Key Design Elements

Online stores as well as websites can often be confusing and hard to use which regularly turns potential customers away. After researching and detailing what I believe to be successful websites I have come up with a design check-list for us to keep in mind when developing/designing our own site to keep our users focused.

Below are 6 elements that we will aim to include in our website:

1. Good Visual Design

As humans we tend to judge a book by its cover SO if I go to a web site that is not visually pleasing chances are I will click away. This doesn’t mean our site needs to be state-of-the-art in visual design however, we feel sticking to a clean and simple design is certainly

the way to go. We have decided to go with the “less is more” approach. We want our design to look good so it can stand out from our competitor(s) in the minds of our potential clients.

First impressions are key. We realize good design alone will not keep our readers on our site — an eye-catching design will at the very least grab their attention long enough to take a look around.

Examples I liked: http://store.apple.com/us , http://www.etsy.com/ , http://hmv.com/hmvweb/home.do

2. Navigation

We aim for our website to be easy to navigate therefore, we need to ensure that the primary means of navigation are kept above the fold, this means our site design will cater to all screen sizes.

Elements we aim to include in our navigation include; our logo (which we want to be a live link back to our home page), as well as links to the main sections of our site. Our navigation should include - “Home | About | Services | FAQ | Contact” in a very easy to find location at the top of our site. Through our research we have found that the key is consistency – we need to place both our primary and sub-navigational links

in the same spot throughout the various pages of our web site. We also want to look into the use of navigational links in our footer. Especially if we use flash in our main navigation.

Examples I liked: http://www.bambinodirect.co.uk/ , http://www.feelunique.com/ , http://www.bigw.com.au/onlinestores.html

3. Meaningful Content

We do realize that “content is king” and we might have a pretty web site which will catch someone’s eye, but if the content is no good, our readers aren’t going to stick around.

When writing the copy for our web site, we’ve noted the importance of providing helpful, knowledgeable information about our company, products, services, etc.

4. Tools and Services

• About Us – this will be a space for our readers to find out who we are, what we’re about and what we offer. In the online environment its nice to give a small personal touch so our readers don’t feel totally disconnected.

• Contact Information – This is important for us to provide so that those who are interested in our services can get in touch with ease. Ideally we want to give more than one method of contact. At the very least an email address and contact form.

• Search – I’ve found through a lot of sites, especially those that are content heavy that having a search field is incredibly helpful.

• Sign up / Subscribe – If we decide to have an email newsletter we feel this would be a beneficial feature for us to use. There appears to be an array of companies that will let us setup and manage a

mailing list. They would provide us with a code for our site to enable our web site visitors to sign up for updates using their email address.

• Sitemap –

We think this is a great tool for our visitors to use to find their way around our site. We would create a structured list of all the pages of our web site to guide readers and this would also allow us to draw attention to any new features we add to the site over time. A link to the sitemap is another item that we think will be helpful to place down in the footer of the site, as well.

5. Web Optimized Images

When designing for the web, we’ve learnt through our photoshop tutorials in class that it’s important that we save all our images in a compressed format. Not too much that your images become pixelated, but as much as possible while retaining quality.

As we will be using Adobe Photoshop we will note to “Save for Web” feature that will automatically convert our image to 72dpi to make sure we don’t forget.

6. Statistics, Tracking and Analytics

We feel this is one of the most important elements or tools for us to incorporate into our site so we can monitor our sites performance and see what needs to be improved.

There are many services that offer tracking of web site statistics, which include information such as:

- How many hits does my site receive?

- How many of these are from unique visitors?

- How are people finding my web site?

- What search terms are they finding me under?

- What web sites link to me?

- What are the most popular pages on my site?

- Who is my average visitor (platform / browser / screen resolution)?

Through our research we’ve found that the most popular site for this is Google Analytics which offers a very robust (and free) tracking solution.

PhotoShop ‘till you brand & drop

This week we were introduced to the concept of 'self-branding', involving the self-conscious construction of a meta-narrative and meta-image of self through the use of cultural meanings and images drawn from the narrative and visual codes of the mainstream culture industries (Hearn 2008, p. 198). An example of the reflexive project of the ‘ self’ within the online space is how, as Hearn notes, websites such as 2night.com and universityparty.ca improvise on the theme of self-branding by taking photographs of young people at clubs and linking them to advertisements online, blurring the distinction between private self and instrumental associative object.

We also experimented with PhotoShop, a professional image editing software package enabling amateurs and experts alike to modify colours and effects, crop, collage, play with gradients and layer organic images.

This combination of theoretical discussion and technical practice got me thinking about the ways in which contemporary user-friendly software like Photoshop might play a role in the practice and

production of ‘branded’ personae within the online retail microcosm. The e-stores for Aussie labels Zimmermann and Peter Alexander immediately sprang to mind; both comprise clear, sharp and well illuminated clothing catalogues, vivid photographs and moving fashion spreads that deflect the two-dimensional actuality of the computer screen and bring the garments to life for the browsing customer.

Both sites use a complex of significations – highly stylized colour schemes, pattern, photography, composition, logos, models’ body language, text, etc. - to ‘brand’ their product, positioning themselves as sites for the extraction of value (Hearn 2008, p. 201).

In creating and developing our website feature, we ourselves will inevitably become involved in this process of self-branding. Producing a site that advocates that what matters is not ‘meaning’ or ‘truth’ or ‘reason’, but ‘winning’ (by keeping up with the Joneses and going online NOW), the feature’s purpose is fundamentally persuasive, urging retailers to re-produce their products for competitive-circulation. In some sense, then, we are instructing our retailer audience to 're-brand' themselves, to generate their own rhetorically persuasive packaging against an online backdrop.

With self-branding now a hallmark of modernity, it's food for thought to consider that, as online media students, we become a part of the complex processes that we are striving to deconstruct.

Making the most of the Debt Crisis: Interactivity Online

Pedestrian TV had it right when it confessed we all share a general understanding that “some kind of serious shit's going down with the global economy.” What with journalism's inundation of scary financial jargon in journalism over the past months, I was inspired by Pedestrian’s Guide to Online Shopping in Debt Crisis, which trumpets the advantages of the financial black hole into which the United States has sunk by reminding readers that the Australian dollar, comparatively, is at an all-time high. This means that right now, when Australians purchase items from online international retailers, our wardrobes can be happy without our wallets feeling too hard done by. The Guide cites a range of clothing styles and items, spanning from Luxury/High End to Vintage at its cheapest, and even includes the online outlet where you can supposedly get ‘everything’ – a.k.a. Amazon.com.

Being somewhat of an online shopping novice, I clicked on a few of the Guide's back-links, and was amazed at the way idiosyncratic fashion genres are now engaging niche consumer tribes within sophisticated, interactive online spaces. Designer Discount online outlet The Outnet, for example, enables its visitors to ‘shop by occasion’ by entering the unique event for which they need an outfit. The site then searches its cyber-shelves and uploads a variety of options for the customer to browse for their 'first date', 'summer wedding' or 'Sunday yacht trip'.

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Online shopping is no longer a two-dimensional experience of adding arbitrary items to a pseudo-shopping cart and ‘continuing to check-out’: it has become highly dynamic, symbiotic and personalised, with vendors creating retail interfaces with interactive features, and shoppers, in turn, being assisted in their purchase decisions by the customisation of the electronic shopping environment to their individual preferences. The explosion of interactive e-shopping is explored by Haubl and Trifts in their journal article Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids, in which they suggest that the availability of such tools may lead to a transformation of the way in which shoppers search for product information and make purchase decisions. Another example of a hands-on online shopping space is Polyvore, where visitors can browse and create different "sets" or outfits virtually. Shoppers can also create their own profile, collect favourite outfit sets and exchange style advice with other shoppers – or “tastemakers” - by adding them as contacts. The experience is not just about ‘machine interactivity’ but also ‘person interactivity’, combining the ability to interactively access information in an online database with the ability to communicate with other individuals (Hoffman and Novak 1996).

In creating our 'How To’ guide for Australian retailers opting to launch their businesses online, I feel that it is important to draw our users' attention to these ‘interactive decision aids’ that are currently transforming the online shopping experience - perhaps even practicing what we preach by incorporating them within our own site itself. With a view towards attracting consumer user groups that will stay curious, committed and constantly excited by their sites, amateur online retailers should be encouraged to utilise dynamic and interactive tools within their online interfaces, in fitting with the all-encompassing purchase lifestyle in which consumers are now immersed.

Ask the Expert

The online site for the Australian Magazine ‘Smarter Business Ideas’ has many similarities to our proposed web feature. This site is also aimed at retailers however our site differs in the way that it is a stand-alone site that is directed exclusively at fashion retailers. One service they provide which I would really like to build into our own site is the ‘Ask the Expert’ tool.

This service is useful as it is provides the same interactivity of a ‘review’ but allows users to pose their questions to a trusted figure whose advice they can more comfortably rely on. 

How Will Our Site Function?

So far we have three planned aspects to our web feature. These are:


1. News and feature articles which will educate retailers on how consumer patterns are changing. I would recommend that we use as much primary data as we can. This could include the 2011 Digital Media Research Overview as well as the Colmar Bruton Market Research Form. 

            2. Interviews, Vox Pop’s and Testimonials from designers, experts and consumers. I thought perhaps we could try and get in contact with expert Dr Paul Harrison from the Australian consumer and marketing website Tribal Insight as well as perhaps Terri Winter who is the founder of the Sydney based design store Top 3 by Design which has been selling successfully online since 2001.

        3. Tutorials that will include useful tips for retailers designing a site.


       Lecture 4 reflects on the idea described by Barry Wellman in his ‘Personal Relationships: On and off the Internet’ (2006) of the ‘intimate stranger’. The Internet provides a platform for users to establish relationships based on trust with complete strangers. Considering the following table from the 2010 Nielsen Global Consumer Report it is evident that Internet users really do value and trust the opinion of others especially when it comes to purchasing something online. Perhaps one of our tutorials can focus on different ways retailers could build a review service into their site. 




















       An example is the American Apparel online store which invites users to both rate the item out of five stars as well as write a review for other users.

 

Online Shopping: Taking Australian Consumers by Storm

In Margaret Simons ‘Gift Economy and the Future’, the founder of the public journalism movement Jay Rosen attributes the decay of mainstream media to the lack of the journalist’s relationship with their audience (p.208.) Rosen commends bloggers and stand-alone journalists of the web for the way they engage with their readers by providing useful information and helpful solutions. This reflects the concept of a ‘gift-economy’ where privileged persons work not for profit but rather for the satisfaction that comes from sharing knowledge with others. 
I envision our website as being a part of this ‘gift-economy’. Through a combination of well-researched news features and opinions from both media experts and experienced people in the retail industry as well as tutorials on aspects such as site design, our web features will educate ‘brick and mortar fashion retailers’ (as termed by Dr Paul Harrison on the 7pm Project) on why and how they should embrace the online environment. 
Online shopping is a consumer trend that cannot be underestimated by Australian fashion retailers. An April 2011 article from The Courier Mail quotes the Australian National Retail Association in stating that Internet shopping will cause 50,000 Australians to lose their jobs in the next five years. This figure is supported by the 2011 Digital Media Research Overview (Australia and New Zealand) from Price Waterhouse Coopers and Frost & Sullivan which conveys that 86% of online shoppers expect to increase their current level of online expenditure in the next 12 months. The report states that contributing factors include the strength of the Australian dollar, the rise in mobile devices, the range of choices and cheaper costs, and the added convenience. It states, 

“Supporting new technologies and infrastructure will be critical to [retailers] success…retailers need to consider how they leverage these technologies by integrating digital channels into the total purchase lifecycle.” 


The news features and tutorials on our web feature will strive to provide useful information and practical solutions for fashion retailers going online. The accompanying diagram is an example of the type of information we will include in our news features as it provides a helpful platform for our target audience to understand the benefits of the online purchase cycle and think of ways that they can engage with the online consumer. Furthermore, our site will then provide tutorials which will demonstrate through a step-by-step process how retailers can build these services into their own website. 

Have your say! As an Australian consumer do you think you will purchase from an international online retailer in the next 6 months?