Noam Design will yield an unbeatable value for your project.

You have a limited budget? Reduce the project’s scope. But don’t try to get everything done under your budget because in the end that’s the more costly road! Instead, reduce the project’s features and be more flexible about the creative process. Brainstorm with your project manager on what can be achieved within your budget. But don’t shop around for the team that’d give you everything on earth within the smallest budget.

Where you can save costs is being smart about using resources. That’s why we created Template Action – you can download a template and setup an award winning website at a ridiculous price. And you can get such a great value because we don’t have to deal with pre-sales discussions, back and forth emails and phone calls during the creative process, time spent in meetings, etc. We created great websites you can easily manage and edit – if you like one of them you can purchase it for less than what a single consultation would cost you. It’s that simple.

Start your designs with the content that goes on the page – not the other way around.

Don’t design “boxes”, “areas”, or “structure” and then fill them out with the content you think will go there.

Instead, start by designing the main elements based on the content that you want to communicate on the page. That way you’ll be sure to include the content right away into your design strategy. Content is what matters most.

Start with the content and how you want to display it. That title, that image, this slogan and that short text. Here goes the navigation, there the main call to action. Here some additional content/options. How do I want to display these elements in order to make sure I will achieve my goals? The rest should follow.

Related posts:

• Web Design Is All About Content
• Attractive Content Rules Web Design

Debugging is a normal part of web design and development. What’s unclear about that? Web developers don’t “create bugs”, or “make mistakes”. It’s just the way it goes. I’ll explain more about that below but for now consider this simple analogy:

When you write a book or a paper – you don’t expect the publisher to publish your first submission, do you? Your copy will go through series of edits, corrections, error fixing, rephrasing, rearranging, proof reading, etc… Often this phase can take longer than the time it originally took you to write the paper or book itself! That’s the way it goes. (more…)