Kidson Talks | The E-commerce Chemist » web-design

Web Design without Adobe

Liz — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:36:46 +0000

I love adobe, but commercially its damn expensive. So what are our alternatives? I like GIMP and here is a simple tutorial on how you can map out your own website design using GIMP. Chopping it up and making it real is another challenge!

I have been creating a colour pallet for an Intranet system, colours A and B are the branded colours which have to be used and the buttons are 100% GIMP:

Open University Web Applications Development

Liz — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:17:47 +0000

I am nearly at the end of the first module, and with assessment scores of 88%, 95% and 100% I am hopeful I get a good grade in my project! Once it is all submitted and marked I shall publish my dealings as I am proud of my line by line code writing. Being a serial code masher, somethings do escape you and I am glad I am learning to code in XHTML and CSS properly. The next module is more about object orientated programming and client side scripting, as well as more advanced (X)HTML and CSS.

I’m loving it!

E-commerce Tip – Add to cart button

Liz — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:02:25 +0000

The visual aspect of a website is always important but the add to cart button is quite frequently overlooked. This article :
107 Add to Cart Buttons of the Top Online Retailers gives us the some nice examples for inspiration. This article also has some great tips for cart buttons such as:

Button Placement

If you offer helpful features on your product pages like wishlists, enlarged photos, colour switching, alternate product views, email to friend, size chart, view cart or check out buttons, make sure the “Add to Cart” button is obvious, bright and prominent in comparison. Less important functions can be lighter coloured buttons or simple text links.

My Favourites are

and

from 1800contacts and Proflowers respectivly

Should you employ a SEO expert????

Liz — Tue, 15 May 2007 12:30:25 +0000

Here are a list of claims from a random SEO site and my opinion:

specific advice direct from our experts – Are you an expert really?
monthly submission to 400+ search engines – Why? When really you only need to focus on the big 4?
guaranteed Google placement – Google says this can’t be done. You can set up a site map with Google using one of its free tools as thats almost a guarantee. You can also use Google Adwords for easy and quick inclusion. Hey Google will find you anyway in the end!
meta tag generation – yah, try this for size
customised search engine optimisation – OK, this might be good – but how customised, have we not customised it with the keywords and meta tags?Do you mean writing page copy to ensure high keyword density? I bet you could do that.
competitor website comparisons – Try Popuri.us or Compare in Alexa
keyword recommendations tailored to your site – Go Wordtracker Go
free phone consultation – yeah ok a Â£2 call?
ranking and link popularity data – http://popuri.us/ and http://www.compete.com/
Pay Per Click (PPC) – Google Adwords is the most documented PPC ever, try it you can manage it.

If you have time, read a book and tackle this area yourself. You can spend alot of money on companies that also use various tools (free or paid for) and you can save oodles of cashola!