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It’s not difficult to find examples of businesses with beautiful websites but no traffic. Businesses with stunning websites that fail because the product or service they’re providing just isn’t good enough. Design only goes so far, and ultimately cannot save a business if the product just doesn’t cut it.

Of course on the other end we have pig ugly websites that are wildly successful. Websites like Craigslist. People point at them and say: “Look, aesthetics don’t matter — as long as its usable enough and offers enough value it will succeed”. Yes, unless the interface is so unusable that people can’t use the service then it probably will succeed — but that’s not the point. The real point is: does good design and good aesthetic help your business be even more successful, and if so, are the gains enough to justify the work spent?

Read more on UsabilityPost.com.

In Defense of Eye Candy

By Stephen P. Anderson

Recent studies into emotions are finding that we can’t actually separate cognition from affect. Separate studies in economics and in neuroscience are proving that:

“affect, which is inexplicably linked to attitudes, expectations and motivations, plays a significant role in the cognition of product interaction…the perception that affect and cognition are independent, separate information processing systems is flawed.” [2]

In other words, how we “think” cannot be separated from how we “feel.”

This raises some interesting questions—especially in the area of decision making. In short, our rational choices aren’t so rational. From studies on choice to first impressions, neuroscience is exploring how the brain works—and it’s kind of scary. We’re not nearly as in charge of our decisions as we’d like to believe.

Consider what you’re doing with your interfaces to speak to people’s emotions? Industrial product design, automobile manufacturing and other more mature industries get this—with tools such as Kano modeling that have been used for decades. But user interface development is still maturing and catching up to what these other disciplines already know: the most direct way to influence a decision or perception is through the emotions.

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Simplified Web Design Can Help Your Ecommerce Business

Simplicity is key with ecommerce sites, says SmashingMagazine.com. A couple facts about online consumerism:

• No longer do users spend time on a site’s homepage and navigate to content by category search or other product recommendations. Users type product or service names into a search engine, most likely Google.
• Too many options and cluttered design (useless text, widgets or unrelated products) turn the user off and he/she will quickly exit the page to find another site offering the same product with a much simpler interface.
• With only a few seconds to capture their attention, since they use search engines to limit searches to a very narrow field, online shoppers are different from window shoppers in the sense they know exactly what they’re looking for.
• SmashingMagazine also comments on the prevalence of the scatter shot approach – the shock of consumer overload by offering as many options as possible within one page.

Here are a few design tips to help carry your next ecommerce site design:

Less Products –> More Focus!
Customers go online to avoid the hassle of driving to a store to buy a product, so make their online experience as stress-free as possible.

For example:

Apple’s flagship product, or dominant product of choice is the upcoming iPad.

Their site has a few main components:

• Simple header navigation
• One featured product
• Links about the product underneath
• A few news headlines above the footer

Only what you need.
Show only what’s needed to make the sale. Give the user more information by giving them the choice – include “Learn more” links throughout the page.

Reduce clicks.
The less clicks it takes for a customer to buy a product, the higher returns.

Keep all users in mind.
If an elderly person or less technologically-advanced users can figure out how to buy a product on your site, chances are your site is organized effectively.

Reduce the number of columns.
Each time you add a column to a page, the content is pushed into a smaller and smaller space. The result? Less emphasis on the main product, more on excess products the user doesn’t want.

Give less options.
Display your products in a way that eliminates extra thinking and decisions. Streamlining the process will cut down the stress, and the buyer will have a faster, more pleasant experience.

Keep it clean.
Clean and aesthetically-pleasing sites will keep clients happy – they’ll be more likely to be repeat visitors, if not spread the word around about your business and products. Remember to use whitespace and tasteful colors to make the product pop.