Web Design '09 Conference Session Descriptions

A luxury sports car with every option may be a nice package, but if its job is to get you to the supermarket, all those expensive options won't accomplish that task any better. It's the same when spending on a site redesign: Effective site design often means bypassing the nice-to-haves to focus on the must-haves, then figuring out how to implement them as cost effectively as possible. Award-winning online toy retailer FatBrain.com, a home-based Internet start-up only six years ago, routinely goes through this exercise when planning for site redesign and upgrades. For FatBrain, this process has resulted in a robust e-commerce site that has many of the same merchandising features, functionalities and visuals of larger competitors, on a fraction of the budget. FatBrain CEO Mark Carson will talk about how FatBrain achieved that with a largely internally-executed design, selective use of outside vendors, an understanding of when a site feature is justified and when it can safely leave something out—and how smaller-scale retailers can approach the same decisions.