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I often get questions from folks who are planning to launch a retail or e-commerce site. Oddly, most of the time they aren’t asking me about marketing or back end scripting options, but rather layout and design questions.
I’m by no means a web design expert, but there is an art to good layout presentation when dealing with a retail store site and do believe I’m pretty good with this. Since my background is in offline retail and I spent over 12 years managing everything from small specialty stores to high-volume discount outlets; and I apply a lot of what I learned in that time to my work online today.
Still, I think the easiest and best way to explain something is by example, so I’m going to use a rubber stamp and custom rubber stamps retailer that I know of and like which recently updated their site because in my mind they have the perfect balance of appealing and functional presentation for their products. www.rubberstampchamp.com
I’m not going to go in-depth on every aspect of the layout, but just notice how they use large product images on the main page as sign-posts to their category pages, which again use large product images for the individual items. People, especially online, are very visual and the use of clear graphics to grab visitor’s attention and make it easy to navigate the site is perfect. Plus, they’ve avoided using flashing or animated graphics which typically go too far and annoy visitors.
If you look at an individual product page you’ll find they give the basic details, again with a large product image, and make placing an order very easy for the visitor. This is crucial in my mind on a retail site and where a lot seem to mess up. You don’t need to “sell” the product at this point because someone on your product page has already made the effort to find it and likely has their credit card out and ready. Now they just want the basic facts to know this product will meet their needs, and an easy path to getting it–and that’s what the product pages on this site provide.
So, if you’re planning to start a retail or e-commerce site at some point www.rubberstampchamp.com is a good layout to model it from in my opinion, and it’s also a great place to pick up rubber stamps for your office too.
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