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!

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

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

‘

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

White Wash House by LOGO

Visit their parent site White House

Why White Wash House?

+ One of the most creative navigation solutions I’ve seen in a long time
+ Smooth and appropriate transitions between pages
+ Extremely visual – great product close-ups and online shopping experience
+ Successful shopping checkout; easy to use and well branded within the rest of the website

Why LOGO?

+ Impressed by the great atmosphere their designers get to work in!

+ Great idea to have a simple form for their potential clients to fill out and in return they will receive a more detailed design brief right away. Very helpful for both ends !
+ I really enjoy the property tab to highlight their specialty niche in the design world

Remedy Coffee by Third + Grand

Why Remedy Coffee?

+ Attractive headers with simple, elegant color/heading changes across different pages.
+ Uniquely shaped footer, reflecting the logo’s shape. Nicely done.
+ Great use of white space. Consistent throughout the site.
+ Well organized color coated calendar. Easy to find what your interested in.

Why Third + Grand?

+ Straight-forward, truthful web design company
+ New favorite design quote,

“Remember, you can get a haircut at Fantastic Sam’s for $8.00 or at the salon for $140.00. Same basic idea, much different results.”

Not all customers are looking for a fabulous website, and many are looking for a great website at a cheap price. Sometimes, you get what you pay for! Third & Grand really puts their best foot forward, giving potential clients a lot of information up-front without even having to contact them.

Bertoldi’s by Insite Design

Why Bertoldi’s

+ Flawless combination of illustration, photography and typography. All extremely unique and in-line with the brand.
+ Beautiful color palette; vibrant and lush.
+ Check out the Masottina room; Showcases their emphasis on family

Why Insite Design?

+ Originality & attention to minute details
+ Focused in the wine business – showcasing their expertise in a particular niche
+ Unique designs – they aren’t just following the crowd and web 2.0 feel which is refreshing!
+ Stunning illustrations – if you are looking for more artistic designs check them out!

Take a look at Sibling Rivalry (I absolutely adore the design of this site!)

Frontier Room by Urban Influence

Why Frontier Room?

+ Pure fun & easy to use!
+ Extremely creative tid-bits, like the pulling the cow’s tail to send in a stampede! Try it if you haven’t yet under the menu tab
+ Successful copywriting
+ Unique contact page / email sign-up – all integrated well to fit the site’s look and feel

Why Urban Influence?

+ Results Page: Great way to prove to potential clients that their designs are successful and can help your business
+ They tell you their story and their passion shows through in the explanation of what they love to do. It’s great when you can see how much a company cares about what they are doing, not always up-front on every designer’s site.
+ Smooth page transitions on their site, along with simple & effective animations to add a little zest to the user experience – well done!

Boys & Girls Clubs of the Twin Cites by Catalyst Studios

Why Boys & Girls Clubs of the Twin Cities?
+ Fits the client’s purpose and mission to a “t” – design focused on kids. We see this through the little details such as: tape holding page sections up (not literally ) notebook paper accents and scribbles throughout the website.
+ Read my story windows on homepage – neat scroll bars!
+ Consistent section layout on each page – gives the user a sense of what to expect in particular areas

Why Catalyst Studios?

+ I visited their studio last year and their website reflects the same personality I saw then – their studio has green walls, and many playful aspects to it. Great job branding overall!
+ Their about us page is fab! They showcase their team individually which makes the design experience personal
+ Using sticky notes, Catalyst allows their visitors to leave them messages and place them wherever they feel the need to chat I left one this morning while writing this! Hope they checkout their review
+ On the homepage, they change up the feature project to make each visit to their website a fresh and fun experience

I thought I would share a few of my favorite travel websites, since I’m leaving for the Bahamas tomorrow morning at sunrise. Feel free to share some of your travel experiences! I’m always on the lookout for unique destinations to adventure to. Enjoy!

1-Bahamas

I had to include this one, not only because I am heading out to the Bahamas within the day, but I love the logo’s relationship to the island shapes and layout. Beautifully done.

2-Australia

3- Africa| Egypt: Nature Expeditions

4-Sweeden | Map & Photography Integration

5- Alaska

6-Ireland

7-Napa, California | Balloon Tours

8-Madagascar | Wildlife

9-Belize

10-Need Inspiration on Where to Travel Next? | Great Resource for Planning a Vacation

Travel Related Blogs

Scuba Diving

Travelaholic Anonymous

EuroCheapo

New Zealand Travel Blog

Chaa Creek’s Belize Travel Blog

Upon my return I will post some photography from my Bahamas journey! I look forward to sharing my adventure with you. Feel free to share yours too!

Everyone has a love for a particular type of food or maybe you’re like me and enjoy trying many different kinds. It is a great idea to reach out to the web when running a successful restaurant. Especially if you live in a popular tourist area, college town, or simply want to give your potential customers more information about why they should dine with you.

As a traveler myself, when planning a trip I usually like to find out what restaurants are in the area and the easiest way to do that is to reach out to the web. Or if your restaurant is in a college town, consider an influx of people during certain times of the year and the ages those groups might be as a starting point to building your new website. Here are a few I thought were very effective:

1 | Restaurant Alma

One of the most important uses for a restaurant’s website is the address and hours. How many times have you wanted to make reservations or check the hours of operation to find 5 minutes later, buried in a bunch of pages, only a phone number? This website offers up all the essential information anyone would need to know right off the bat and does it in a classy, simple and effective fashion. Today, designers have so many technology options that sometimes it is a challenge to be simplistic in their designs.

Flash
You’ve probably been to many websites that utilize Flash; a fabulous asset to any designer’s arsenal, but a dangerous one. In this example, the designer uses Flash very effectively to bring the site to life, without giving the user a headache while trying to find what they are looking for. Flash should only enhance your website, not confused your viewers.

Elegance
A restaurant’s main appeal of course is its food, but what generally brings customers in at first is its’ ambiance and atmosphere. Alma is a 4-star restaurant and it’s site design shows it. Simplicity is a key element in elegance.

2 | Brasa

While looking through Restaurant Alma’s site, I noticed the owner also has another restaurant in the metro area. Both well designed! I particularly like this site’s attention to details. Little details can really give that extra something to a website’s overall feel. I particularly enjoyed how the background gave a historic feel to the design and allowed the main content to come forward. Beautifully done.

Home Cooking
When first looking at this restaurant’s website, I immediately thought “home cooking” This was reflected by the images of the food, the orignality and hand-made feeling some of the graphics gave off, and the friends page of the website. In the friend’s section, the site includes different suppliers they work with. I love knowing there are restaurants out there whose attention to fresh, quality product is in sight for the world to see. The more upfront you can be with your customers the better.

3 | Pizza Luce

This website stood out to me not only for it’s design, but also for it’s unique characteristics.  If you click on “our story” you’ll see customer testimonials. What a great idea! Many designers do this to promote their work, but it is also a great idea for businesses too! What are your customers saying? Let possible diners hear what the word on the street is when it comes to your restaurant.

Creativity & Food
Since creativity is their main focus when it comes to pizza, Pizza Luce’s website also picks up this splash of creativity and originality with torn paper edges and beautiful line drawings. Oh, and in case you were wondering, their Baked Potato Pizza is to die for!

4 | Mona Lisa’s

This restaurant can be found on the main drag in Eau Claire, WI. In my college days, I spent a summer at Mona’s waiting for extra money. Their customer base tends to be many creatives and folks who can appreciate quality art. Mona Lisa’s main focus was atmosphere & service. When you enter the site, you can tell right away the type of person that might frequent this restaurant. Also, notice there aren’t many photographs of their food. This could be for a few reasons, the most important one being they didn’t want to focus their attention on the food, but rather other aspects of the restaurant (even though their food is spectacular).

Honesty First
On the tour page, they portray their restaurant exactly how it is when you visit. They are honest with their customer. They don’t make it look better than it really is. You’ll find this often happens when restaurants show images of their food and atmosphere. To build a good relationship with a customer, you want to show them exactly what they are going to get. Don’t let them down ahead of time!

Flash
This is a great use of flash as well, although it is a bit more edgy than Alma’s website, it loads quick, is easy to understand how it functions, and serves a purpose. It gives the viewer a virtual tour, literally! It fly’s you through the restaurant, to be sure not to give everything away, but connects with the viewer in a more interactive, 3-d fashion.

5 | California Pizza Kitchen

Show off your product! People love to see what they are going to get when they visit your restaurant. California Pizza Kitchen’s designer did a fantastic job at bringing the viewer into the site by attractive and delicious looking samples of their food. Photography is an extremely important part of any food industry’s visual promotions.

Interested in reading more about food photography? Check out Still Life with…

Hungry yet?? Visit AllRecipes.com for a wide selection of easily searchable cuisine! My recent favorite is Honey-Lime Enchiladas.

What are your favorites?

Post a website link and give 2 reasons why you believe it is well designed/developed.