Free! - Planning a usable website: A three-step guide

A website is like an information flow, with you as the provider and your site visitors as the receivers of the information. If you don't plan your website with this in mind right from the start, you could find yourself with a brand new website that solves all your immediate needs... but not those of your site visitors.

Clicking away from your website has never been easier for Internet users. There are about 35 million websites competing with yours on the Internet (source: Zooknic). Search engine results are becoming better and better and Internet connection speeds faster and faster - finding one of your competitors' websites is now very quick and very easy.

Free! - How disabled users access the Internet

In 1995 a new era of accessibility for disabled people began. The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) was passed, stating that:

“It's unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public.”

A website is regarded as a service and the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) and DRC (Disability Rights Commission) have been quick to apply pressure on to organisations to push this law into practice. Indeed, the DRC has now published a report on its formal investigation into 1000 websites.

So, how do disabled people access the Internet?

Design-Wise Shopping Carts

One easy way to develop an eye-pleasing and functional site is through a grid layout, because as Web designers switch from tables to CSS rules, grids remain an important tool to use for layout considerations. When a simple grid is applied to some examples that I used in the last article about shopping cart programs, some sites seem soundly designed, and others seem to fall a little short of the grid design mark. Further, even though a site might carry a great design, other details may make the shopping experience rather shabby...

Free! - ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site

More and more money is being spent online as consumers switch to shopping on the web. Yet so many websites don't seem to have considered the usability of their ecommerce site and of their ordering process, resulting in users prematurely giving up and abandoning their shopping basket. Here are ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site, so that you can maximise your conversion rate and help convert the contents of users' shopping baskets into orders:

1. Identify users with their e-mail address

How many different usernames do you use for ecommerce website accounts? Now, how many different e-mail addresses do you use for ecommerce website accounts? I'd wager that you not only have fewer e-mail addresses, but also that you find it much easier to remember your e-mail address, than your username.

Always try and use an e-mail address to identify users, rather than a username. This is because e-mail addresses are easier to remember and are more standard, meaning that you don't have to worry so much about special characters. They're also always unique, so you can avoid the problem of another user having already taken a username.