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The ESRI Dev Summit 2010 hosted in Palms Springs CA is open for registration.

Posted by Al on Oct 30, 2009 in Dotnet  | View Original Article
 

My favorite conference/summit is now open for registration. If you are a developer in GIS or even just getting into mapping and location, this is a must go. You’ll find how to use the ESRI Silverlight SDK, Flex, JavaScript and the new iPhone SDK. So many developers for the Apple iPhone with great knowledge of Objective-C and Cocoa are waiting for the ESRI iPhone SDK that will provide you with all the ArcGis online maps and functionality  to create your applications.

Registration

What's Included

  • All scheduled sessions
  • Presummit seminars
  • ESRI Showcase
  • GIS Solutions EXPO and Social
  • DevSummit party
  • Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday’s continental breakfast, lunch, and beverage breaks

 

When?

March 22-25, 2010

From the official announcement

The DevSummit is your event, and you won't want to miss it. It's the place to get your voice heard and your hands dirty. Ask questions and get into meaty discussions. When it comes to using spatial technology in your applications, this is your ultimate resource for the year, where you'll learn exactly how to build and deploy critical, cutting-edge solutions in your job.

Are you a mapping or spatial application developer? A software architect interested in ArcGIS? Maybe you don't use ESRI software currently. Maybe you live halfway around the world from the California desert. It doesn't matter. You'll benefit greatly.

Need an excuse or to send an email to your boss?

Find all the information here.

 

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Connect Your Website With Facebook Using Mu JavaScript Library

Posted by W3Avenue Team on Oct 30, 2009 in Javascript  | View Original Article
 

Mu is a lightweight JavaScript library to use Facebook Connect on your site. It allows you to gain access to identity information (user’s name, photo, etc); social graph (user’s friends and connections); distribution (stream, and the ability to communicate); integration (publishers, canvas pages, profile boxes & tabs).

You can use Mu along with your favorite JavaScript library such as Dojo, jQuery, MooTools, Prototype or YUI. All files in the library are very well commented and you can find API documentation and examples on the website.

Developed by Naitik Shah; you can find further information, documentation, demos & download on Mu Website.

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Really Useful Tutorials You Should Have Read in October 2009

Posted by W3Avenue Team on Oct 30, 2009 in CSS, Javascript, PHP, Tutorials  | View Original Article
 

This update covers tutorials, how-to, screen casts, tips and techniques that you should have read in October 2009. Featured authors include: Marco Kuiper, Janko Jovanovic, Konstantin Kovshenin, Andrew Burgess, Tom Kenny, Joshua Johnson, Chris Coyier, Jonathan Snook, Jean-Baptiste Jung, Jeffrey Way, Dan Wellman, Tyler Denis, W. Jason Gilmore, Andrew Valums, Joel Reyes, Louis Lazaris, Kerasiotis Vasileios, Dustin Blake, Joel Reyes, Martin, Jeffrey, Bratu Sebastian, Schalk Neethling, Rich and Michael.

Featured Publications/Blogs include: Smashing Magazine, Nettuts+, CSS-Tricks, Six Revisions, Snook, Design Shack, Marcofolio, JankoAtWarpSpeed, Tutorialzine, MyInkBlog, Inspect Element, Build Internet, Andrew Valums, Kovshenin, DesignersMantra, Jeez Tech, Expansive Derivation, AEXT, THAT Agency, Activetuts+ and Get Objected.

So which articles you found most useful. Also feel free to recommend any article that we may have missed.

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My Twitter Lists

Posted by Davide on Oct 30, 2009 in CLoud Computing, Silver Light  | View Original Article
 

Twitter has just enabled a new feature named “Lists” which permits to organize in categories the people you are following and make their tweets available to others. In this way it’s very simple to navigate the various subjects, follow the lists created by other people and subscribe to them.

I’ve tried this new functionality and created my own lists about Silverlight-related stuff, feel free to subscribe here if you find useful:

http://twitter.com/davidezordan/lists

Happy Silverlighting!

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Book Review: Enterprise Service Bus

Posted by Jan Van Ryswyck on Oct 30, 2009 in Dotnet  | View Original Article
 

ESB About a year ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Kaizenconf in Austin. When I joined the discussions on ESB Patterns, Dru Sellers and Chris Patterson (also known as the MassTransit guys) were talking about this book called Enterprise Service Bus from David Chappell. I finally took the time to read it and for the most part it was a real eye opener. As you might have guessed, the book provides an architectural overview of the ESB concept. Although it does provide some amount of detail, there are no in depth discussions on any particular technologies. But after reading the book it is quite clear that the author comes more from a Java background. However this is not that important for a book like this as these concepts are technology agnostic anyway.

I must admit that getting through the first chapter, which tries to introduce the ESB, was not that easy. Too abstract and high level for my taste.

The second chapter is about the State of Integration and discusses how both business and technical drivers contributed to the ESB approach as opposed to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). One of the best parts in the book is the discussion about “Accidental Architecture” which is an accurate and far too familiar description of the current architecture in most companies. Although the book is approximately 5 years old, it is still very relevant as the adoption rate of ESB’s is still not that common. But then again, I could be wrong about this :-) .   

The third chapter examines the key concepts of an ESB were the author tries to prove that these are born out of necessity, based on real requirements and problems that couldn’t be solved with typical EAI broker architectures (like Biztalk for example).

Chapter 4 states that XML is the exchange format of choice for passing data structures between applications and services. Nothing new here.

Chapter 5 till 8 provide in dept information about each of the key concepts described in chapter 4, like Message Oriented Middleware (MOM), Service Containers and Endpoints, Routing, Transformation, Messaging, etc. …

Chapter 9 goes back to the real world by exploring the most common form of integration that is practiced today: bulk data transfer using ETL and an endless amount of small batch applications. Sounds familiar? This chapter also provides the necessary steps in order to migrate away from latency and reliability issues towards a real-time integration and how this affects your business.

Chapter 10 is a bit more technology focused as it talks about Java Components in an ESB. However, this could equally be .NET or any other platform.

For me, chapter 11 is a real masterpiece especially the part on Portal Server Integration patterns like Forward Cache and Federated Query. Highly recommended reading.

The final chapter discusses the WS-DeathStar (WS-*) specifications and what they could mean for an ESB.

In the end, I have a lot to think about after reading this book. It challenged a lot of my earlier assumptions on distributed computing and it certainly helped me understand a couple of things while I was exploring NServiceBus.

Till next time

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Web Typography: Font Embedding Services

Posted by vitaly on Oct 30, 2009 in Design & Graphics  | View Original Article
 


There are a lot of options out there for using other-than-websafe fonts in your website designs. Dynamic text replacement methods or resorting to very long fontstacks (where most of your visitors won’t see the font you wanted anyway) have long been the standard for using anything other than websafe fonts.

But the @font-face function changes all that. With most major, modern browsers now compatible with it, services are cropping up all over for providing the fonts you want to embed on your site without eating up your bandwidth and server space.

One of the biggest hurdles these services help to overcome is the licensing issues related to embedding certain fonts on your website. While many fonts (especially open source fonts) have licenses that allow for embedding, others strictly prohibit it. Webfont services work with the type foundries to provide fonts for embedding while also providing the security that foundries insist upon.

Currently, there are four such services available, though two (Typekit and Fontdeck) are still invite-only. Read on for more information about each.

1. Typekit

Typekit is invite-only at this point. You can sign up for updates on their website, and they’ll announce when it’s ready. But a lot of information is already available on their blog.

Typekit

From the looks of it, Typekit will have three available subscription options. The Trial service offers a pretty decent sized collection of fonts from foundries including Bitstream (Vera Sans), Bigelow & Holmes (Luxi Sans, Luxi Serif), Fonthead (Good Dog, Corn Dog, and others), Jason Kottke (Silkscreen) and others. The Personal-level service offers all of the trial fonts, plus fonts from Barry Schwartz (BonvenoCF, Goudy Bookletter 1911), Cathy Davies (Chemist, Chemist Rough), FRiTZe (Vollkorn), and Typodermic (Cardigan, Soap, and others) among plenty of other foundries. The Full Library option has all the fonts from the personal and trial libraries plus fonts from Betatype (Apertura, Pill Gothic 300mg, and others), Insigne Design (Montag, Carta Marina, Deinstag), and Paragraph (Galette, Mentone), among others. Overall, there are hundreds of fonts available.

Typekit works with virtually every major browser, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. While pricing has not yet been released, the trial version will be free to use.

Typekit Resources

First Impressions of Typekit
This post gives a great, first-hand account of what it’s like to use Typekit.

Examining Typekit
An excellent article that takes a look at the positives and negatives of using Typekit.

Getting Started with Typekit
An excellent introductory guide from Carsonified.

Type Sellers, Web Fonts, and Typekit
A great post from Nice Web Type that talks about @font-face in general and Typekit in particular.

Typekit Hopes to Become the YouTube of Fonts
An excellent article from Webmonkey about Typekit’s potential.

Typekit: Banishing Blight from the Browser
A pretty comprehensive look at Typekit from Linux Magazine.

2. Typotheque Web Fonts

Typotheque is a font foundry providing their own solution to the @font-face dilemma. Their service claims to work on 95% of browsers, and supports multiple languages.

Typotheque

One of the big advantages to this foundry-based service is that you pay for a single license for both print and web usage, and the license fee is a one-time payment. You can use the fonts you purchase on an unlimited number of domains, too, making it a potentially very cost-effective solution.

Of course, the big drawback to this is that you can only use it with Typotheques fonts. While they have some very nice fonts available, it’s a relatively small collection, with only eight distinct fonts (with multiple weights available for most of them). But, if their fonts fit your needs, then it’s a great solution.

Typotheque Resources

Testing Typotheque @font-face Embedding
A very thorough look at Typotheque from For a Beautiful Web.

Typotheque’s Web Fonts Rock, But Old Machines Can’t Learn New Type Tricks
A more critical look at Typotheque from Webmonkey.

Typotheque Web Font Service Demo
A video demonstration of Typotheque on Vimeo.

3. Kernest

Kernest takes a slightly different approach to the webfont service model. Basically, they let type designers and foundries submit their fonts under a variety of licensing options, and set the price for using that particular font on a per-site-per-year basis. They have a few dozen fonts currently available, from a variety of foundries. The preview functionality on the site is also really helpful, letting you try out fonts with text you input.

Kernest

Kernest works with all major web browsers, including Safari 3 and higher, Firefox 3.5 and up, Opera 10 and up, and Internet Explorer 4 and higher. It’s a pretty impressive list.

Usage is easy, with web designers only needing to choose the fonts, upload Kernest’s CSS Embed, update the site’s CSS tags, and refresh.

Font pricing varies widely on the site, with a lot of fonts available for free and others running in the $10-$20/year range (though some are more expensive). Depending on which fonts you want to use, it can be a very economical option.

Sites Using Kernest

While the other sites don’t yet have galleries of sites using their services, Kernest does. Below are a few sites taking advantage of their technology.

Parrot in the Tank

Thingelstad.com

The Kristina Gisors Blog

Kernest Resources

A Web Font Service For Real, a Sneak Peek at KernestA great look at how Kernest works, from Readable Web.

The Importance of Knowing Kernest: Pretty High. Your Move, Typekit.
A quick look at Kernest from someone who’s used both it and Typekit.

An Interview with Kernest’s Garrick Van Buren
An interview with the creator of Kernest.

Using New Fonts from Kernest on Blogger
A tutorial for using Kernest webfonts on Blogger blogs.

4. Fontdeck

Fontdeck is a webfont service developed by ClearLeft and OmniTI that’s still in private beta. You can sign up for updates on their website. There’s even less information available about Fontdeck than there is about Typekit.

Fontdeck

Of course, the fact that OmniTI will be handling the security aspects of Fontdeck means it’s more likely to get support from font foundries who may be wary or less-secure methods. Fontdeck will likely make guarantees as to the safety of the fonts it provides.

There’s no pricing information available yet for Fontdeck, or even information on how their pricing might be structured.

You can get updates on Fontdeck developments through their Twitter feed.

Advantages of Webfont Services

There are a number of advantages to using webfont services over dynamic text replacement (DTR) or other methods. The first is that these services work well for replacing the font of all the text on a page, not just your headlines. Converting all the text on a page using DTR is impractical due to the conversion time required. Webfont services don’t take any longer to load a page of text than they do to load a header.

Another huge advantage to using a webfont service is that it removes the sometimes-confusing and sticky legal issues involved with embedding fonts on the web. Many font foundries consider embedding fonts to be redistributing them, making it against their terms of service to use @font-face with their fonts. Considering how small most font foundries are (many are just one person), font piracy can be a huge burden for them. Most web services make security a top priority and do a lot to protect font foundries from having their fonts pirated.

The final big advantage to using a webfont service is that it saves your bandwidth. If you have a high traffic site, everyone downloading font files when your page loads can quickly use a lot of bandwidth. Font services host the fonts on their own servers, saving your bandwidth. Depending on your traffic figures and hosting plan, the money saved might even be enough to offset the cost of the service each year.

Further Resources

The Font-as-Service
A great post from i love typography comparing Typekit, Fontdeck and Typotheque.

The Direction Forward with Web Fonts
A post from Molecular Voices that covers a wide variety of web font options, including webfont services, standards, and proposals (like .webfont and ZOT).

Web Font Services Join Fray as .webfont Format Gains Support
A post from Ars Technica about webfont services and proposals.

The Future of Web Font Embedding
An older post from Clagnut on embedding webfonts.

Testing Web Fonts
An excellent post from movito about Typekit, Typotheque and WOFF.

About the author

Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing . She’s also the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

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Sneak Peek: Enhanced ASP.NET Themes DLL Performance

Posted by Mehul Harry (Developer Express) on Oct 30, 2009 in ASP.Net, Dotnet  | View Original Article
 

Another performance enhancement in the DXperience 2009 volume 3 release is use of the ASPxThemes DLL. Typically, the ASP.NET theme files are stored in your project’s App_Themes folder. With the DXperience 2009 volume 2 release, you have the advantage of using our ASPxThemes DLL [1] which packs the images and CSS files into one DLL.

Using the ASPxThemes DLL in the DXperience 2009 volume 3 release, results in reduced web server traffic because:

  1. Shorter resource URLs:
    • ASPxThemes DLL - '/grid93/DXR.axd?r=1_16' – (22 Characters)
    • App_Themes Folder - 'App_Themes/MyBlackGlass/Web/sprite.png'  - (38 Characters)
  2. The ASPxThemes DLL will compress the CSS files:

Table 1: Performance of App_Themes Folder vs ASPxThemes DLL    

Recommendation

We’re recommending that you use the ASPxThemes DLL. By default, the pre-packaged themes we provide will already be included in the ASPxThemes DLL. However, if you use custom ASP.NET Themes then put them in the ‘custom theme assembly’ before publishing your web site. And here’s how to do it:

S132599 - Provide a way to use custom ASP.NET Theme with New HTTP Handler for Resources

 

Your Feedback Is Appreciated

Drop me a line below with your thoughts and comments.

 

References:

[1] Custom ASP.NET Themes And The New ASP.NET Themes DLL by Mehul Harry

 

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is the .NET developer's secret weapon. Get full access to a complete suite of professional components that let you instantly drop in new features, designer styles and fast performance for your applications. Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

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Increasing Online Sales: Simple Usability Problems To Avoid

Posted by Kevin Holesh on Oct 30, 2009 in Design & Graphics  | View Original Article
 

  

When designing an online store, you have to consider many different types of customers: repeat customers, first-timers, people in a rush, etc. One thing that would help all of them is optimum usability. You can achieve this in a variety of ways, starting with eliminating the most common usability problems from your website. Fixing any one of the following eight common usability problems will get you started on the path to usability and user-experience heaven and, ultimately, more sales.

1. Hidden Search Box

A solid information architecture can do wonders for people who enjoy browsing, but some customers just want to find what they’re looking for, buy it and get out. These people are search dominant, and as soon as they land on your website, they will start searching. And if they can’t find your search box, they will leave. As simple as that.

Overstock.com has a giant search box at the top right of the homepage

A great example of a prominent search box is the one on Overstock.com. It is the second thing I notice on the home page because of its size, proximity to the top and dominant red border.

Imagine stopping at a grocery store on your way home from work to pick up some pine nuts for your world-famous pesto sauce. The nuts could be anywhere, so you decide to ask an employee for help. After a few minutes of looking around, you can’t find anyone who works there. So you leave frustrated and empty-handed. Would-be customers who can’t find somewhere to search your products feel the exact same way.

Get Satisfaction has a prominent search box with a hardly usable drop-down menu. The search box appears only on the front page.
Get Satisfaction has a prominent search box with a hardly usable drop-down menu. The search box appears only on the front page.

Also, make sure that the user can actually use the search functionality and will not be confused or irritated by design elements surrounding the search box. In the example above, Get Satisfaction has placed a search box above a video-block. Once the user types in a keyword, a drop-down menu appears below. However, this menu is hardly readable and is therefore quite confusing. Unfortunately, the search box appears only on the start page of the site which makes the search hardly usable. That’s not user-friendly.

How to Fix It

Make your search box more prominent, and keep it in a consistent location. It doesn’t have to be as big and dominant as Overstock’s, but visitors do commonly look for it in the top-right corner. Also make sure that the search box isn’t surrounded by elements that may affect its functionality. It concerns the search results page, too.

2. Unhelpful Search Results

This dovetails with the last point. Visitors who use the search box want to find what they’re looking for quickly. They are probably searching either for a specific product or for a specific feature of a product that may not be listed in the website’s main categories.

When you search ModCloth.com for 'blue,' it returns all things that are blue

When I search for “blue,” ModCloth does an excellent job of showing me items that are… well, blue! It sounds simple, until you notice that the word “blue” does not appear in any product names or descriptions. The website seems to have used some kind of witchcraft to magically retrieve only blue items. (In fact, it probably uses a tagging system, and when you search for “blue,” all of the products with that tag are displayed… but still!)

How To Fix It

Support common misspellings. Example: See how Google does it.

Google checks my spelling for me and links to the correct spelling.

Make the “Zero results” page clear, and suggest alternative search terms. Example: eBay not only suggests that I rephrase my search but guides me with examples.

eBay suggests that I remove some keywords to broaden the search.

Unhelpful search results are usually fixed with back-end magic. This can be a tricky job and usually calls for a custom solution. You can start by looking at your search log to see what people are searching for. The terms that need the most improvement will be the ones that consistently turn up in that log.

3. Not Enough Products On Each Listing Page

The goal of any online store is to sell as many products as possible, and a great way to increase sales is to get visitors to look at more products during each visit. When you are in a grocery store, you have the freedom to look at as many items as you want with few barriers (the main one being how fast you can skip down the aisles behind a cart).

We lose that freedom when shopping online. We come up against this foreign concept of “pages.” We can look at only one of them at a time, and to get to the next one we have to click on a “Next page” link. That means more work for your visitors, so make it easier for them by displaying more products at a time. This reduces the “Next page” barrier and encourages them to browse more.

You don’t want to overload visitors with too many products. Adding more products to each page is like making the aisles in a grocery store longer. You don’t want to trap your customers in an aisle as long as a football field.

How to Fix It

Add more products to each page, but consider the nature of your products before blindly increasing the number of products. Are your products visual? Or technical in nature?

Search results for 'beach' on iStockPhoto.com

When you search iStockPhoto for “beach,” the results are almost 100% visual, which shrinks the gap between browsing and purchasing. Not much thought goes into comparing products once you’ve scanned an image. If your products are highly visual, then the more you put on the page, the better. Anywhere between 50 and 100 is ideal.

BestBuy.com's search results for cameras

On the other hand, if your products require technical explanation, limiting the products to about 15–20 per page is best. On Best Buy, customers can compare cameras without feeling overwhelmed or getting lost in a sea of megapixels and LCD screen sizes.

4. Small Pagination Links

Make your pagination links more usable by increasing the clickable area. This lowers the barrier between pages that we talked about above and encourages visitors to view more products.

Overstock's phony pagination links

The pagination link above appears to have a large clickable area, but only the small oddly positioned blue box is actually clickable. This confuses visitors and makes the navigation more difficult. Consequently, readers have to think about positioning the mouse properly which has a negative effect on overall user experience.

Flickr's well done pagination has padded links and incorporates the blue and red color scheme from its logo

The best example of pagination links I’ve come across is Flickr’s. Though not an online store, the same concept applies. These links have a large clickable area, clearly marked by the gray border. They also reinforce Flickr’s brand by using the logo colors to let viewers know what page they are on and which elements can be clicked.

How to Fix It

Increasing the clickable area of your page links is as easy as adding one line to your CSS: 

.pagination a { padding: 4px; }

As a bare-bones usability test, visit your website on an iPhone, and try to click each pagination link with your thumb. If you can’t do it, you probably have to give the link some breathing room by adding more padding.

5. Non-descriptive Product Page Links

When your customers send each other links to your product pages, they should be able to tell what the product is even before clicking on the link.

What I mean are links like http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=5540041; if you get that link an e-mail, you would have no idea what the product would be. A much more user-friendly URL would be http://www.ecrater.com/products/kodak-slide-projector. Being able to see the product name gives potential customers an incentive to click on the link.

Friendly URLs improve your search engine ranking because they give search engines more information about what is on the page. If a customer is searching for a chrome faucet that you happen to sell on your state-of-the-art faucet website, which URL would they be more likely to click on:

Google result showing URL of www.rensup.com/Products/Cat-442.htm

or

Google result showing URL of dornob.com/futuristic-fixture-chrome-faucet-head-handle-design/

Amazon does a great job of using customer-friendly URLs for its products. Take this typical product page link as an example:

http://www.amazon.com/Crush-Time-Cash-Your-Passion/dp/0061914177/

The book title comes right after amazon.com. This helps visitors confirm that they’re on the right page by glancing at the URL, and it helps potential customers share links with each other. Amazon URLs would be even more user-friendly without the gibberish at the end. But the company still does an amazing job, given their product catalog of hundreds of thousands of unique products.

How To Fix It

Add product titles to the beginnings of your links, using URL-friendly strings such as Crush-Time-Cash-Your-Passion.

6. Forcing Registration For Purchases

When a customer wants to buy a product from you, by all means get out of the way. They want to fork over their hard-earned cash!

One way to get in their way is by requiring them to register an account before purchasing anything. This is commonly done to keep track of purchasing details and make it more convenient for customers to make future purchases. This is all well and good, until you realize that this is a significant barrier between the customer and check-out page. The home stretch is the absolute worst place to give the customer a reason to abandon their cart.

Don’t believe me? Read how Amazon increased its sales by $300 million (yes, 300,000,000 dollars) simply by changing one button in its checkout process.

How to Fix It

Instead of forcing potential customers to register during the check-out process, sell them on the benefits of registration. Highlighting the convenience, increased security and fraud detection can convince them to do it. But leave the choice to the customer.

7. Ads Throughout The Store

Displaying ads in your online store tells the customer that you’re trying to squeeze every cent possible from them. Ads detract from the goal of your store, which is to get customers to buy products they want.

Buy.com has flashy animated ads that distract from their product offerings

When I first land on Buy.com’s camera page, the first thing I see isn’t the camera listings, but the flashy animated ad for the Sidekick. Ignoring the ad and focusing on the cameras is not easy. I came here to buy a camera, and it gets in the way.

Overstock.com actually displays ads for competitors on the same page it sells its products

It turns out that some sites actually link to its biggest competitors right in its search results. Imagine if your shop were a physical store. Would you let your competitors advertise their cameras right beside where you are selling your products? By putting ads on its website, you would be doing exactly that.

Don’t confuse this with cross-promotion, which is selling ancillary items from your own store based on what the customer is looking at. Ads don’t drive your own sales but rather drive customers to your competitors while adding a measly 5 or 10 cents to your bottom line.

8. No Notice of Out-of-Stock Items

If a customer pays for a product only to find out later that it is on back order, they won’t be happy. They will either cancel their order or contact customer support to complain. Neglecting to notify customers that an item is out of stock is a customer service problem and makes for a poor user experience.

How to Fix It

Be up front with visitors. Tell them about your inventory level so that they can factor that into their decision.

Even on the product listing page at ModCloth.com I'm notified of a low stock level

ModCloth immediately tells visitors on its product listing page about the current inventory level. If an item is out of stock, the friendly orange (and not harsh red) text tells me right away. If inventory is low, I’m warned that only a certain number of items are left, in this case four. This nudges me to be snappy about my decision but doesn’t stress me out either. If the message had said, “Our stock will be out in 19 minutes,” I would feel like I’m diffusing a bomb on Mission Impossible. You have no reason to panic your customers.

ModCloth.com displays a bubble immediately attracting my attention to tell me the product is out of stock

ModCloth also tells me on each product page whether an item is sold out. It is the first thing I see when I land, so I know about the stock right away. ModCloth’s user experience designers get bonus points for letting me quickly add my name to a list to be notified when the item is back in stock. While I may be upset that the red dress I want is out of stock, I’m quickly appeased by the friendly and helpful messages on the page.

Summary

The goal of user interface design is to make a website easier for visitors to use. For online stores, fixing problems brings in more visitors who browse more products for a longer period of time. Even simple fixes, like not requiring registration for purchases, can have a huge effect on your bottom line. Keep these common problems in mind the next time you design an online store. Your customers will thank you for it.

Related Posts

About the Author

Kevin Holesh has a passion for everything Web development (HTML, wireframes, Ruby on Rails, you name it). He runs I Love Usability, a website about rock-solid usability and stunning user experiences.

(vf), (al)

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Microsoft DRM part 2

Posted by Tom Barker on Oct 30, 2009 in Flex  | View Original Article
  In my previous article I talked about setting up an installation of Microsoft DRM, and some of the pitfalls encountered with the base set up. In this article I will detail how I refined that process. As I described previously,...

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