Features I Expect to See on E-commerce Sites
Posted by jonpape | Filed under Internet Marketing, Usability
Some cool features I expect to see in the future on e-commerce websites and where I found the inspiration.
- From Spymaster -level bar – Spend $2000 for a free itouch
- From Continental – Award points – for emails and CC signup
- From Linkedin – your profile is % complete
- From Amazon – Affiliate share bar that users could activate
- From Google Leader – Like button and links to other users who liked. Click to view profile, friend
- From Amazon – other people who purchased this purchased this (level 1) other people who viewed this viewed this (level 2) in order information.
Kiosk Interfaces for Brick n Mortar
Posted by jonpape | Filed under Business, Usability
Last year, my local big box store had photos of products in aisles but no interactive ordering. This year, setup large product displays in aisle and use kiosk for order fulfillment. Free shipping to home would sell customer. Shipping costs could be included in product price.
Problems with Current Merchandising:
- Customer has to find sales associate
- Sales associate needs to find stock
- Sales associate needs to find way to move stock
- Customer needs to verify they can move large box in car
Potential Uses for a kiosk:
- Children’s backyard toys
- Pools & Spas
- Outdoor Furniture
Benefits of an Interactive Kiosk:
- Better Merchandising
- Less stock in stocks
- Reduced operations costs
- Better customer service
- No wait
- Better visual displays
- No problems for customer trying to ship home
Basics of Kiosk UI
- Category page w/ stripped down navigation
- Redirect to category page after 2 minutes of no activity
- Mockup would have large product images similar to photo display previously used
Rules for Beginning Developers & the People who Manage Them
Posted by jonpape | Filed under Business, Internet Marketing, Usability
Inspired by the blog “1,001 Rules for My unborn Son” I decided to create 10 rules for beginning web developers and the people who manage them.
- Never criticize someone who emails you in all caps. They usually own their own business.
- Its better to quit a project early then work for poor management.
- Always setup domain nameservers ASAP.
- Resumes will never tell you how good a web developer is. If a web developer can’t show you sites they have worked on, it’s a bad sign.
- Developers often underestimate how long it will take to communicate ideas to laymen.
- You’re doing something wrong if you have to write the same code twice.
- Always check the domain before you email someone you don’t know or reply to an email.
- If you put something back together after you tore it apart, left over screws are usually OK. Left over wires are bad.
- Websites don’t live in a vacuum. If search engine can’t index a website it better be really, really cool.
- Never read a computer book that is over 5 years old.
