Currently at Sarah Lynn Design, we are beginning a new web project in the medical field. Each project begins with research and getting to know the business we are working with, whether it is the client directly or closely related. It’s important to see what the competition is up to and find ways to do it better. Here are some examples of successful websites in the healthcare industry. Including hospitals, medical schools, optometrists, veterinarians and more.

These sites were chosen based on their creativity, organization, typography, spacial relationships, and whether or not they were appropriate for their industry and expertise. Enjoy!

University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Aurora Health Care

Aurora Health Care

Columbia St. Mary’s

Columbia St. Mary's

St. Vincent Hospital

St. Vincent Hospital

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood

St. Francis Hospital

St. Francis Hospital

Kansas Heart Hospital

Kansas Heart Hospital

Mount Sinai Medical Center

Mount Sinai Medical Center

Seattle Children’s Hospital

Seattle Children's Hospital

Children’s Hospital of Richmond

Children's Hospital of Richmond

Family Eye Care

Family Eye Care

Laser Eye Center

Laser Eye Center

Florida Hospital Cancer Institute

Florida Hospital Cancer Institute

Saint Anthony Hospital

Saint Anthony Hospital

Legacy Health

Legacy Health

Oregon Health & Science University

Oregon Health & Science University

Dove Lewis

Dove Lewis

Banfield | The Pet Hospital

Banfield | The Pet Hospital

Firehouse

Firehouse Animal Health Center

Carondelet Health Network

Carondelet Health Network

Feel free to add any sites you’ve seen that fit the bill in your comments below!

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!

Give your customers what they expect, when it comes to making their way around your website. With so many online shopping options, customers don’t have to put up with confusing navigation or unintuitive shopping carts. Make sure you’re guiding your customer in the right direction and not causing them to leave your site.

“What does color have to do with it? Everything.”

Some of the most successful retailers use color to help guide their customers through their site. Where do you want your customer to look when they are ready to checkout? Make sure they are looking in the right place by adding color in the correct places. Using colored buttons and contrasting colors in your website’s navigation can dramatically help your user’s customer experience. The same way aisle signs and section banners in a retail store guide customers.

Using Color to Guide Your Customers

Let’s take a look at some examples of how color is used by some of the most successful online retailers on the market today.

Amazon Usability & Color

Amazon, known for their incredibly smart and user friendly shopping experience, uses different colors to gauge the importance of their buttons. As you can see both add to cart buttons are designed to appear brighter and more saturated in color than the add to wish list and baby registry buttons right below. Also notice the blue coloring behind this extremely important panel of options. Not only do the buttons guide the eye in this area because of their contrasting colors, but the blue background helps to break-up the white space and pull the customer’s eye to the right as well.

You’ll also notice in the upper left-hand corner, shop all departments is given a bright orange color. When on any other page besides their homepage, the navigation collapses to make way for a more narrowed list of search results, based on the section of the store you’ve chosen. Amazon wants to make sure their customers are aware that their main shopping categories are still available and easily found when collapsed.

Cafe Press Usability & Color

Cafe Press does an excellent job utilizing color where they want their customers to take action. With a minimalist design style, the other, less important links are presented in subdued colors allowing for less confusion and overwhelming feelings from visitors.

Buy.com Usability & Color

Buy.com follows suit with Cafe Press and allows their products to stand out on their own with a minimalist style of design. Again, green is used for the most important elements on the page. If you look at the print this page, email a friend and add to wishlist buttons, they are a lighter shade of blue and less saturated than the add to cart button above. Usability design is extremely important when it comes to getting a customer to checkout. Your customer should have no problem finding their shopping cart and adding an item to it.

“If the checkout buttons are not visible to the shoppers or they do not stand out in some way from the rest of the page, you will have a difficult time converting many of your shoppers to buyers.”

-eCommerce Optimization

L.L. Bean Signature Usability & Color

L.L. Bean Signature Usability & Color

The L.L. Bean Signature site has an excellent overall design. They use the color orange to showcase when their customer’s should make an action. In the examples above, It is important to keep the color consistent throughout the site as customers will eventually become accustomed to orange and what the color is associated with.

The North Face Usability & Color

Navigating through the North Face website is like riding a bike with training wheels. There are always three ways to know what page you’re on, made apparent by the color red, large fonts and the use of effective bulleting and overly large bread crumbs. Similar to the other examples, only one color is used to represent the shopping cart related actions.

Eddie Bauer Usability Design

Eddie Bauer (above) and First Ascent (below) use color to highlight the background of the active page the user is on. Eddie Bauer also is using color to highlight the active page in yellow. The more consistent you can be with your color choices, the easier it will be for your customer to shop!

First Ascent Usability & Color

Usability Takeaways

• Always give your customers a clear indication of where they are on your website. Color is a great way to do this.

• Make sure there is some differentiation between common buttons and buttons that have specific actions (IE. shopping cart functions).

• Choose one color to use to assist in guiding your customer. This way they know what to expect.

• Use more than one option to show your customer where they are (IE. breadcrumbs, color highlighting and large title headers)

Design Usability Resources

• 10 Principles Of Navigation Design And Why Quality Navigation Is So Critical
• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

There is only one key ingredient in any design that will hold it together, make it rise and make it deliver what it is supposed to. Whether the design is for the web, a book cover or a simple business card, there is one piece to the puzzle that must be present for the design to be successful. What is it you ask?

When reading through the many design blogs and books out there today, you’ll find showcases of beautiful designs, tutorials on how to make or use a specific design program, what certain colors mean and where they should be used and many more things. But no matter how much you learn, there is still only one element that truly matters. Designers must ask themselves one question:

Is the design appropriate for the target customer?

The website or brochure may be designed with the most stunning colors, stylish fonts, and newest trends. But this doesn’t mean it’s great design or appropriate for your viewers. There are certain trends that are age, industry and location appropriate. Simply because you are utilizing them doesn’t mean the design will be successful.

What to Consider When Designing for a Specific Target Market

How will the product or service improve the customer’s life?

Whether you’re selling food, a new tie or a trip to Europe you have to showcase the reasons to why the customer would want any of these items. You’re not going to reach the customer by relying on a slick navigation, pretty pictures and an easy to use shopping cart. There needs to be a clear reason why they need or will benefit from the product or service. Design is a great way to guide the customer through the reasons why, in a particular order or way.

Product Example

Photo by Aaron Alexander

Say for example your selling a new tie. Why would someone want to purchase that specific tie over another? Maybe you’re showing imagery of a man wearing the tie on his wedding day. So what? That man looks great in that tie, but so does every other man that happens to be photographed with a fancy tie. What makes this tie any better?

Maybe the tie is made of special material that is meant to feel comfortable and breathable during high-stress occasions like a wedding. A good way to connect with the customer through the design knowing this detail is by increasing the size of the text and overlay it onto the photograph. Not only will the “pretty” photograph pull your customer’s attention into the page, but the large text with the tie’s fabric benefits will give the customer a reason to buy that tie over another. Highlighting specific details can really improve a designs overall success rate. And yes, it can be as simple as pulling out a product detail that already exists.

The key with products are to avoid leaving beneficial details to waste. Bring out the little details, especially when you’re selling something as common as a tie. Once your able to focus in on the benefits, use colors and other design elements to bring the viewers eye even more towards these little details.

Service Example

Photo by Alberto P Veiga

In this example, let’s say a travel company’s website is selling a trip to Europe. The client wants to push the ultimate travel package versus the basic travel package. How will the design help sell more ultimate packages for this client? A solution for this scenario could be to compare each package side-by-side without price involved, graphically. Highlight the ultimate package and the details that would make that choice better than the others. Show a video/written testimonial of a customer who has chosen this package in the past and why they liked it. Customer reviews are proven to be more beneficial and trusted by viewers than company recommendations alone.

Customer Review Focus

Customer reviews are becoming more and more common to online businesses. As a business owner, you should be aware of Google’s SideWiki. It allows customers to write their own reviews on any website and publish it. When another customer visits the website with a SideWiki, they can then see those reviews made by other visitors on the SideWiki. The power is in the customer’s hands. This technology may not be utilized by very many customers today, but it is important to be on the lookout for similar releases & technologies that will give customers the upper-hand on your websites. The last thing you want is a customer complaint shown to all your potential customers.

Checkout this useful article reviewing the SideWiki:

Google’s SideWiki Shifts Power To Consumers –Away From Corporate Websites

The target market in this travel example is likely a customer that has a mid to high income level and could afford a premium travel package. If the targeted customer was of a lower income bracket, the design would be entirely different. Maybe the company would be trying to sell travel packages during a non-peak season to Europe. You might highlight the discounted price with a sale burst or a bolded tag-line saying “Now you can visit Europe too, for half the price.” Instead of comparing special vacation packages, you are emphasizing with the design the urgency of traveling now and the benefit of saving money and being able to afford a trip.

The key is to pull out the details that are most important to highlight within the design. This takes both efforts of the designer and the business owner/project manager.

Tip for Designers: Most clients aren’t going to offer up all the details you need to know to target their specific market. Chances are you’re going to have to dig deep and ask! Your clients are the experts of their market. Is the business a start-up? Maybe you can do some research as well to help your client pull out essential details they might be missing. Show them you want the design to help improve their business.

Tip for Business Owners: To end up with a successful design for whatever you happen to be selling or showcasing, it is important to open up communication as much as possible with your designer. Make sure they know your end goals and your target market. Also make sure to give them the details you want to highlight or what is most important about your promoted products and/or services. Not sure what else to prepare? Read ” What to Prepare Before Hiring a Web Designer“.

Share your Expertise…

Designers: In what ways have you used design to successfully target a specific market?

Business Owners: How has design help to improve your business? What reports or analysis have you put in place to track the success of the design on your website? (if applicable)

Photo by lotyloty

What should you prepare prior to contacting a design and/or web developer? Having most if not all of these items listed below will greatly increase the success of you website. There are many areas that should be planned out before setting foot into the design. If you don’t plan ahead, chances are you’ll have trouble down the road when you decide you want to add pages, reach specific business goals, edit content to improve your SEO and much more.

Phase I: The Basics

Marketing Plan
What is your target market? Who are you trying to reach with your new website? Do they even have internet access readily available to them? These are a few of the many questions you should be asking yourself/team before even considering talking to a designer. You’ll want to make sure you can answer everything you possibly can about your potential customer.

Questions to Consider

• Why would your customer want to use your website? How will it aid them with making a purchase or using your services?
• Is your customer web-savvy? Will they understand how to use your site easily and efficiently? Consider interactive elements and hiring a designer that is competent in user interface design to make sure the site is easy to use.
• How do you plan to market your website to your customers? (Consider: Email marketing, PPC  advertising, affiliates, television, print and direct mail pieces, product packaging)

Web Hosting
Is your business able to host the website on your own servers? Will your designer be able to setup hosting for you? This is a great question to ask your potential designer. It’s good to be open to suggestions, as certain hosts provide different things that could be more beneficial to your website.

Site Goals
What goals do you want your website to achieve for your business? Think of goals you can measure. IE: I want to bring “x” number of visitors to my site by the end of 6 months. I hope to bring in “x” amount of dollars from my website after one year.

If you’ve already got a website, re-design goals are also great to have ready for your designer. Solving your current site’s limitations are what designers are here to do for you!

Style, Color & Other Design Elements
You’re probably thinking, “Isn’t it the designer’s job to figure out all of those elements?” Yes and no. It’s good to go into a discussion having some idea of what you’re looking for. Whether you know a few things or a lot about developing a website, you should know what style of design appeals to you and more importantly, your customers.

Not sure where to look? Here are some great web design showcases to help you along

• 35 Beautiful E-Commerce Websites
• Delish! 30 Successfully Designed Food Websites
• Top 20 Illustration & Type-Based Websites
• Checking in Hotel Web Design: 50 Cosy Hotel Websites and Trends

Budget
How much money do you have available to spend on your website? This can be a large factor in what you’re able to have developed on your new site. Always remember, the more functionality to a website, the more time involved and the more it will cost you. A professional developed website can cost thousands of dollars.

What elements are necessary to have? Which ones can you live without? Make sure you know what you are able to put into it without getting too far along and have to cut back on essential elements. Discuss your budget right away with your designer (Even though I’m sure they’ll ask right off the bat).

• Interested in a project quote? Submit your project details on our project quote page.

Phase II: The Content

What ideas do you want to drive home to your customer? Are they essential to your business’s success? Who is going to prepare the content for the website? Do you have a copywriter or should you consider hiring someone to help with this aspect of the site?

SEO Planning & Copywriting
The content of your website deserves plenty of attention. You’ll also want to consider SEO (search engine optimization) when developing the content for your site. An SEO advisor can help you target keywords that will help improve your search ranking when a potential customer searches for you or a keyword (product/service you might offer). These keywords should be found in your site’s content as much as possible. It’s important to think about SEO before building a site as the URL structure can play a large role.  Not everything can be done prior to contacting a designer, but consider having a rough plan for your copywriting and SEO.

SEO & Copywriting Resources

• Beginners Guide to SEO
• Ways to Increase Traffic
• 11 Best Practices for URLs
• Copywriting 101: An introduction to effective copywriting
• How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content

Page Layout
Consider the different pages you’d like to have on your website. How many will you need to have? Can you combine pages to make the navigation as simple as possible? Will you need to add more pages on in the future? These are all great items to think about when planning out the pages of your new site.

Special Features
Do you want to incorporate a shopping cart feature on your website? Do you plan on having a blog section so you can connect with your customers and share knowledge on the topics that affect your business?

There are many special features that you can add to make your site more dynamic and engaging. Many of them can dramatically make a difference on the way your site is built, what technology it uses, and the cost of the site.

• Shopping Carts & Online Stores
• Product Reviews & Customer Testimonials
• Blogs
• Forums & Discussion Boards
• Email Subscriptions
  

Phase III: The Future

CMS (Content Management System)
If you’re going to have an interactive website in which the content is updated regularly, you’ll want to consider a CMS. This will allow you to easily manage your website and make changes to it when necessary. Most websites nowadays have a CMS unless the changes to the site are minimal. This can increase the cost of a website somewhat, but is necessary to improve your user’s experience. The more often you’re changing your content, the more you’re users will want to visit your website.

CMS Examples:

• Magento Ecommerce Platform – A popular CMS option for online retailers
• WordPress – Publishing platform which caters to bloggers. A robust & free CMS option
• Joomla – A popular CMS for websites of all sizes

Goals for the Future
Do you plan on adding pages to your website in the future? Who is going to manage your website’s content? The fastest way to lose your viewer’s interest is by leaving your website by the way-side. Have a plan for the future. Make sure your keeping your site’s content fresh and giving users a reason to visit it on a consistent basis.

Sarah Lynn Design offers website management packages as well as copywriting, SEO, and business marketing to help you get your planning started. Check out everything we can offer you to help you business succeed on the web.

• Sarah Lynn Design Services

Email design is a very important part of any email campaign – if not the most important. Where certain elements are placed, which offers are presented and what imagery is used can all be huge influencing factors in how your email campaign is going to perform. Over the past two months I’ve rounded up a few email designs. Here are a few I’ve found are most successful and why.

Cater to your customer's curiosity.

Cater to your Customer’s Curiosity

The Banana Republic does an excellent job offering up a mystery amount of savings. This idea is a great way to get customers to click on the email and bring them to the website where they can then be enticed by more products and their awaiting offer. What I found somewhat clever as well was the fact that you didn’t see what the offer was until you found your items, proceeded to the checkout and then entered the promotion code in. In theory this idea is great because it gets the consumer to look at the different items and get as far as entering in their billing information. But, it could be frustrating to the customer who isn’t  looking to purchase, but is soley enticed by the awaiting offer.

I also thought it was smart to show the customer what they might be saving on their purchase. A chance at 500 dollars at their favorite retail store is a great way to bring the customer to your website.

Come up with a catchy, clever idea to entice your customers! Everyone loves cupcakes.

Clever Concept

This email made me laugh which in turn got me to send it along to other people. Simply put, a clever concept is going to help your email campaign tremendously. Having a plan before creating an email will show your customers you really do have something special to show them. Give them a reason to sign-up for your emails.

Details are very important to any type of design. I especially love how this marketing team took the name of each panty and turned it into a frosting to bring the whole concept together. Great work! This naming technique not only is cute and playful, but it also gives the product more personality. They are no longer just free lacy underwear.

Always a great idea to remind you customers that there great deals are ending soon

Email Reminders

Borders consistently reminds their customers about sale deadlines that are approaching. With the many things happening in your daily life along with the list of emails that need replies,  chances are, you probably won’t remember that great deal you saw while sipping your morning coffee. We all need reminders, and this is a great way to put some urgency behind the offer as well.

Valuable tips and product details are key.

Content is King

Length isn’t a factor anymore when it comes to email design. Many users are used to scrolling on websites and the same is true for emails. So give your customers something worth reading. Tell them about your products likes Aveda does in the example above. Why should they click through to your website? What can you offer them that can improve their life and make them look forward to hearing from you? Retailers walk a fine-line between spamming and providing valuable information to their customers. Which side of the line are you on? Make sure your putting some thought behind your email campaigns. Customers want to know why your products are better than your competition. Tell them why.

Show examples of sale product, while focusing on percentages off.

Sale Product Focus

When promoting your sale items, prove to your customer that your sale items do in fact offer value.  A good offer drives this example from PetSmart and follows with many different items that might appeal to various pet owners. And even better, they are all on sale. More often than not I see sale emails with the top percentage off and no sale items featured. When you think sale items, what immediately comes to mind? Unwanted items. Products that are overstocked and are not selling as well as you’ve expected them to. The goal is to make these items seem more appealing and to at least showcase products, rather than solely a top percentage off. If your customers don’t see a few of the products offered on sale they won’t feel as much of an urgency to visit your site.

Certain customers who don’t have much money to spend are still going to be looking for items on sale. With this in mind, you will see results when simply using a percentage off. But, to reach a larger customer base, using both products and a percentage (like this example) will boost clicks even more.

Appeal to your customers senses! Yum!

Sensory Tactics

If your business sells food products keep these key elements in mind when emailing your customers. Visuals are key when it comes to food. If it looks good, there’s a good chance it tastes great too! Cold Stone does a great job of highlighting the interior of their fudge brownie ice cream cake which adds to the overall appeal of their product and brand name.

Photography is key when appealing to your customer’s senses. You want your product to look it’s best and highlight it’s tastiest features. Descriptions of the product are also important, especially if the key ingredients aren’t visible. This could include organic and natural products or special ingredients only available from your company for example.

Cold Stone also does a great job of connecting delicious product with their gift cards for the holidays. Do take advantage of holidays. Customers expect promotions and deals during certain times of the year. Give them what they are looking for otherwise your competition is going step-up and give them discounts when you are not. Pay attention to the competition as much as possible. Sign-up for their emails and see what they are doing.

More Great Email Marketing & Design Resources

20 Email Design Best Practices and Resources for Beginners

Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Now that the end of the year has hit, many salary reports are showing up on the scene. Here are a few summaries and links to great statistics and graphs.

The Six New Realities of Creative Work in 2009 from Coroflot.com

Almost every branch of design has taken a hit this past year, except for fashion and apparel design.

The AIGA Aquent Survey of Design Salaries

The same trends seem to be happening with the stats gathered from AIGA’s Aquent Survey of Design Salaries 2009.

View an Overview of Compensations Here

AIGA’s Design Leaders Confidence Index ( is currently at 99.01 up from three months ago. View the current report

Average Graphic Design Salaries

IT Jobs Watch  – UK Stats on Web Design

This is a great reference to see which programming languages are the most desired as of late. Visit IT Jobs Watch for more statistics and trends overseas.

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Old Navy Gift Shop

“Tis the Season to be Jolly – or – Tis the Season to Find the Best Deals in Town”

The holiday season for retailers is the busiest time of the year and planning for it often starts in the summer time for the many companies. A common trend to assist customers in their holiday shopping is to utilize a Gift Shop or Holiday Center for help focus in their products on gifts. Every design team’s strategy is different, but as you can see below there are quite a few trends as well.

Trends

Gifts Under: $25, $50, $75 etc.
Options focused on price, often many lower priced gifts front and center

Gift Card Emphasis

Creation of Gift Sets
Eases customers worries of wrapping and presentation of the gift

Interactive Gift Catalogs
Often used by online retailers with print catalogs to utilize the creative twice

Offer Calendars
A preview calendar of all the offers coming up through the holiday season

Wish Lists
Pre-selected lists of ideas as well as user created wish lists to keep track of all the gifts you need to purchase

Holiday Logo and Overall Site Design
Backgrounds and logos are altered for the holiday season

Crate and Barrel Gift Shop Design

Gander Mountain's Holiday Gift Shop

Target Gift Shop

Aveda Gift Shop

Toys R Us Gift Finder Design

Bath and Body Works Gift Shop

Cabela's Christmas Shop

Fossil Holiday Landing Page Design

Fossil Interactive Gift Catalog

Michael's Handmade Holiday Guide

Kohl's Gift Center

Famous Footwear Holiday Gift Shop

L.L. Bean Gift Ideas

Borders Season Readings Gift Shop

Best Buy Holiday Gift Center

REI Gift Center

CafePress Gift Center

CafePress Pet Lover Gifts

Victoria's Secret Gift Section

Victoria's Secret adds a splash of red for the holiday season

Orvis' Gift Shop

Vanity Holiday Handbook

American Eagle Gift Shop

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