Design & Development
The nuts and bolts of an ecommerce site are design and development. We address design innovation and trends — including layouts, colors, photography, logos, video, and more. We explain the basics of code — HTML, CSS, JavaScript — as well as platforms, themes, plugins, open source, and related topics.
Code | Design & Dev Tools | Platforms & Apps | Schools & Resources | Typography & Fonts | User Experience-
Business
5 Reasons to Consider Ubuntu for Your Small Business
July 24, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system focused on ease of use, simplicity, and security. This operating system is a good alternative to either Microsoft Windows or Apple's OS X, and may help small businesses get improved performance while saving money. Although some small business ow...
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Schools & Resources
16 New QR Code Campaigns in 2012
July 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Quick Response (QR) codes continue to appear in creative and inspired marketing promotions. Companies are finding new uses for the codes, as well as new ways to display them. Here is a list of new QR code campaigns in 2012. Some of the QR examples are remarkably inventive, such as Ema...
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Design & Development
18 Websites Featuring Beautiful Illustrations
July 24, 2012 • Drew Coffin
In "10 Web Design Trends for 2012," I listed large illustrations as a growing trend in web design. Website illustrations can add personality to even the smallest sites and invite visitors to stay awhile and explore. Here are 18 websites with compelling illustrations.
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Design & Development
Getting Started with Responsive Web Design
July 19, 2012 • Gagan Mehra
Responsive design was conceived a couple of years ago to allow users to view websites across all devices — computers, tablets and smartphones. Since then, large sites like Starbucks and Boston Globe have adopted responsive design. But adoption by the small business community has been lo...
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Schools & Resources
16 New Ecommerce Books for Summer 2012
July 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Working on your summer reading list? Here is a list of new ecommerce and Internet-marketing books for summer 2012. There are new titles on social media, handcrafted Pinterest businesses, search engine optimization, and even a title on creating short product videos. This list was compil...
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Design & Dev Tools
Qwiki’s New Video Creator May Have Ecommerce Applications
July 2, 2012 • Armando Roggio
A New York-based rich-media technology firm has released a new platform that may make it easier for online retailers to produce product-detail videos with little more than product images and a microphone. Qwiki first announced its Creator platform in May 2012 and set up a private beta ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Trevor Ginn of Hello Baby
June 15, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Design & Development
5 Mistakes to Avoid on Ecommerce Sites
June 12, 2012 • Armando Roggio
What makes great ecommerce-site aesthetics, layout, and even features are a matter of opinion. But there are some things that simply are not smart for online retailers. Online retail sites have a distinct job: selling something. While site design can be a matter of taste, I believe th...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Hassan Bawab of Magic Logix
June 11, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com
June 8, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Design & Dev Tools
RSS Plumbing with Yahoo! Pipes
May 29, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Yahoo! Pipes is a free content manipulation service that lets you mix and mash up web content using a visual editor that doesn’t require any code writing experience. The Pipes service has been around since February 7, 2007, and is the primarily the work of then Yahoo! Engineers Pasha S...
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Design & Development
15 Personalized Shopping Cart Icons
May 28, 2012 • Drew Coffin
Custom icons can help a site design and personalize the online shopping experience. Shopping cart icons are some of the more popular icons to personalize. Here are 15 sites with ...
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Platforms & Apps
Automating Social Media Posts with Dlvr.it
May 23, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Social media campaigns have become a mainstay of ecommerce marketing. Even the smallest of online retailers are likely to have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and there are indications that social engagement may improve shopper relations and, possibly, sales. But the process of ...
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Platforms & Apps
Bing Goes Social with New Redesign
May 15, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Microsoft's Bing search engine will get a major redesign in the next month, extending the tool's integration with Facebook and introducing a new feature to help searchers get more done. “In 2009, we launched Bing with a simple proposition: people should expect more from a search engine...
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Schools & Resources
10 Photoshop Skills for Beginners
May 14, 2012 • Drew Coffin
Adobe Photoshop is an incredibly powerful program that allows you to do professional grade image manipulations and adjustments. Whether you want to work with product images or design website layouts, Photoshop has the tools you need to get the job done. However, Photoshop is so powerful...
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Design & Development
How to Generate Phone Calls from PPC Ads
May 10, 2012 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
In this interview, Internet marketing expert Joseph Kerschbaum explains how phone ads work, that display phone numbers -- and allow customers to click to call — in a PPC ad.
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Neil Davidson of My Web Presenters
May 3, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded ...
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User Experience
Emphasizing Site Search in Web Design
April 25, 2012 • Armando Roggio
A website's own search engine is fundamental to helping customers find products, make purchases, and have a positive shopping experience. Speaking at an ecommerce conference in Brazil, Ed Huffman, vice president of global sales and business development for SLI Systems, a site search pr...
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Schools & Resources
15 New Ecommerce Books for March 2012
March 13, 2012 • Sig Ueland
The wide adoption of the tablet has created an explosion in ebook publishing. Here is a list of new ecommerce titles, including books on marketing, social media, and email lists. Nearly all of the books are available in digital format, while only one is available in hardcover. One-third...
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Design & Development
25 Great Corporate Logos
March 9, 2012 • Drew Coffin
A company logo is often the face of the business. While logos come in a variety of styles, a strong logo will adhere to certain basic principles. Strong logos are unique, balanced, easily identifiable, simple to understand, and easy to read — if they include text. Logos should also be ...
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Schools & Resources
Managing a Design Project When You’re Not a Graphic Artist
March 5, 2012 • Drew Coffin
Ecommerce merchants wear many hats. One of them is designing graphics for their websites. In my experience as a freelance graphic artist, I've adopted steps to help me become efficient and productive for each graphic project. I've listed those steps, below, hoping they can help non-pr...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Luke van de Paverd of eCommerce Economy
March 2, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Jaime Brugueras of Mineful
February 24, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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User Experience
10 Innovative Ecommerce Sites
February 21, 2012 • Armando Roggio
What follows is my view of ten excellent ecommerce sites, each offering innovative ideas in navigation, images, and content marketing. The sites all use the Magento open-source platform, but the ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Stefan Schmidt of Hybris
February 14, 2012 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Design & Development
Optimizing Images to Reduce Load Times
February 10, 2012 • Drew Coffin
Not is only a site's load time factored into its search-engine rankings, the longer it takes to load the more likely it will lose visitors. A large percentage of bandwidth usage — especially for ecommerce sites — comes from images. As such, image size is an important component of a site...
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User Experience
4 Ways Tablets Could Affect Ecommerce Design, Marketing
February 7, 2012 • Armando Roggio
The meteoric rise in tablet computer sales could affect how online retailers market in 2012, including driving changes in site design, site features, content, and advertising. Global tablet computer shipments leapt to 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter of last year, setting new s...
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Schools & Resources
SVG Images: Sources to Download, Create
January 30, 2012 • Drew Coffin
In "SVG Images: What Merchants Need to Know," I explained the difference between raster and vector images and explained how SVG images use XML to generate perfectly scalable graphics. From that article, recall that raster images can accommodate many more color variations than vector, b...
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Design & Development
SVG Images: What Merchants Need to Know
January 17, 2012 • Drew Coffin
Many online merchants are unaware of the benefits of scalable vector graphics, or SVGs. This article will provide a basic overview. Vector vs. Raster Before looking at SVGs, we first need to understand what a “vector” graphic is. There are two types of web graphics: raster and vector....
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Design & Development
220 Million Top-Level Domains: A Breakdown
January 13, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) began accepting applications for new custom top-level domains (TLDs) on January 12. While the new TLDs are cost-prohibitive to small businesses — $185,000 each — the domain landscape is about to change dramatically. The applica...