Recently, I’ve been dealing with several established ecommerce sites and a few yet-to-be-launched sites at the same time. The difference between them is interesting.
The ones that haven’t started up yet are generally just talking about design. It’s all about the graphic design, the look and feel.
The established ones, design is just one part of the mix. The things they focus on are sales, features, conversions, marketing opportunities. And, yes, they think about design, but it’s rarely top of the list.
Sure, to some extent it’s comparing apples with oranges. The established sites already have designs. The point though is that most new sites spend too much time thinking about design. They agonise over small details, but are doing this in a void, with no customer feedback.
We’ve probably all heard about the phenomenal success of Zappos. Another site I like to point people to is Blair. Zappos is taking the world by storm with it’s phenomenal sales. Blair is consistently one of the top converting sites on the web. Both are, in my opinion, quite ugly sites (and Zappos redesigned recently!)
For those in startup, agonising over a few pixels, think: do I know more than Zappos or Blair? Not that the goal is to try and be ugly, a nice site is always better of course. The goal is to sell, and they do that well, so take a few hints from them.