Dive Site Photo by permanently scatterbrained

Continuing with the Impact of Design series, I’d like to introduce our new addition with a focus on the travel industry. The travel industry is dependent upon many other industries to stay afloat, including: food, transportation, entertainment, hospitality and more. Many cities wouldn’t have income coming in if we didn’t have the ability to travel. Since this is such a large area of business, I’d like to discuss how design can help make it successful online.

Key Points of Design Focus

Exciting & Engaging Design Elements

When your viewing a travel website, what draws you into it to begin with? The colors, the way the images make you feel, the great prices displayed prominently? These are just to name a few. Whatever your business draw may be, your graphics should follow suit.

Prague Castle photo by mcost

For example, let’s say your travel website is focused on offering luxury castle stays in Prague. Your main focus is luxury and elegance. With your graphics, you want to make the site feel elegant and luxurious, the same way you want your customers to feel when they visit your castle. Show the details of the rooms, what their dining experience might look like, and any other elements that scream luxury. Use rich colors that allow these luxurious elements to take center stage. When listing the pricing, since this is probably a costly stay, be sure not to bring too much attention to it, but making sure it isn’t tough to find either.

You might want to consider using a video that walks the user through a visitor’s experience at the castle. Allowing them an opportunity to see themselves at the castle.

Finding the right balance and what is most and least important can be key when engaging your visitors.

Evaluating the Competition

How does your travel offerings and presentation compare with the competition? Before starting or re-evaluating your travel website, it’s important to see what others are doing first. Then, decide how you can do it better and more effectively and what you can add that they don’t offer.

For example, let’s say Travel Company A has a really cool and engaging Flash application running within their website. It allows their customers to click on a map and highlights the best reasons to visit that particular destination. How can you take this idea and make it one step better? Maybe graphically it isn’t very engaging as it is functional. Maybe you decide to showcase the best things to see in each area by using photographs alone within map pop-ups? Taking one more step to engage and intrigue the customer might make your business more successful.

Websites

Online Booking

Many travel sites have very intuitive booking systems that allow you to quickly book your entire vacation online in the comfort of your own home. With the many options that vacation packages can bring to the table, it’s important to focus on the user’s experience when designing.

UI (User Interface) designers are specifically trained in improving a user’s experience by making the completion of one task as seamless as possible. With travel, there are quite a few options to take into account. If you are running a business, which offers vacation packages with transportation, lodging and activities there are quite a few combinations that could be put together. Making those choices fun, simple and engaging to sort through isn’t always easy.

A great solution would be to group options by the type of travelers you commonly encounter. Such as the budget-savvy traveler, the luxury traveler, the extreme adventurist, the water lover, etc. Intelligently grouping certain options will help guide your users through your website and make booking a vacation just as relaxing as being on it!

Here’s a great example of a website grouping unusual hotels by type:

If your UI and/or web designer is able to test the site within a focus group, take advantage of that. It’s important when planning out a large, complex site with many options to test the usability with those that might be in your target market. This way you’ll find any glaring complexities right away before time and money has been put building a confusing, hard-to-follow travel site.

Here are a few examples of Travel websites that utilize online grouping and booking systems effectively:

Online Booking | Royal Caribbean

Contiki Travel for Ages 18-35

Tablet Hotels | Hotel Search

Photography

Quality & Amount

When we’re talking about travel, most people want as many visuals as possible when they are spending their hard earned money on a vacation. When you haven’t been to a country before, you want to make sure it looks like a place you can see yourself enjoying. Keyword here is “see”. If you can only read about it, it probably won’t be nearly as appealing as a travel website who offers lots of visuals. This could cause your business to move elsewhere.

When you show photography, give a description of where and what is happening in the snapshot. The more information you can give your customers the better. Display photographs of many different parts of the area and even some of the local residential areas. This helps bring the area’s culture to the mix as well.

Food is also a great item to have on display. Many travelers look to try new cuisine and showcasing some of the region’s specialties could be a great crowd pleaser as well.

Up-to-date Photography

When your showcasing photography, make sure the photos are somewhat up-to-date. Many elements can alter an area’s appearances. You want to make sure your photographs are telling a truthful story and what they see is actually what they will get. Dating the photographs in the descriptions/captions might be a good way to be more upfront with your customers.

Email Marketing

Travel Promotions

During tough economic times, many consumers aren’t spending the money on vacations and extra, unnecessary purchases. A great way for your designer to help promote good value in the travel business is to design email promotions. Email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your customers and promote your services at a discounted rate.

Maybe you have a tough time selling trips to warm destinations during a particular time of year. Email is a great way to promote discounts easily and directly to your customers and design plays a big part in the success of these messages.

When consumers aren’t out searching for a specific destination, photography in emails can be a great way to put these areas on showcase. Make the destination look it’s best and explain why the special offer should be taken advantage of. Just because your customer’s aren’t visiting your site, doesn’t mean they aren’t dreaming of a vacation. Maybe they can’t afford it or aren’t sure where they can go on a few dollars.

Here is an example of a promotional travel email I recently received that I found to be well done.

Intriguing Email Design/Marketing | Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines | Click to View Whole Email

Use design to promote the offer in an exciting manner that is also optimized properly for email. A great tip for your designer is to use both HTML text and images as shown in the above example. This way, if you customer doesn’t have images enabled in their email provider’s inbox view, they will still be able to see the special offer, enticing them to show the images. If you only use images in the email design, the efforts might not be as effective in this situation. For more best email practices and examples check out Email Designs that Will Rock Your Inbox.

Travel Website Resources from Around the Web

10 Best Designed State Travel Sites

37 of the Best Web Designs from the Travel Industry

Top 10 Designed Travel Websites

More from The Impact of Design Series

The Impact of Design: Restaurant Business

The Impact of Design: Online Retail

Summer is almost here! To put you in a warmer, more colorful mood, I thought sharing some summer color palettes, photography & illustrations would help inspire brighter days! Whether your a designer, painter, photographer or metal smith you need some sort of inspiration to help you create stunning and innovative works of art this Summer.

Summer Color Palettes

Sunny Summer Photography

Back door bokeh by Richard0

Lake Powell by Wolfgang Staudt

Moth Caterpillar by Lukjonis

Orange Splash x2 by John Steven Fernandez

Chicory Flower by aussiegall

Old Summer Fun by Supagroova

Dunes by CharlotteSpeaks

Ice Cube in Tea by kevindooley

57 flavors of summer by Robert S. Donovan

Baby g by jonny2love

Illustrative Summer Colors

Russian Summer by Maria Khokhlova

See.Saw by L Filipe dos Santos | Illustration

Turn on the Bright Senses by Archan Nair | Illustration

White Spaces by Archan Nair | Illustration

Smells of Summer by Masha Levene | Painting

Summer by Nichlas Boysen | Illustration

Summer by Luis Afonso | Painting

The Puti Trees by Nod Young | Illustration

Places for Inspiration

• Behance Network
• Dribbble
• Colour Lovers
• doodleBug

Related Tid Bits

• 25 Beautifully Colorful Websites
• The Beautiful Outdoors: 50 Amazing Photos
• 50 Yellow Web Designs to Inspire You
• Anatomy of Colors in Web Design: Blue and the Cool Look

Articles on Sarah Lynn Design for Inspiration

• Down to Earth Art & Design Series Photography Pt I.
• Top 20 Illustration & Type-Based Websites
• Top 10 Designed Travel Websites

Have some Summer inspiration to share? Feel free to drop links to anything bright, vibrant & summery that might inspire something great!

Being someone who is passionate about my career, I thought I’d take an opportunity to take a look at April Bodenburg’s work, a young and inspired artist who also fits that description. I have to say I’ve never met anyone that has as much fun and shows as much spunk and energy about her work as April does. You can truly tell she loves what she does and it clear as day in her photographs.

I chose to highlight April for a few reasons. Mainly being that she is extremely talented for capturing the personality and emotion of particular moments. I feel as if her subjects don’t even know she’s there. It takes a certain person to capture candid moments that the couple usual only experiences without anyone watching, in front of a camera. But, April does just that, and does it with her own personal flare and light.

I took the liberty of asking April a few questions about herself and her work. She’s been in high demand as of late, but she was nice enough to squeeze me in!

About April

Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about your background.
I’m originally from the small town of Viroqua, WI where I grew up on a dairy farm. After graduating college with a Retail Merchandising degree, I worked in the retail industry for a few years. But with a downturn in the economy and an odd twist of fate, I found myself facing the challenge of taking what was once “something fun on the side” to a full-time business – and April Bodenburg Photography was born.

When did you start taking photos?
Well, I guess you could say I started when I got my first film camera as a little girl.  It was pink and purple and I loved it!  But that’s pretty cliche. Many photographer’s will tell you they started when they had their first child.  But I can’t use that one yet either.  So for me… I truly became passionate about photography when searching for my wedding photographer in early 2008.  There are loads of photographers out there that take ‘traditional’, ‘posed’ wedding photos.  But I’m not a ‘traditional’ person.  While searching TheKnot.com, I came across a wedding that had the most beautiful photos I’d ever seen.  I soon found they were taken by Jose Villa – a highly sought after fine art wedding photographer from Southern California.  And I was in love.  In love with the unique, photo journalistic, candid approach that was more about “capturing” a moment versus “creating” one.  I became so obsessed I decided to purchase a digital SLR of my own and see what happened.  I found a used, Canon 20D on eBay and did a LOT of researching how to use it.  That was August 2008.  Just over a year ago!  Since then I’ve purchased a second camera body (Canon 5D) and some various lenses.  I’ve discovered many more wedding photographer’s whose work I love, but Jose Villa is really the one that started it all for me.

Where is your favorite place to shoot?
I really love shooting in grassy fields and near old buildings like barns and wood-boarded sheds.  But I also LOVE when a couple (or family) suggests a spot to shoot that has meaning to them.  A park they frequent, a cafe they visit each weekend, etc, because it brings a significance to their images.

What do you do when you’re in a creative rut?
Having been at this for just over a year, I’m not sure I’ve been OUT of a rut. I’m still trying to find my way and my style – but I guess I would say I just keep trying new things, shooting at new angles, trying new techniques for post-processing, renting new lenses to shoot with. I think it’s all about changing things up and staying fresh to avoid ‘a rut’.

“Photography evokes emotion. Real, honest, pure.  It can re-create a moment in time.”

April’s Work

What is your favorite part of a photography shoot and why?
When the subjects ‘loosen up’.  It sounds funny, but I think everyone is a little awkward and uneasy when you first start the session – including the photographer!  I don’t like to overly direct my subjects – so I love when my subjects feel comfortable enough to just interact and allow me to capture them as they are…versus looking at me uncomfortably wondering where to look or what to do.

It takes a few minutes of interacting (and sometimes just acting like a fool in my case), to get everyone to ’shake off the awkwardness’ and just relax and have fun.    You can just tell when things change from stiff and ‘posed’ to natural and ‘real’ – and that’s my favorite part.

How would you describe your work to someone who has never seen it?
As a new photographer, this is something I’m still trying to define.  And I honestly don’t know yet.  It takes time to really create a a style – to create a body of work that causes someone to look at it and know exactly who took it.  It takes a lot of self-exploration to know who you are as a photographer and what kind of emotion you want to convey in your images….but I’m getting there.  As of right now, some words that describe what I’m trying to achieve are: natural, clean, modern yet elegant and real.

Here is a collection of photography from my recent adventure in Seattle. All photographs will be available soon on Flickr under the Creative Commons license. So feel free to share!

Photo by Pretty Plum Sugar

What will you need to help your online retail business’ design succeed?

Details

Show-off your products details, don’t be shy! Zoom in on important elements. Especially when your customers can’t physically hold the product. They want to see different angles and close-ups. If you can eat it, wear it, or you’ve got a big price tag, make sure and give your customers the full experience as if they were in your physical store.

Are there multiple colors and options per style? Show how they all will look and make sure they resemble the actual product! No customer likes to think they are buying a red sweater when its actually dark pink. Be upfront and clear with your customers.

Photo by Steven Fernandez

Photography is KEY

Zoom in on that special fabric or gold trim. Show your customers why your product should be their choice. Don’t skimp when it comes to your photography budget. It is VERY important. Keep the style you shoot in consistent across all mediums.

If your selling food products, make sure and present it in a flawless fashion. I came across a very talented food photographer a couple of weeks ago who’s been very friendly. Shawn Taylor’s photography is absolutely breathtaking and delicious! If you’re looking to hire someone to shoot your business’ products consider his talents. You can visit his website below with samples of his work.

Have a plan of your overall design before wandering off into photography land. Develop a color palette first, before signing up for a photography session. Try and incorporate those colors in elements surrounding your products, especially for a homepage hero image (feature image). This way your photography compliments the other design elements on your website. Bring it all together and give your online presence at boost!

Focus

What is your focus? Is their a particular characteristic that you’d like to draw your customers attention to?  Or do your products have such unique features that you’d like them to be the main focus? Say for example your selling bed linens and your using a highly specialized material to give your linens the softest touch. Maybe you’d focus on that particular material and how it makes your product stand out above the competition. Using soft subtle colors that emphasize this feature would help, especially if you’re product line is specialized like this. When working with a designer, have them explain to you their reasoning for the colors they’ve chosen. Make sure it coincides with what your main focus is.

Emotion

Recently I’ve seen many great examples of how you can bring some emotion and character to your online store. Even if you plan on using one of the many e-commerce platforms out there, it doesn’t have to look like it!

Here are a few sites I think have really got some personality

Mia & Maggie – Beautifully designed retail site with a clean & unique look. I really love how they’ve allowed their customers to upload pictures of their pups! Fun and personal, allowing them to really see who is using their products and/or wearing them.

Using Magento, a popular e-commerce platform, Mia & Maggie is able to utilize many different built-in features, such as product zoom capabilities. As I touched on earlier, it is important to allow your customers to really get in close with your products. This helps to show off the quality of the materials used, in this case maybe a dog collar?

Interested in seeing an example of how they combine their email campaign with the design of their website? Sign-up for their emails towards the bottom of the website.

DSW Shoes – Edgy, sleek and effectively designed! Check out their email campaign too! Very consistent design across all marketing elements.

A great marketing tool is a global header across the top of each page. This is the perfect place to include a promotion, sale, new product or any other element you think your customer has to know about.

I especially love how their designer/s utilize different sized images on the women’s, men’s and handbag pages. Even though they each have a similar layout, they really pop and all have the same appeal. Very well done!

Aveeno- This website focuses in on the natural and active ingredients found in Aveeno products. The colors are chosen to fit the product design as well as merge with the photography.

Even though they aren’t actually selling the products on this website, it offers details and highlights each product throughly. Since Aveeno is a high-end skin/hair care company, this route is appropriate.

Cross-selling is also very effective online. Give your customers related products when they are viewing a product detail page. Saying, “You might also like”… Imagery is also beneficial in this case to capture their attention to similar products. Aveeno does this very well and even allows you to choose the type of skin or hair you have and it shows multiple products that would be appropriate for you and why. Very functional and smart!

Ease of Use

Design isn’t only to brand and give your website a personality. It has to be functional and easy to understand to be successful too. There are hundreds of different options when it comes to online retail. That doesn’t mean you need to use every single one on your website to make it successful. When working with your designer, make sure there is a reason for each element on the site. If it doesn’t have a purpose, then you probably don’t need it!

“The less elements your customer has to muddle through the better.”

For example, I don’t normally like to point out downfalls on websites, but this one really gets to me! I think the Aveeno design is beautiful, effective and focused, yet when it comes to ease of use, it scores low. When clicking on the Aveeno baby tab in the top navigation, I waited for what felt like a century for the page to load. There was no loading symbol to give me a clue that something exciting was coming. This seems to be the case on many of the pages. Load time is extremely important! Be aware of this and make sure your programmers and designers test and optimize their images to decrease load time. Lots of large images, video and flash = a slow, unhappy website > will lead to visitors leaving instantly.

Another important element is the shopping cart. Try and minimize the amount of steps/hoops your customer has to travel through to purchase a product. Make sure each step is simple and un-cluttered. You want this process to be as painless and straight-forward as possible. Don’t try and be tricky to promote a particular payment method by making others less accessible. This can cause your customers to become irritated and leave without completing the purchase. Simplcity is always key. Here are a few great tips from the Web Design Depot 10 Tips to Design Usable Shopping Carts

Promotions

When doing some research into email campaigns, I came across this unique idea for an email sign-up. Often times businesses will send out both a text version and an image-based email. This is because many mobile devices don’t allow you to see imagery in your emails and/or when browsing the web (iPhone excluded). Urban Originals is asking which format you would prefer to view your email in, with images or without. I think this is a smart idea. Especially since the customer is requesting your information/products/promotions, it would be nice to give them the information in the way they would like to view it too! This would most likely increase sales and get the customers to look at your emails more often than not. Not everyone likes visuals over content, especially depending on what your trying to sell them.

Email is a great way to promote your online retail store. Once you’ve got your website designed, try applying the same look to your email program. It is a great and inexpensive way to connect with your customers. For more information on email campaigns take a look at my post: Direct Mail Options: Print vs. Email

Here is a great example of an email from DSW Shoes. They give the customer a benefit right away to why they are receiving their emails (double points). They also offer great reviews on their boots.

Looking for more great resources on retail design? Check out these other articles:

5 Tips and Tricks For An Effective eCommerce Site With 10 Brilliant Examples

12 Tips For Designing an Excellent Checkout Process

I’d like to introduce a new series of posts which will include: photography, logo design, painting + illustration all relating to the outdoors.

These photographers have shown an expert level of photography, incorporating the outdoors, a sense of emotion and brilliance to each piece.

Elizabeth Carmel

Carmel’s work is focused on expressive landscapes and waterscapes. Her style is one of a kind. A vivid sense of stillness can be felt while viewing many of her photographs. The color palettes she brings to life in these nature scenes, are absolutely stunning.

Carmel is one of 12 photographers worldwide to receive the  Hasselblad Master Photographer Award. She’s spent many years exploring the world and putting her own spin on nature.

Lake Tahoe by Elizabeth Carmel

Lake Tahoe by Elizabeth Carmel

Southwest by Elizabeth Carmel

Yosemite by Elizabeth Carmel

Why I find her work fascinating

+ She has the ability to create dialogue between the subjects in her photography, even though they feel completely still.
+ The clarity she brings to each color, drop of water and inch of sky is beyond recognition.
+ The depth and layers she captures with her outstanding technical skills bring a whole other level to the art of photography.

Launch Elizabeth Carmel’s Website to lay your eyes on some more stunning photography.

John Fiorucci

Recently featured in Communication Arts‘ Photography Annual, John Fiorucci’s photos have a lot to say. With an interest in psychology & the fine arts, Fiorucci’s work speaks for itself as you can see in the following photographs.

John Fiorucci, photographer Mike Mulik, art director Subtle Composites, retoucher Holmes & Lee, ad agency Reason Partners, client

John Fiorucci, photographer Mike Mulik, art director Subtle Composites, retoucher Holmes & Lee, ad agency Reason Partners, client

John Fiorucci, photographer Mike Mulik, art director Subtle Composites, retoucher Holmes & Lee, ad agency Reason Partners, client

“In the form of billboards, these images direct viewers to a Web site, reasonpartners.org, where they can learn more about how pollution and human behavior have affected wildlife habits and also how to get involved with the featured charities.” Communication Arts

Why I find his work fascinating

+ Concept driven work, not just a beautiful photograph.
+ Brilliant atmospheres & lighting on the featured subjects.

Launch John Fiorucci’s Website to lay your eyes on some more stunning photography.

Ville Miettinen

I came across Ville’s eye catching photography while on Flickr a few weeks back and couldn’t stop thinking about how vibrant and stunning his work was. Many of his shots are done in HD, which has been quite popular lately.

Ville Miettinen

Ville Miettinen

Ville Miettinen

Why I find his work fascinating

+Vivid colors and textures are accented in many of his shots.
+ Ville has an  incredible sense of depth-of-field and different perspectives – Out of the ordinary shots.

Visit Ville Miettinen’s Flicker Photostream