Strategic thinking, negotiating deals and making smart use of a host of free and low-cost online design resources are some of the keys to "Creating outstanding design on a budget," according to the three panelists who presented yesterday during a session with that title at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition's pre-conference workshop for small retailers in Boston.
Halley Silver, e-commerce director of King Arthur Flour, shared more than half a dozen web sites offering free or nearly free web sites tools that have helped the baking company design an effective e-commerce site using only a very small internal staff. "We do everything in-house with no design budget," Silver told attendees.
Helping Silver achieve that are sites including Colorschemedesigner.com, where users can build color schemes for a site around a selected primary color. The Firefox web developer toolbar, another free tool, allows web developers and designers to visualize how their site looks on different screen sizes.
Silver uses a $10 monthly subscription from a site called Chartbeat that provides free analytics in real time, avoiding what she says can be a lag time of several hours in analyzing customer activity on the site using the free Google Analytics tool. King Arthur also looks to a site called Bittbox for free art, applications and other design elements.
Silver also says King Arthur.com recently has used a free application from a site called IE6update.com to serve up to site visitors using Internet Explorer 6--two generations behind the current IE8--the message that they should update their browsers to view the page.
"10% to 12% of our visitors come in on IE6, but our developer spends about 75% of his time trying to make the site look right for IE6," she said.
Patrick Conboy, president of ElderLuxe.com, told attendees that sticking within the budget for site design meant being realistic about expenses upfront. "Don't underestimate at the beginning, because you may experience real overages later," he said.
Conboy said that to build his site while keeping costs down, he's used a variety of no-cost approaches such as making use of consumer research available to friends or family with access to it through a university affiliation; and checking out the industry-leading retail sites, summarizing what's appealing in each and using the top five qualities on that list as a basis for a brief to vendors hired to design or develop the site.
Two other techniques that don't cost anything also helped Conboy build out ElderLuxe. Networking produced an introduction to Kensium, the search engine optimization firm he still uses, during a conversation at his son's baseball game; while bartering 500 square feet of his warehouse space to a start-up photography studio has given him a source of quality product and lifestyle photos for the web site. He also uses photography from manufacturers whenever possible.
Conboy said he's found success with vendors by giving them as much lead time to complete a project for the site as possible, noting that "with my 'cheap' mandate, we may not be anybody's priority."
Chris Pawloski, art director of web design and development firm Solid Cactus, offered a web designer's perspective. "Great design is invisible, he said. "It's only when it's done poorly that it's noticeable." Pawloski also reminded attendees that an e-commerce site's design goal should be to facilitate interaction rather than "decorating" the site, and that the sum of a customer's experience would represent the brand in the consumer's mind. "Your brand is not your logo," he said.
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