#19053
What Makes People Trust Online Gambling Sites? 
A validated model of trust was used as a framework for an empirical study to identify on- and offline factors that influence gamblers’ perception of an online casino’s trustworthiness. The results suggest that the quality with which casinos address gamblers’ trust concerns by providing appropriate content is the prime factor. However, designing for trust must be part of a consistent strategy that also involves customer service and usability.
Shelat, B. and F.N. Egger. ACM SIGCHI (2002). Design>Web Design>E Commerce>Usability
#23302
What's the Skinny on Weight Loss Websites?
This study reports on the usability test of three weight loss websites. In addition, eye tracking patterns were observed for initial exposure to each site home page. Results indicate that participants were able to search the Atkins diet site more efficiently than the Jenny Craig website or Weight Watchers website and preferred this site overall. Analysis of eye-tracking data suggests users first fixate on graphics and large text even when looking for specific information. Interface issues contributing to overall satisfaction and preference are discussed.
Shaikh, A. Dawn, J. Ryan Baker and Mark C. Russell. Usability News (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce
#21292
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
'Experience design' doesn't just apply to online design. Paco Underhill's 'Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping' explores customer experience and consumer behavior as they affect retail and offline environments and in turn provides dozens of lessons for those in web development.
Lash, Jeff. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>E Commerce
#32423
Online Travel Booking: What Influences Consumers?
An overview of what influences consumers when booking a holiday and what travel companies can do to offer the best user experience.
Alexander Baxevanis. Webcredible (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>E Commerce
#32860
Screen-Reader Usability at a Standards-Compliant E-Commerce Site
An E-commerce site was redesigned with Web standards in mind. The revised site used semantic HTML markup that usually passes validation tests and also incorporated many common accessibility features. A study was carried out with screen-reader users to determine how well compliance with Web standards and accessibility guidelines translated into actual usability and accessibility.
Clark, Joe. JoeClark.org (2005). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>E Commerce
#32925
How could an $11,000,000,000 company fail so miserably in its e-commerce efforts that it had to turn its storefront over to a relative newcomer? And what is the Big Lesson we can learn from Toys'R'Us' difficulties?
Rosenfeld, Louis. CIO Magazine (2000). Articles>Web Design>E Commerce>Case Studies
#33012
Learn From Your Customers for Usable Web Applications
Usability consultant Paul Englefield takes you on a journey to demonstrate that listening to your customers is the only way to provide the ultimate usability when designing an e-commerce site or Web-based applications. Through examples, the article weaves user-centered design techniques into the steps of designing an effective business site, focusing on gathering data about your customers' (and their customers') usage behaviors, offers two design models, and demonstrates how to integrate customers' input into the testing and evaluation process.
Englefield, Paul. IBM (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce
#33162
Your Website is for Your Most Important Customers
Well-managed websites tend to be those that are narrow in their focus. They do a few things really well rather than attempt to do lots and lots of things.
McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>E Commerce
#33201
97% of sites included global links to the site's top-level categories. While global links to top-level categories help reinforce the breadth of a site's offering, they also consume significant screen real estate for links that arguably are not as relevant to users as page-specific content. This is particularly true at the lower levels of the hierarchy, where there is a larger amount of semantic distance between the global links and the page content.
Adkisson, Heidi P. Web Design Practices (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>E Commerce
#33314
E-Commerce on the Go: Selling Through the Mobile
A series of best practice guidelines for removing potential barriers between your customers and your mobile e-commerce site.
Baxevanis, Alexander. Webcredible (2008). Articles>Web Design>Wireless Web>E Commerce
#33405
Turning on the Lights in Your Online Business
Ecommerce websites are typically set up as if they were just glorified catalogs: a list of products, some pictures, brief descriptions, and an order form. No human interaction at all.
Oxer, Jonathan. Internet Vision Technologies (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>E Commerce
#33430
Close the Sale With Persuasive Design
Persuasive design techniques focus on "getting the lead" or "closing the sale". Here are some techniques to help you do just that.
TechRepublic (2007). Articles>Web Design>Persuasive Design>E Commerce
#33441
Designing Personalized User Experiences for eCommerce: An Information Architecture Perspective
You can think of the information architecture as the “glue” that holds a web site together - the part that hooks the content up with the user interface. It provides the large buckets to place products into and that users can browse by. It specifies the meta-information that ties pieces of content together and enables things like cross-selling.
Instone, Keith. Instone.org (2003). Articles>Web Design>Personalization>E Commerce
#33512
All content that can be digitised – books, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, journals, research, music and film - is being digitised and distributed via the Internet. SubHub’s vision is to provide a solution for getting all this content online.
#34221
Building Mashups with JSONP, jQuery, and Yahoo! Query Language
In the previous article of this series, we introduced JSONP (JSON with Padding) as a way to overcome browser same-origin policy limitations while combining and presenting data from third-party sources. This article continues this process and shows you how to use Yahoo! Query Language (YQL), a JSONP service from Yahoo!, to build a mashup Web page using jQuery.
Özses, Seda and Salih Ergül. IBM (2009). Articles>Web Design>E Commerce>JavaScript
#34620
Practical eCommerce was launched in July 2005 by Kerry and Joy Murdock in Grand Junction, Colorado, USA. Its mission from the start has been to provide down-to-earth articles and advice to help smaller businesses succeed online.
#34747
Considering selling advertisements on your web-site? Here are some things you should think about.
Content Strategy (2007). Articles>Web Design>E Commerce
#34870
The job of a retail site is to attract the consumer, sell the product, and deliver it. In the case of a manufacturer site, the only difference when encountering a retail customer is that, instead of delivering the product, the site may deliver the customer—to an authorized retailer.
Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2007). Articles>Web Design>E Commerce>Usability
#35454
Increasing Online Sales: Simple Usability Problems To Avoid
When designing an online store, you have to consider many different types of customers: repeat customers, first-timers, people in a rush, etc. One thing that would help all of them is optimum usability. You can achieve this in a variety of ways, starting with eliminating the most common usability problems from your website. Fixing any one of the following eight common usability problems will get you started on the path to usability and user-experience heaven and, ultimately, more sales.
Holesh, Kevin. Smashing (2009). Articles>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce
#35515
How To Bid Profitably On Nonconverting Keywords
Google has a bidding methodology called Budget Optimizer that attempts to maximize the traffic you receive for the keywords in a campaign. This is useful for early buying cycle keywords. However, every keyword should be reaching some goal regardless of where it falls into the buying cycle. It was difficult to track the effectiveness of these campaigns until recently when Google made some changes to Google Analytics. Now you can more effectively bid on early buying cycle keywords, or keywords that you want exposure for, but do not have direct returns by combining the new Google Analytics goals with a budget optimizer campaign.
Geddes, Brad. Search Engine Land (2009). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>E Commerce
#35648
Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 2 
In this installment of Search Matters, we’ll continue our discussion of ads in search results. Understand what makes a good ad. Limit cannibalization. Provide ads for internal merchandise instead of third-party advertising. Pay special attention to ads on pages that appear if there are no search results.
Nudelman, Greg and Frank Guo. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce
#35657
Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 1
Conflicting demands make many UX professionals think of ads as a necessary evil. Customers frequently go out of their way to say they hate ads, while marketers always seem to try their hardest to stuff as many of them as they can on each search results page on your site. This leaves many UX design professionals caught in the middle, trying to balance the ad equation—and frequently failing to fully satisfy either customers or marketers. For this 2-part column, I’ve teamed up with advertisement and eyetracking research guru Frank Guo to present real-world strategies for successfully integrating ads into your search results. The goal is making money without unduly turning off your customers.
Nudelman, Greg and Frank Guo. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce
