Category

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

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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
Design & Development
Creating Color Schemes for Web Design

January 5, 2012 • Drew Coffin

The color-concept terms I discussed in “Understanding Color Theory,” my previous article, will come in useful here while learning about color schemes in web design. First I am going ...
Design & Development
Understanding Color Theory

December 22, 2011 • Drew Coffin

Last month, I wrote about color psychology and its effect on emotions, in "Color Psychology and Online Marketing" and "Color Psychology Showcase." In this article, I am going to discuss color theory, including the terms that describe color. Understanding color theory is useful whether y...
Platforms & Apps
13 Timekeeping Apps for Small Businesses

December 21, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Time is a precious commodity, particularly for entrepreneurial small-business owners that have to manage it themselves. Whether for billing or keeping yourself accountable, there are a number of mobile apps to measure your time. Here is a list of mobile apps to manage time. There are t...
Platforms & Apps
10 Great Licensed Shopping Carts

December 19, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Licensed ecommerce platforms are often the most flexible and powerful "shopping carts" available to online retailers, but they can demand more in terms of expenses and development time. Licensed shopping carts — or, perhaps more accurately, ecommerce platforms — are hosted on a merchan...
Platforms & Apps
8 Great SaaS Shopping Carts

December 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce solutions allow small online retailers to open functional online stores with a minimum in capital expense. While there are many good SaaS shopping carts on the market in the end of 2011, here are eight carts that are among my personal favor...
Business
How to Secure a Domain Name in Different Countries

December 7, 2011 • PEC Staff

The notion of expanding an ecommerce business into additional countries is enticing for many merchants. Most every country, however, has its own top-level domain name. There's "co.uk" for the U.K., ".cn" for China, and ".fr" for France, as examples. Should merchants interested in t...
Schools & Resources
15 Schools for Ecommerce Degrees

December 5, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Online entrepreneurs typically learn their trade by trial and error. They also acquire skills through online courses — such as those at Practical eCommerce. But there are also bachelor and master degree programs that concentrate on ecommerce. Here is a list of degree programs that fo...
Design & Development
Color Psychology Showcase

November 29, 2011 • Drew Coffin

In “Color Psychology and Online Marketing,” I addressed how different colors and color combinations send different messages. In this article, I’ll list some sites that illustrate this principle. Red Collision Labs Collision Labs ...
Schools & Resources
12 Tech Review Sites for Small Businesses

November 22, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Technology product review sites can be a valuable resource for small businesses that need to make purchasing decisions. Sites offer expert and consumer opinions, as well as how-to information, competitive pricing locations, and the latest news on technology trends. Here is a list of t...
Design & Development
Selling on Multiple Devices: 7 Key Ecommerce Functions

November 21, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

This is the age of the always-connected customer. Having only an ecommerce website — accessible by a desktop or laptop computer — is not sufficient to maximize your sales. Today’s consumers use a variety of devices to research and purchase your products. A successful online business n...
Platforms & Apps
15 Mobile Apps for Holiday Shopping

November 17, 2011 • Sig Ueland

There are many mobile apps to assist consumers with holiday shopping. There are deals and rewards apps, price comparison apps, and to-do and shopping assistant apps. Here's a list of 15 mobile apps that assist consumers. Review these apps to see the mobile-shopping options your cus...
Schools & Resources
12 New QR Code Campaigns

November 15, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Quick Response (QR) codes continue to gain momentum in mobile commerce. As the holidays approach, a number of companies have launched QR code campaigns to boost sales, as well as promote worthy causes. Here is a list of new QR code campaigns. In addition to promoting mobile commerce, t...
Design & Development
Color Psychology and Online Marketing

November 14, 2011 • Drew Coffin

Colors and color combinations send different messages. Oftentimes for websites, colors intuitively create a mood or atmosphere. Color psychology takes this intuition and identifies common themes among certain colors. These color signals can be used to send stronger messages online. Col...
Platforms & Apps
7 Worthy Magento Extensions

November 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce merchants often add features and functions to their sites to increase sales and performance. In this article, you'll find seven worthy extensions for Magento — the ecommerce platform — that address common ecommerce-related tasks. Some of these work best with the free Magento ...
Schools & Resources
13 Sites to Answer Technology Questions

November 10, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Making a technology buying decision is difficult when you don’t understand the technology itself. You know that cloud computing has little to do with the weather, but beyond that you’re stumped. Where do you turn for answers? Here is a list of resources to get answers to your technolog...
Platforms & Apps
An Overview of Magento Go

November 7, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Magento Go is the software-as-a-service ecommerce platform from Magento, a leading open-source ecommerce solution. Magento Go may be an attractive choice for some online merchants. SaaS or hosted ecommerce platforms generally offer a few advantages for merchants. First, many of the he...
User Experience
Does SEO Conflict with User-Friendly Websites?

November 3, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google's so-called "Farmer/Panda" algorithm update rewards original, high-quality site content. Aggregators suffer under Panda, as do ecommerce merchants who rely on generic product descriptions that are not unique to their sites, or who offer poor content generally. We've addressed t...

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