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Posted by admin on February 16th, 2009

Designing for the web is a unique affair. Not only does the website have to look good and entice a user to learn more about a clients services or products, it also has to ‘flow’ well. That is, a user has to be able to navigate a website with ease – they have to be able to to find the information they need quickly. Once they reach that information they need to be able to ‘action’ the information in some way – that might mean being able to quickly send an email, call a number or make a purchase.

Designing e-commerce websites presents the most challenging creative process. The flow of the user has to be linear. They have to be able to find a product, learn more about it, look at images (most of the time they’ll want to look at those images in detail which means being able to enlarge them) and then they need to be able to make an informed, and most importantly, a secure purchase. Designing that process presents interesting challenges – but having the right ‘back end’ presents another. That’s where Magento comes in…

Magento is the new s2o back end. It’s a versatile e-commerce solution that works hand in hand with designing a great buying experience for your customers. The options Magento provides means we can start stretching our usability design into areas that actually give the user more control over how they view and interact with your products. And by giving the user a degree of personal control it means we can start designing websites that put more products on the page an in front of the eyes of a customer. One of the most intriguing features from a creative point of view is the ‘Product Display’ option. Conventionally, a standard product list page will display products in either a single column – thumbnail with basic descriptive text a price and a link through to a detail page. Alternatively – the thumbnails takes precedence – the page is led by the product image, with a title and a price. The benefits of both are obvious – the first gives more information to the user immediately, but doesn’t necessarily allow them to look at a variety of products on a single page. The second option lets the user view more images – but doesn’t give them a great deal of additional information. It’s a constant struggle as a designer to present products clearly – and clients will always want more products on page – with more information so the end user can make a more informed choice. Now, with Magento being able to give the customer the best of both worlds – we can satisfy the clients need to get information in front of the customer, the customers need in wanting to be able to find exactly what they want however they want to – and our need in being able to create and deliver the most robust e-commerce solution that flows in exactly the right direction.

I love you.

Parb Johal – Art Director Extraordinaire, Creative Usability Guru and Spreading Love Since 1978…