Web Design '08 Conference Session Descriptions

With the adoption of broadband in the home, retailers are no longer constrained as to the type of content they can host at their web sites. Rich media is no longer the impediment to navigation that it once was and, in fact, plenty of retailers' experience shows that it is a spur to sales. Many retailers have understood this change in consumers' attitudes and have adopted rich media of various kinds. The challenge now becomes how to make a rich media deployment stand out. One way is to use rich media in a way that is unique to a site and to a particular retailer's products. Our first speaker, a design expert who has worked with numerous retailer clients, will discuss what it takes to make rich media work quickly and smoothly and what retailers have gotten out of rich media deployments. Our second speaker will talk about how GolfLocker.com implemented a design-your-own-shoe program online, what it took to get the program up and running, how it has benefited, why the company wanted to make its shoe configurator different from what other golf sites were offering and the management issues involved in making it work.