Web Design and Usability
"Designing for Dollars"

Web Design and Usability February Supplement
A special section produced exclusively for providers of Web Design and Usability products and services

Designing for dollars: design and usability tactics that pay off
With online retail sales beginning to perk up, two-thirds of online retailers who responded to a recent Internet Retailer survey said they plan to redesign their sites in the coming year. They’ve got a long list of features they want to improve, including home pages, product pages, site search, the checkout flow and the increasingly important community features—such as customer reviews, forums, Q&A and blogs—that keep consumers engaged with a retailer’s site. They will be studying the lessons they learned over the past year as many consumers became focused on price and value, and online shoppers increasingly used the web to window shop and compare prices. E-retailers learned they had to make a case quickly, ensuring shoppers could easily find the products they wanted, view them in detail, read reviews, compare them with other products and see the total cost of a purchase. More sites added video, personalized product recommendations became more common, and many e-retailers now make it easy for consumers to pass on product information to friends on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But few retailers have it all—and those who hope to rise to the top as consumers open their wallets will be looking to fill in the gaps in 2010.

Special Editorial Report and Advertising Section: This special report and advertising section, entitled “Designing for dollars: design and usability tactics that pay off,” will help retailers understand the ins and outs of successful web site design in the post-recession market. It will address:

• How to convey a strong value proposition to consumers through text and imagery, using advances in site navigation technology that lead to purchase decisions, and how to make sure pages load quickly, even on sites that feature complex images, animation and video
• What it takes to add social features such as customer reviews, forums, and links to popular social networks
• How to manage the increasingly complex and diverse content a top-notch e-commerce site must offer, and the important role of performance testing and monitoring before and after a site launches
• How to decide when it’s time for a site redesign, how to choose a designer, and the role of in-house personnel in working with vendors to successfully redesign an e-commerce site

The Advertising Opportunity: For a special net rate of $7,500, advertisers in this Special Report and Advertising Section will receive the following:

• Display Advertising: Your full-page color advertisement will appear within the main body of the special section. The only advertising included in this section will be that of companies participating in this special offer.
  
  
• Editorial Mention: Your company will be prominently mentioned within the text of the special editorial report entitled “Designing for dollars: design and usability tactics that pay off.” An executive designated by your company will be interviewed by the editors of the report and quoted in the main body of this feature article. Sponsors of the section will be the only solutions providers quoted within the report.
  
  
• Web-Link via InternetRetailer.com: “Designing for dollars: design and usability tactics that pay off” will be included as a special feature on InternetRetailer.com, our high-traffic industry web site. Advertisers in the print version of the special report will receive a hot link to their web sites in the online version of the report.