Timbukt2's Build Your Own Bag

I love cool new ways to show product online. I can play with this thing for hours, but I gotta work! Timbuk2 clearly has one of the most user-friendly and fun ways to design your own Timbukt2 bag. Go to their website and try it out!

One man's anguished cry for better usability

This post from Andrew Wilkinson at MetaLab would be really, really funny if it weren’t so true.

Now, Zappos ain’t gonna lose any love from me because I adore their selection and famous customer service. But what IS customer service, anyway? Awesome shipping policies? Yes. Crazy product selection? Yep. Quick and knowledgeable help via phone or email? Hells yeah. Zappos has all that. It’s going far and beyond what most companies are doing these days. Zappos should also get some credit for the way it displays its products on the main product pages. Multiple views of the product from all angles and a nifty color swatching feature help the customer visually pick up and handle the merchandise.

But the point is this: Usability IS customer service. Whether your customer has to shop dirty aisles and trip over floorstacks, or look at bleary jpgs and crappy navigational menus, it’s the same thing. Customers can “walk” into your webstore 24/7. Therefore, you should put as much effort into making the shopping experience for your online customers as intuitive and easy as you would for your earthbound store. A pleasant and groan-free shopping experience means more sales.

I am no web usability expert (yet). But I have enough years working retail floors, designing retail merchandising plans, conducting resets and remodels that I understand it instinctively. I also understand customer service. The more I work in eCommerce, the more I understand that what applies to real stores should apply to online stores as well. As more and more consumers buy online, it would behoove us to remember what it feels like to be a customer.

Amazon Cyber Monday Deals page

I work in eCommerce design, so I get a little excited when I see an online store do things right. I’m referring to Amazon.com and their Cyber Monday Deals, which a fellow designer I work with called my attention to.

Visit the homepage, click on the upper right hand corner where it says Cyber Monday Deals Are Here in red. That’s where you’ll see a page dedicated to the best deals up until today, 11/30. Subsections are set up on the page titled with product header such as Electronics, Video Games, and what they call Lightning Deals, deals that are added on an hourly basis and subject to sell-outs, and have a stock meter and time remaining on the deal to create a sense of urgency.

With so many different kinds of products (zillions!), creating clean, intuitive design with excellent usability is a herculean challenge. The Amazon development team certainly make it look easy.