Quality is a word that a lot of people like to use when describing their web design services. But what is quality, how do you know if a design is quality or not. Well, I think that there’s quite a few ways to spot quality within web designs. Once you can see just what goes into making a quality web design, you can use the techniques to perfect your own style.

I’ve put together a few pointers, and collected some examples to explain just how I look for quality within a website design.

01. Spacing

One of the main things that I look for within a good website design is clever use of spacing with design elements. Paying close attention to how certain things are spaced out and lined up can really make a difference to the overall appearance and sense of quality of your design.

I think the key to getting your spacing right is to look at all of the elements within your design. Looking at the bigger picture really can help you get a good idea of how best to space your elements. Sometimes zooming out and taking a different look at your designs can be a great help.

Examples of Excellent Spacing

Great Spacing on the Good.is Website

As you can see here, there is a very clean and open feel to the content here. This is completely down to the designer allowing a good amount of space around the text & images.

A very well spaced out Digital Mash Website

Having well spaced out elements can make them a lot more attractive, and a lot more clickable. Digital Mash is a great example of a very welcoming website.

Creatica Daily has heaps of space

Again the great use of spacing here really helps let the content speak for itself. There isn’t a lot of content in each post, but they’ve not been afraid to give the content a lot of space. Just because you only have a few lines of text, doesn’t mean it can’t use a lot of space.

Lots of Space on the Postbox Site

Taking a close look at the Postbox website, you can really see how space there is around the edges. There’s actually a 60px padding here. It sounds like quite a lot, but when you see it in action it looks great.

Getting Spacing Wrong

The main mistake people make when it comes to spacing is having their content too close to the edges. No matter how well you’ve styled your content, if you cram too much in, it loses a lot of it’s style and quality.

Example of not using enough spacing

We showed in the previous section how good the spacing was on the PostBox website, but we’ve made the  mock-up below to show how it would look with less spacing. And you can see just how much bad spacing can effect your design. It takes a lot away from the design and certainly removes the quality feel from it.

Tips on Effective Spacing

Deciding on how much spacing to use is something which will vary from time to time, you really need to train your eye to allow for the correct amount of spacing for each element, and use it effectively to fit the design. It’s touch but something you can pick up with practice.

• Design using a grid system
Using a grid certainly helps you to understand the importance of spacing

• Try & Try again
You can always use a method of trial and error until you find what looks right.

• White Space isn’t a wasted space
Just because you have an empty area, it doesn’t mean you have to fill it.

• Less really is More
Rather than trying to fit more in an area, fit less, give it space and keep just the vital important information.

02. Pixel Perfect Detail

You can really tell when someone has put real effort into the finish of a web design. Sometimes it’s the subtle things that really make a difference, and a lot of people might not even notice. What I mean when I talk about Pixel Perfect Detail is the method of paying close attention to lines, edges and borders. Rather than just have a simple line, sometimes adding some small details, whether it be subtle gradients, or something as a simple 1px shadow or highlight can really make your work stand out. Some designers of note that are really good at this are: Collis Ta’eed,  David Leggett and Wolfgang Bartelme.

Examples of Pixel Perfect Details

A close look at the detail on Envato

If you look in the examples I’ve cut out, you can see in Example 1, how the green bar has a 1 pixel lighter green line on the border. Example 2 uses a soft gradient shadow on the inside of the box and leaves a 1px clear white border at the top. Clever, using a shadow to give the impression of a highlight above it. The green area behind has a very soft subtle shadow which helps draw attention to the clean and crisp detail within the white box below. Although it doesn’t seem like much these thing really do help to make everything look that little bit more polished, they give a sense of 3D and realism, almost like the elements are placed onto the page, rather than just a flat and static layout.

The Details on Tutorial9.net

David Leggett has a great understanding of how to really make pixel’s pop. His recent redesign of tutorial9 is a great mix of so many pixel popping techniques. In Example 1 you can see how he’s made the tabs look that little bit slicker by adding a simple 1px highlight to the top. Example 2 see’s a variety of techniques. A Drop shadow on the camera icon, a shadow highlight on the white area, and a 1px highlight on the top of the navigation bar.

Pixel Perfect Buttons & Separators on RedBrick Health

This beautiful navigation, created by Ryan Scherf is another great example of using pixel perfect details to get that feel of quality in your design. The pink button has a 1px highlight, and the separating lines between the links have the same level of quality and detail, as you can see rather than just having a gray line separation, Ryan has included a 1 pixel highlight below it to prevent it looking flat and 2 dimensional.

Pixel Perfection Applies to Grunge too: AvalonStar

Here we have the beautiful AvalonStar: Distortion blog, which uses a great grunge style. But even with a dirty & grungy design using a 1px highlight can still make a big difference. If you look at Example 1 you can see how a shadow gradient has been used on the brown top area, the green box which lies below it has a 1px highlight at the top. The combination of the shadow above and the 1 pixel highlight really make the boxes look that little bit more polished.

Quick tips for Perfect Details

Practice makes perfect in this case, as you can see from the examples something as simple as a 1px highlight line can add some really cool depth to your designs, you don’t need to rely on really over the top bevels and gradients to give the impression of something with a bit of depth.

• Keep it Subtle
Small details that compliment the content are the key.

• Think in Pixels
Borders, gradients, lines and shadows etc don’t have to be huge to be effective.

• Before & After
Compare your results to how they looked before you applied the effects. Then you can see just how effective they are.

03. Well thought out Typography

Although the actual content of the website won’t be written by the designer, they play just as important role in the overall quality of the content. Their role is to make sure that the content is displayed in a way that is easy to follow and read through. There are many ways that you can ensure your type is readable and usable, and while I’m not going to list a set of rules and regulations on what, and what not to do, I will give you some examples of where clever typography really does make a difference.

Examples of Well Thought out Typography

Big & Beautiful on The Netsetter

Titles are important within web design, especially when you are designing for a blog. A recent trend in web design is to use big & bold fonts for titles. This works in a number of positive ways, not only does it tick all the right boxes from a usability point of view, but it helps to create space and define structure within a design. This example from Netsetter is a great illustration of these points, you can see how the title creates a lot of white space around it, and naturally it’s very easy to read.

Leading & Spacing with your Text

The Viget website really is a beautiful example of how important typography is within web design. The example we see below (taken from their portfolio showcase) shows once again how using a larger sized font helps to create and open space. Even with the thin, crisp font they have used you can see just how much space has been created in that area. The actual typeface itself is very slick, and is a great choice of font. The other thing that stands out here is their attention to detail with the line height (Leading), the spacing between each line of text has been increased from the default value to create a lot more space and make the text much more readable. A trick which you could try in your next design.

Web Design Ledger, Fonts to Fit your Mood

Finding the perfect font can be done through trial and error, or you can make your choices based upon the different moods certain fonts help bring to a design. The example here, Web Design Ledger, has a retro and worn look to it, while still having a very open and modern feel to it, so choosing fonts that help evoke a similar moods to these is essential to it’s success. Henry Jones (the designer) has chosen a popular transitional serif typeface: Georgia for the titles which compliment the retro & worn aspects of the design very well. The modern feel to the website comes from using a very different font to the titles, the main content body is written in Helvetica, a sans-serif typeface with a very rounded, open feel to it. The two choices of typeface in this example are very clever and really help to compliment and set the mood of the design.

Quick check list for Typography in Web Design

Spotting good typography within web design becomes a little easier when you’ve seen some great examples of typography (above) But when exactly is it that makes these examples so good, and what should you be looking out for when you come to design your next website?

• Is it Readable?
Don’t be scared of making your titles big and bold.

• Have you thought about spacing?
Spacing can vastly improve readability.

• Do your fonts fit the mood?
Make sure your fonts compliment the design.

There are probably a thousand more tips out there, but I don’t consider myself an expert in this area, I think I’ve just learnt to appreciate the impact of good typography. If you want to learn more about the things to look out for and see some better examples i strongly suggest you check out this post from Smashing Magazine.

04. Organization of Elements

Being a designer appeals to many because of it’s creative nature, and sure it can be a lot of fun. Now I know that Organizing doesn’t sound at all creative or fun, but once you get into a habit of good organization it doesn’t have to be as dull as it sounds. The way you organize the elements in a website is always going to be different, it depends on what type of site it is, and how important certain features are to the content of that website.

Although there’s always a variation in how and where you place things, there are some things you can do to make organizing your content very easy. The first thing you need to do is decide what you want your design to achieve. For example, are you designing to sell a product, are you designing for content, or are you designing for signups & referrals etc.

Designing to Sell: 37Signals

Taking a look at the massively popular 37 signals website it’s easy to see that it’s no coincidence they are selling their products so well. They’ve made it as easy as possible for you to see what’s for sale and help you to make the final decision to buy. Everything you want from a site designed to sell.

In the Example image you can see that the site has 4 key features that make it ideal to encourage you to buy. Attention is the first thing, they’ve made a very dark box with a quick summary & big bold titles. Next they generate your Interest by listing some benefits of each product with a lovely illustration. Desire is the next point, and this is archived by placing quotes & testimonials, and as in this point some videos of “What our Customers have to say.” The final feature to keep in mind is Action; on 37Signals there are various action points throughout the page, also nice to see that as the page is quite long they even have some action points in the footer.

Designing for Content (Blog): Well Medicated

When you’re designing for a blog it’s a completely different story. You don’t need to spend time convincing and re-assuring your users about your product, your “product” is already on display, your content is your product. Make it easy for your users to see your posts, explore them and connect with you & your blog.

Content should be (one of) the first thing(s) you see on a blog. In this example a nice bold pink title font really draws your eyes straight to the content. There’s a good sized preview image and a good 2/3 paragraphs of text followed by a “Continue Reading” link. There’s also the standard date & author information. For me this is one of the most perfect examples of what I would class as quality “Content Design.” Attention can be directed to anything of interest, here the nice big subscribe icons are the focus and help the users to stay connected with your content. Plus it without doubt will increase the amount of subscribers, so it works on two levels. Encouraging your users to Explore is quite simple, you can use anything from tabbed recent or popular content in the sidebar, to drop down menu’s or simple & effective lists. It’s easy to do, but very effective, especially on a blog. Blogs tend to be very personal things, so allowing your visitors to Connect with you in a variety of ways can be a big plus, and can help encourage people to get to know you, and visit

Tips to Help with Organizing your content.

Of course there’s always times where you’ll need to do things differently and break the norm. But there are some simple tips you can follow to keeping a well structured and well ordered design.

• What are you designing for?
As we’ve shown above, decide the goal of your design

• Design using a Grid
Grids allow you to make the most of your space.

• Test the Placement of Elements
Be the visitor, would you be able to use it.

• Remove any unnecessary Elements
Anything that isn’t essential should be removed, or out of the way

• Balance of Attention
Some things need to stay simple to allow others to shine

05. Restraint & Subtlety

Designers are always looking for ways to make an impact with a unique design or special effect within a design. But sometimes you can make a bigger impact by restraining yourself. There comes a point where something crosses from being good to being too much. A good designer can spot when the line has been crossed, and avoid putting too much into a design or special effect.

Examples of Subtle Effects within Web Design

Soft Gradients on “Things” Website

I’m always on the look out for subtle effects on all the websites I visit. Sort of sad maybe, but I can’t help but pick out all the little details for future inspiration. Gradients are often over used and really in your face, but used correctly gradients can add a element of reality and depth to a design. Most people might not even spot the gradients, and those for me are the best ones.

Drop Shadows on Icon Dock

Icon Dock is a smorgasbord of subtlety. Pixel highlights, gradients and drop shadows. But for the sake of this example we will focus on the drop shadow, it’s not very big, and it’s opacity has been reduced to just put the highlight on the content box and bring it forward very slightly. It’s a beautiful example.

Subtle Background Textures; Scouting for Girls

Having a textured background can make or break your design. A lot of times the background becomes too much of a distraction that it actually takes away from the quality of the design. So it’s often a good idea to keep your background textures subtle and soft. The Scouting for Girls website does a great job of using a texture to compliment the overall style & quality of the design.

A hint of Wear & Tear: Viget Advance

I don’t think you can ever be too subtle, any amount of detail no matter how subtle will be noticeable, and whether people are aware of it or not it does have an impact. This example from the Viget Advance blog shows some hints of wear & tear, just a very small amount of wear, but without it the paper would look flat and dull. It’s the small imperfections that make it more believable and real.

Watercolours on WebDesignerWall

When using watercolours it’s always nice to make sure you mix the colours and keep the colours very soft, faded, and well… Watery. Using watercolours can benefit your design in many ways, it allows you to inject some subtle colours and bring in some texture, which is why it’s become quite a popular choice for many designers to include.

Subtle Floral Elements; Dara’s Garden

This is a brilliant example of subtle floral detail within a design. There are some more vivid floral illustrations that are also quite stunning, but in this example we are focusing on the lighter & softer details in the background. This really shows the importance of subtlety, the soft colour and worn look to the pattern means that your eye is aware of the detail, but it isn’t the main focus.

Tips for Subtlety in your Design

For me, subtle details in a design can really push a design from being good, to being amazing. If you’re looking for a way to inject something special into your design, subtle details really are the way to go. Here are some tips to keep in mind when including subtle details in your design.

• Build up your layers
Never just use one brush or texture, build your details up.

• Experiment with opacity & Colour
Sometimes even 3% opacity can have a positive impact.

• Don’t worry, Be Brave
Done be afraid to be too subtle, or too faded.

06. Using Colour to it’s Full Potential

People often judge colours on their personal taste, which is a huge mistake. If you’re ever in a situation where you need to decide upon what colours look good in a design your mind should always be on the brand, and building a theme and mood using a colour scheme.

Brilliant uses of Colour In Web Design

Real Estate can be Real Colourful: Oypro

The thing I like about the Oypro website is that it proves that a “boring” subject doesn’t have to have a boring design. All too often corporate sites have a reluctance to allow designers to really put across some creative flair in their designs. There seems to be a need to keep things simple, flat, and gray. But this design proves that you can still have a corporate looking website, without the need to hold back.

Keeping your Colours Relevant: Tennessee Summertime

Summertime in Tennessee is a vibrant, bright and very warm website. Everything you’d want to associate with a site that is promoting summer activities. There are a lot of different colours in play here, but all of them are relevant. Good quality designs have a colour scheme that is relevant to the service or product that they are designing for. Sometimes it’s the obvious colour choices that make for the better design, a good example of my point is Hell Design – it wouldn’t make sense being any colour than a firey red.

Variety in your Backgrounds: Saturized Studio

It’s not enough just to have colour in your background and expect that to make it interesting. Some of the best backgrounds are those that have a bit of variety, in this example we see that the beautiful orange/red colour is subject to all sorts of lighting effects and gradients. It gives an extra something to the background, and prevents it from looking stale and flat. Important to note here too that the contrast between the dark & deep orange works really nice set behind the much lighter content area.

Tips for using colour in design

Colour is always a good area for exploration and trying different possibilities and variations, but it’s always important to keep a few things in mind when choosing colours and a colour scheme.

• Experiment
A boring topic doesn’t have to have a boring colour scheme.

• Variety
Try using gradients, patterns, brushes on your colourful backgrounds. Colour alone doesn’t make something look good.

• Stick to a Theme
Make sure your colours are relevant to your product/service.

07. Doing something Nobody else has done

Some of the best websites around are those that are out of the ordinary, strange and somewhat bizzare. But those that challenge the norm may end up changing what the norm is. But being truly original and creating something nobody else has done before is the toughest thing to do in design.

You could end up making something of amazing brilliance, or you could end up with a design that’s worthy of nothing but criticism. It’s a very thin line between success and failure; I mean there are reasons something’s never been done before, and it’s usually because it’s a shit idea. You’ve got to be brave to step away from what people know and love, and here are a few examples of that point:

Unique Navigation on MB Dragan

Not exactly your average site navigation, but would the website look as good if it just had a standard navigation. I’d say it was a bit of a risk having the navigation in such an unusual way, but it does fit in with the site, it is relevant, and it’s done to such a standard that it’s hard not to appreciate how well it works with the overall design.

Visualbox & their very Visual Navigation

Visualbox have one goal in mind, showing you their brilliant work. So they’ve got very little text, on first look all you see is their Name and a selection of their work. The preview box changes when you hover over it to reveal details of that project, so it’s actually a very effective and functional solution, and much more appealing then just having a list of links.

Straight to the point with Nikola Mircic

So you’re a interface designer, you want people to see your work, and hire you. Nikola Mircic shows us how getting straight to it makes for a really impressive site. You are greeted with a wide variety of his work, his name & what he does at the top, and a contact link. There’s no mass of text or fancy words to convince you to use his services, he literally lets his work talk for itself. Of course you can click on the images to see more & get some text, but the layout if very unique and I love how it works.

Tips for trying something new

The examples above are not meant to be “inspiration” for unique ideas, just simply a couple of sites that I found that I’d deem to be quite unique. The fact is you can’t really search around for inspiration on new ideas, as it kind of spoils the point of it. So really you can just ignore this whole section if you are trying to think up something new!

• Keep it Relevant
If you’re going to do something very new and unique, ask yourself “does it make sense” and “does it fit with the branding?” if so then go do it!

• Ignore everything you know!
Okay maybe not everything, basic principles may stay the same, but there’s no point looking for inspiration on new ideas, you’ll just be heading in the wrong direction.

• Keep a level of quality
I think generally if your new idea looks good, and works well it’s much easier for you to justify.

What Do you look for in a Quality Design?

There are so many things that can make a design stand out as quality, I’d say I’ve just covered a few of the base points. So I’d love to see your ideas and thoughts about what you look for when you decide whether a design is good or not.

Written by liam on April 13, 2009

The subject of what separates art and design is convoluted and has been debated for a long time.

Artists and designers both create visual compositions using a shared knowledge base, but their reasons for doing so are entirely different.

Some designers consider themselves artists, but few artists consider themselves designers.

So what exactly is the difference between art and design? In this post, we’ll examine and compare some of the core principles of each craft.

This is a subject that people have strong opinions about, and I’m looking forward to reading the various points of view in the comments.

This post isn’t a definitive guide, but rather the starting point for a conversation, so let’s be open-minded!

Good Art Inspires. Good Design Motivates.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between art and design that we can all agree on is their purposes.

Typically, the process of creating a work of art starts with nothing, a blank canvas. A work of art stems from a view or opinion or feeling that the artist holds within him or herself.

They create the art to share that feeling with others, to allow the viewers to relate to it, learn from it or be inspired by it.

The most renowned (and successful) works of art today are those that establish the strongest emotional bond between the artist and their audience.

By contrast, when a designer sets out to create a new piece, they almost always have a fixed starting point, whether a message, an image, an idea or an action.

The designer’s job isn’t to invent something new, but to communicate something that already exists, for a purpose.

That purpose is almost always to motivate the audience to do something: buy a product, use a service, visit a location, learn certain information. The most successful designs are those that most effectively communicate their message and motivate their consumers to carry out a task.

Good Art Is Interpreted. Good Design Is Understood.

Another difference between art and design is how the messages of each are interpreted by their respective audiences.

Although an artist sets out to convey a viewpoint or emotion, that is not to say that the viewpoint or emotion has a single meaning.

Art connects with people in different ways, because it’s interpreted differently.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been interpreted and discussed for many years. Just why is she smiling? Scientists say it’s an illusion created by your peripheral vision. Romantics say she is in love. Skeptics say there is no reason. None of them are wrong.

Design is the very opposite. Many will say that if a design can be “interpreted” at all, it has failed in its purpose.

The fundamental purpose of design is to communicate a message and motivate the viewer to do something.

If your design communicates a message other than the one you intended, and your viewer goes and does something based on that other message, then it has not met its requirement. With a good piece of design, the designer’s exact message is understood by the viewer.

Good Art Is a Taste. Good Design Is an Opinion.

Art is judged by opinion, and opinion is governed by taste.

To a forward-thinking modern art enthusiast, Tracey Emin’s piece “My Bed”, which was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999, may be the height of artistic expression.

To a follower of more traditional art, it may be an insult to the medium. This goes back to our point about interpretation, but taste is more about people’s particular likes and dislikes rather than the message they take away from a piece.

Design has an element of taste, but the difference between good and bad design is largely a matter of opinion.

A good piece of design can still be successful without being to your taste. If it accomplishes its objective of being understood and motivates people to do something, then whether it’s good or not is a matter of opinion.

We could go on discussing this particular point, but hopefully the underlying principle is clear.

Good Art Is a Talent. Good Design Is a Skill.

What about the creator’s abilities?

More often than not, an artist has natural ability. Of course, from a young age, the artist grows up drawing, painting, sculpting and developing their abilities.

But the true value of an artist is in the talent (or natural ability) they are born with. There is some overlap here: good artists certainly have skill, but artistic skill without talent is, arguably, worthless.

Design, though, is really a skill that is taught and learned. You do not have to be a great artist to be a great designer; you just have to be able to achieve the objectives of design.

Some of the most respected designers in the world are best known for their minimalist styles. They don’t use much color or texture, but they pay great attention to size, positioning, and spacing, all of which can be learned without innate talent.

Good Art Sends a Different Message to Everyone. Good Design Sends the Same Message to Everyone.

This really falls under the second point about interpretation and understanding. But if you take only one thing away from this article, take this point.

Many designers consider themselves artists because they create something visually attractive, something they would be proud for people to hang on a wall and admire.

But a visual composition intended to accomplish a specific task or communicate a particular message, no matter how beautiful, is not art. It is a form of communication, simply a window to the message it contains.

Few artists call themselves designers because they seem to better understand the difference. Artists do not create their work to sell a product or promote a service. They create it solely as a means of self-expression, so that it can be viewed and appreciated by others. The message, if we can even call it that, is not a fact but a feeling.

What Do You Think?

Depending on how you look at it, the difference between art and design can be clear-cut or hazy. The two certainly overlap, but art is more personal, evoking strong reactions in those who connect with the subject.

When was the last time you called customer support because you were having problems checking out online? Probably never! Cart abandonment rate is at around 60%, and most of it happens before the user even begins the checkout process. Sometimes, convincing your customers to trust you is your biggest challenge.

There is no “Consumer Trust for Dummies,” but as eCommerce designers, we need to focus on some fundamentals. The following topics may seem as obvious as walking into a seven-foot Wookie, but rest assured you will find plenty of websites with a mouth full of fur.

1. Paint Your Pictures At Home

If your core demographic is women between the ages 35 and 65 who have an annual income of $60,000+, you would treat them different than the 18- to 25-year-old male demographic. First and foremost in e-tail: forcing your visitor to think is a bad idea. When creativity stops being subjective and can be measured by a dollar amount, making sure you’re designing for the customer is a no-brainer.

Years ago, I had an SVP of DotCom tell my team, “You can go home if you want to paint pictures.” And for the rest of the day, I couldn’t wait to get there so that I could make sure the next morning his inbox was full of expletive material illegal in most counties. After calming down, I realized he was right. All along, what he was telling us was simply to design for the customer and not ourselves. This was a challenge for designers working in an eCommerce corporate atmosphere but a very important lesson to learn.

2. Good UX Is Like A Perfect Movie Score

Build brand loyalty to gain patient, forgiving customers for a lifetime. For instance, Apple’s customer loyalty exceeds all other brands with an unusual cult following. Apple lovers forgive the company when it makes mistakes and zealously defend the company’s products and reputation.

How do you make your customers trust you this much? The answer is to give the user an “Experience.” It is not enough simply to make a website usable. The experience you create for the customer has to make them not realize that they are “using” it. It’s a tough concept to grasp, and the recipe changes from website to website, but the right combination of usability, creative design, writing, psychology and metrics and a strong brand will create an experience through which your customers learn to trust you.

Like the perfect score to a film, a good user experience is unobtrusive and transparent to the consumer because “it just works.” The Apple model will not work for everyone, but I often find myself challenged with a W.W.J.D. moment. Ask, “What would Jobs do?” and then look at other websites for inspiration.

3. eCommerce UX Pitfalls To Avoid

Just because a website is usable, does not mean customers will use it. Usability and user experience are in the same family, but more often than not user experience is the forgotten child. There are key areas in which the two must co-exist. Below are suggestions for some areas where websites should spend as much, if not more time, on the user experience.

Product Detail page

The product detail (PD) page is where some retail websites drop the ball. Too much focus is put on the design and usability of the home page, and that effort does not continue through to the rest of the website. More of the user’s time is spent on the product detail page than any other. Here, you need to offer customers all of the information they are looking for but present it in an intelligent way as well.

A few recent trends on eCommerce websites are “no-click” alternate images and swatches. A user simply has to roll over an image, without clicking, to get immediate feedback. The same approach can be used to zoom in to the image. Other UX options for the PD page are smart fields that let users know they still have to perform a required action before proceeding, without getting a typical error message.

The Checkout Process

Much like the PD page, the checkout process is a critical piece that engages the customer on a somewhat intimate level. However, unlike the PD page, where customers want to spend time to make sure they want what they are looking at, the checkout process should have as few steps as possible. Too many steps and the customer feels trapped.

But too quick and they feel like they have lost control. For instance, asking for credit card information too soon will seem out of order and no doubt scare even the most seasoned online shopper into abandoning their cart. Hidden taxes and shipping costs will make them feel like you are trying to take advantage of them.

Security

Always making sure your customer knows that your website is secure and that their privacy will never be compromised goes back to the issue of trust. It does not take much effort to display a message telling your customers that they are safe in your hands; a footer link to your privacy policy is not always enough.

Page Weight

A page’s weight is determined by its file size, by adding up every image, every line of code and anything that gets loaded when the user first hits the page. Libraries such as Scriptaculous, jQuery, MooTools and even Flash Shared Objects are often forgotten, but they all add to a page’s “weight.”

Some fascinating things are on the horizon for developers related to user experience and page weight. One notable development as of late was the release of Safari 4 Beta, which has support for HTML 5 media tags, CSS animation and CSS effects. As more and more of these features become standard in browsers across the board, we can look forward to offering users a better experience by using features directly in the browser.

4. The Value Of Content And Then SoMe

We cannot talk about user experience without touching on content and social media (SoMe). In order to be profitable, eCommerce retailers need to engage customers with their content and use social media outlets within and outside their own websites.

93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, according to Cone, while an overwhelming 85% believe a company should not only have a presence in but also interact with its consumers via social media.

• 60% of all online adults use social media.
• 85% believe a company should not only have a presence in but also interact with its consumers via social media.
• 56% of users feel a stronger connection with, and feel better served by, companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

When a website such as Facebook, which just turned 5 years old in February, has an active user base of over 175 million people, it is easy to see the unlimited potential to increase your wallet share simply by giving your customers what they want. Some options are:

• Give your customer the ability to add your website or product detail pages to websites such as Delicious, StumpleUpon, Digg, Twitter and Facebook.
• Give them the ability to customize their experience on your website. These experiences can range from customizing the home page as they see fit to uploading their image to go beside their product reviews.
• Create an RSS feed for your website. If your website has a blog or some other content area that changes regularly, give your customers the option to add it to their favorite RSS reader.

They say, “Content is king,” but if you cannot account for your king’s whereabouts, he needs to be beheaded. Your website’s content is only as relevant as its success. So, test as much as you can. Some tests you can perform to get hard data include:

• Website and email A/B testing
  Split your promotion views between your customers. 50% see version A, and 50% see version B. You can perform these tests for just about any purpose, but make sure your goals are clear before beginning. Figure out what you are trying to solve, and then move forward with the testing. From changing your website’s navigation to simply testing the style of your promotion’s copy, doing an A/B test will give you the relevant data you need to decide whether to update or remain the same.
• Polls
  Polls are quick and simple but, depending on your pool of users, can give you mountains of data. To get more people to take your poll, consider giving some kind of incentive to participate. Some polls are fun to take, but if you’re asking, “Which brand of television is better?” and not, “Who’s hotter, Jessica Simpson or Britney Spears?” then you may want to think more carefully about how much the feedback is worth.

5. Using Type And Color To Influence

Using color and typography is nothing new to designers. Using them in eCommerce is not much different. When designing for a retail website, your client is the customer. You are trying to convince thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of potential customers to click on your promotion and buy whatever you are selling. Consider the following.

Can It Be Read?

Most designers love to play with typography: twisting, shaping and contorting letters and word to obey your every whim, forming a beautiful masterpiece of skill and beauty. However, if your customer is not an artist, chances are they won’t get what you’re doing, and you’ve just lost a sale. Up front and to the point messaging is not always the answer either.

Consider using fun copy as an alternative. For example, if you sell banjos, instead of saying, “Shop New Banjo Supplies,” you could say, “Add More Twang to Your Thang.” As stated earlier with regard to designing for the customer, this depends a lot on what your target demographic is.

Can It Be Red?

No big surprise, red is the color of choice for error messages. But consider this when thinking about the user experience. What color does Target.com use for its error messages? Makes you think, right? Good! By the way, it uses red, too. The point is to consider alternatives. If your company has red in its brand, and the website has a lot of red as well, consider another color. You’re trying to get the user’s attention, so blue text with an alert icon could work just as well.

Consistency in Type: Stylistically and Creatively.

Making sure your headers, sub-headings and body copy are consistent across your website is easy. Making sure your website has a well-defined style guide is not. A style guide requires a lot of patience and care and is never complete. A website’s style guide should be a living, breathing document that continues to grow as your company and brand grows.

There is nothing wrong with this. As you find certain styles that perform better than others, find a way to add them to the guide. This document, depending on the complexity of your brand and the size of your website, could potentially be split into two separate documents: a creative style guide and a copy style guide. Each guide serves a different purpose but live together harmoniously.

Inspiration and Sources

Designing for the user experience in eCommerce is a multi-faceted puzzle. Some solutions work across the board, and some are specific to your website alone. The good news is that finding the solutions that best fit your particular needs is the most challenging and rewarding work a designer can do. It takes a rare breed to fully appreciate the value of the user experience, and if you are part of it, I hope this article and these resources give you as much pleasure as they have given me.

• Jakob Nielsen’s Alert Box – Current Issues in Web Usability
• Human Factors International
• User Interface Engineering
• UX Booth
• Pattern Tap
• Usability Post
• 960 Grid System
• I Love Typography
• Web Designer Depot
• A List Apart
• Function
• Endless.com
• Free People
• Facebook Statistics
• … and, of course, Smashing Magazine

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(Thanks to the original post at: http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2008/07/the-worlds-biggest-post-about-photoshop-psds-textures-tutorials-patterns-shapes-brushes-and/ )

You don’t have to write the same CSS-code or (X)HTML-Markup over and over again. Whatever project you’re starting to work with, at some point you have to define classes and IDs you’ve already defined in your previous web-projects. To avoid unnecessary mistakes you might want to start not from a blank file, but from an almost “perfect” scratch. The latter might contain some basic definitions you’d write in your code anyway. However, once you’ve decided to create such a scratch, you need to make sure it is really bulletproof — besides, if the stylesheet also sets up optimal typographic rules and basic form styling you manage to kill two birds with one stone.

And this is where CSS Frameworks and CSS Reset are becoming important. Using them, you can get yourself a perfect default-stylesheet and markup, save your time and ensure the best quality of your code from the very beginning. But what are CSS Frameworks? And why do you need the Reset for?

Let’s take a look at the idea behind CSS Frameworks, their advantages and disadvantages, most popular CSS frameworks and dozens of default-stylesheets you can use designing a new web-site from scratch.

• This article partially covers tools and techniques which use Grids. You might want to make sure you get the idea behind the grid-based design approach — from our article Designing With Grid-Based Approach.
• You can find hundreds of CSS templates in our article Free CSS Layouts and Templates.
• Please notice that this article takes a closer look at CSS Frameworks, not at extensive server-side programming frameworks such as CakePHP and also not at Web Development Environments such as Coda or Dreamweaver.

What is a CSS Framework?

• A framework is a basic (usually abstract) conceptual structure which you can use as a “scratch” for your web-projects. For instance, instead of defining global reset, consistent baseline, typographic rules or basic styles for forms over and over again — every time you work on a new project — you can prepare a default-style once and reuse it in all your future projects. This is what you call a CSS Framework.
• CSS frameworks don’t have to be complex or large, they may contain a set of simple CSS-styles such as
  • typography.css for basic typographic rules,
  • grid.css for grid-based layouts or
  • layout.css for general layouts,
  • form.css for basic form styling,
  • general.css for further general rules

  and so on. In your code segmentation you can also go further, for instance: structure, typography, design presentation, specialist sections (e.g. menus, navigation), print, mobile web, tweaks (mostly old style browser hacks), browser specific workarounds (via IE conditional statement). “On the whole code segmentation in frameworks is handy to work with, but it can add some real load to a server with the extra http request per page view.” [Treading Lightly With CSS Frameworks, by Gary Barber]

• “[Framework is] a set of tools, libraries, conventions, and best practices that attempt to abstract routine tasks into generic modules that can be reused. The goal here is to allow the designer or developer to focus on tasks that are unique to a given project, rather than reinventing the wheel each time around.” [Framework For Designers, by Jeff Croft]

Advantages of CSS Frameworks

• You increase your productivity and avoid common mistakes.
  If you develop several sites of the similar nature, an abstraction of CSS code can dramatically speed up your productivity, help you to avoid common mistakes and simplify the management of CSS code.
• You normalize your code/class base.
  You have a common “default” CSS-code and (X)HTML-markup, so you always use the same IDs and class names in your projects. Code consistency throughout a number of projects makes it’s easier for you to maintain a web-site without digging into the source code of every project you’ve ever worked on — to understand how you’ve actually built the web-site.
• You have a better workflow within a team.
  If a CSS-framework is well documented, it can be used within a team as a common ground-up; thus you can avoid misunderstandings and ensure an optimal workflow. The latter results in avoiding mistakes and helps you to meet deadlines without compromising on product quality and without overtime costs.
• You gain an optimal browser-compatibility.
  Since your CSS-framework is “bulletproof”, you don’t have to worry about browser-compatibility issues and can start coding right away.
• You have a clean, well-structured and complete code.
  CSS Frameworks provide you with a well thought-out foundation for your sites; using them you have the basic styling of all html-elements you’ll ever need to style from the very beginning of your projects. Have you ever forgotten about code or abbr? That’s the point.

Disadvantages of CSS Frameworks

• You need time to fully understand the framework.
  “For the average user, [..] the time required to understand the architecture of the framework far outweighs the menial task of coding it from scratch.” [Why I don't use frameworks]
• You need a close familiarity with your code’s architecture.
  Using external CSS frameworks, you still need a profound understanding of your code. You need to know exactly how your framework is actually built. “By building a site from the ground up, you gain a knowledge of your site’s architecture that can’t be learned through any study or documentation.” [Why I don't use frameworks]
• You might inherit someone’s bugs or mistakes.
  If you use external CSS Frameworks you might get in trouble fixing someone else’s bugs which is far more time-consuming than fixing your own bugs.
• You develop sites upon a framework, not upon the solid knowledge of CSS.
  “A big problem with frameworks is when up and coming developers attach themselves to a framework as opposed to the underlying code itself. The knowledge gained in this case surrounds a specific framework, which severely limits the developer.” [Please Do Not Use CSS Frameworks, by Jonathan Christopher]
• You get a bloated source code.
  “Whether it be in a server side language framework or JavaScript library, there is often a large percentage of code that will never be executed. While not a major issue server side, this can greatly degrade the performance of a client side framework such as a JavaScript library.” [Please Do Not Use CSS Frameworks, by Jonathan Christopher]
• CSS can not be framed semantically.
  “CSS and (X)HTML go hand in hand. (X)HTML is a language semantic in nature, which is impossible to wrap up in the style of a framework. Each and every project is unique in and of itself, right down to the document structure, classes, and ids. A CSS framework passively removes a great majority of semantic value from the markup of a document and, in my opinion, should be avoided.” [Please Do Not Use CSS Frameworks, by Jonathan Christopher]
• Ignoring the uniqueness of your projects.
  Designs should be based upon the content, not upon a standard template you use over and over again.

CSS Frameworks

YAML (Yet Another Multicolumn Layout)

Dirk Jesse’s extensive (X)HTML/CSS Framework offers the whole bunch of default-templates for a number of simple or more complex web-projects. YAML is based on web standards and supports every modern web browser. All Internet Explorer’s major rendering bugs are countered. YAML fully supports all IE versions from 5.x/Win to 7.0.

Apart from a number of standard-conform layouts the framework also offers a debugging stylesheet, print stylesheet as well as various robust tools for web-development in YAML. All CSS components of the framework as well as the various layout methods are thoroughly documented in both English and German, supplemented by numerous examples.

You can also use a YAML Builder to develop your layout visually – in your web-browser. You can choose a Doctype, basic layout elements (#header, #footer, …), the number of content columns as well as preferred column order and set the layout and column widths. You can also drag & drop and nest both sub-templates and dummy content, display and output the complete code (XTHML markup and CSS) and switch between draft mode and preview of the finished layout.

Blueprint

The Blueprint CSS framework, created by Norwegian tech student Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy, is a very promising foundation for developing typographic grids using CSS. The framework offers an easily customizable grid, sensible typography, a typographic baseline and a stylesheet for printing. It also uses relative font-sizes, provides a CSS reset and is supposed to be cleaned of code bloats. The latter isn’t always true.

Besides, you can also use the Blueprint Grid CSS Generator to generate more flexible versions of Blueprint’s templates. Whether you prefer 8, 10,16 or 24 columns in your design, this generator now enables you that flexibility with Blueprint CSS Framework – a new “to-become-standard” in grid-based design approach.

Yahoo! UI Library CSS Foundation

Yahoo! UI Library presents a set of CSS frameworks: the core YUI CSS foundation includes the Reset CSS, Base CSS, Fonts CSS, and Grids CSS packages.

While Reset CSS removes and neutralizes the inconsistent default styling of HTML elements, Base CSS applies a consistent style foundation for common HTML elements across A-grade browsers.

Fonts CSS offers cross-browser typographical normalization and control; the framework provides consistent font sizing and line-height, supports user-driven font-size adjustment in the browser, including cross-browser consistency for adjusted sizes and works in both Quirks Mode and Standards Mode.

Grids CSS delivers four preset page widths, six preset templates, and the ability to stack and nest subdivided regions of two, three, or four columns. The 4kb file provides over 1000 page layout combinations. The framework supports easy customization of the width for fixed-width layouts; it also supports fluid-width (100%) layouts as well as preset fixed-width layouts at 750px, 950px, and 974px, and the ability to easily customize to any number. YUI also offers The YUI Grids Builder — a simple interface for Grids customization.

You should be aware that these frameworks are often criticized for bloating the code with non-semantic markup and generating too many unnecessary classes, IDs and div-containers in CSS. Yahoo! UI Library also provides a detailed documentation with numerous examples, tutorials, cheat sheets, templates and tools.

CSS Global Reset (CSS Baseline)

• Global Reset is needed to ensure the more or less identical cross-browser presentation of your web-sites. By default different browsers use different values for margin, padding or line-height. Global Reset makes sure all (or probably most) browsers render sites identically.
• * { margin: 0; padding: 0; } is a bad practice.
  “Unfortunately, this isn’t a good practice. It’s very heavy on the rendering agent to apply rules to every single element in the document, especially with large web pages, and this can also destroy a lot of good default styling, especially when you want to have default styled submit buttons.” [CSS Techniques I Use All The Time by Christian Montoya]
• Tripoli
  Tripoli is “a generic CSS standard for HTML rendering. By resetting and rebuilding browser standards, Tripoli forms a stable, cross-browser rendering foundation for your web projects.”A set of default-CSS-files is supposed to give you a profound foundation for cross-browser compatible CSS-based designs. All default-values – including dozens of elements – tables, lists, typography, but also headers (h1 – h6), abbreviations, citations, quotes and forms are selected to enable an optimal legibility and well-structured text presentation.

  

• CSS Reset Reloaded by Eric Meyer
  A “reset” or “baseline” set of styles, not based on the universal selector. As Meyer says, “the styles should list all the actual elements to be reset and exactly how they should be reset.”
• Yahoo! UI Library: Reset CSS
  YUI Reset CSS file removes and neutralizes the inconsistent default styling of HTML elements, creating a level playing field across A-grade browsers and providing a sound foundation upon which you can explicitly declare your intentions.
• CSS Global Styles Reset by Kyle Neath
  A simple CSS reset with some additional classes for better debugging.
• CSS Global Reset by Christian Montoya – css
  “It’s far better to have a complete list of default settings to apply from the beginning that targets the specific browser inconsistencies.”
• CSS Global Reset by Mike Rundle (currently unavailable)
• Master Stylesheet
  This default-stylesheet takes some typographic rules into consideration, such as the spacing between heading tags, paragraphs, and blockquote elements.

CSS: Basic Styling

• Web Typography: bottom margins of paragraphs and lists by Marko Dugonjic
• Compose To A Vertical Rhythm
  “The basic unit of vertical space is line height. Establishing a suitable line height that can be applied to all text on the page, be it heading, body copy or sidenote, is the key to a solid dependable vertical rhythm, which will engage and guide the reader down the page.”
• Baseline Stylesheets by Darren Hoyt
• One clean HTML markup, many layouts… by TJKDesign
• Mike Stenhouse’s CSS Framework
  There is a possibility of breaking down stylesheets into components that could be reused across projects. The next logical step is to extend this to become a CSS framework, allowing rapid development of sites with pre-written and tested components. All that’s really required to produce this is a set of naming conventions and a flexible base template…

Develop Your Own CSS Frameworks!

Keep your CSS frameworks as abstract as possible. Usually the global reset style and basic formatting rules are a sound compromise which will give you a though-out starting point and won’t bound you to the rigid structure of the framework.

Developing your own default-styles, keep the numbers of classes, IDs and used html-elements to a minimum; keep the importance of semantic meaning of the classes in mind.

More ideas? Let us know — share your starting points and your knowledge in the comments!

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