Here’s a look at some of the first design work we did for webtogs. The principle was fairly clear from the outset, but looking back, it’s amazing how things have changed over time.

Critical to us was the need for simplicity and ease of navigation. The basic rule of successful ecommerce for us, is this: “If someone wants to buy a backpack, sell them a backpack, don’t try to sell them a tent”. It sounds simple, but many sites seem to get this wrong, and annoy potential customers.

Early, 3 column design…

I think, looking back, we spent too much time trying to make a bad design work. The box structure was very limiting, as we were constantly trying to fit lots of info into small boxes. Another test we used, was to print the designs out on A3 paper, put them on the wall and take a step back. Looking at this design in that way, showed the interface far more than the product. Not a good thing, as we can’t sell an interface.

The search box, top left, was also an issue. We wanted a big, bold and prominent search box, that just couldn’t be slotted into this design. Actually, looking at it now, there’s really a lot wrong with this!

The persistent shopping basket (top right), was an idea we’d all seen on play.com and really liked using. But, when we started trying to make it work with the product database, it just didn’t work. Play mainly sell items that have no attributes (like size, colour, etc). When you add variations into the mix, it becomes very difficult to make a small persistent palette work correctly. This is another lesson we learnt the hard way. In hindsight, we would have been far better starting with 50 actual products, and working the interface around them, as opposed to shoving products into a pre-designed interface.

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