Digital UK Design Blog
The internet is big, as as this illustration proves, it’s growing faster than the Solar System. It’s amazing when you put all these figures down in one place, it makes you feel quite inadequate in comparison. 210 billion daily emails is staggering, if I just try a little harder I’m sure I’ll be able to increase that to 211,000,000,000 emails. Simply leave your email below and we’ll get the ball rolling 
Created by Online Education
Peter from Peopleoftheday.co.uk dropped us an email to ask if we can help publicise their range of celebrity caricature books and prints in time for Christmas. Normally we ignore these types of marketing emails but Peters request stood out when he explained it was an initiative that supported Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Personally I have never explained CF personally, nor through any family members but through reading up on the subject it’s a life-threatening inherited disease which affects over 8,000 people in the UK.
Around 1 in 25 people in the UK carry the faulty gene, that’s over two million people.
Each week five babies are born with CF and three young lives are lost to CF.
CF affects a number of internal organs, especially the lungs and digestive system, by clogging them with thick sticky mucus resulting in infections and inflammation making it hard to breathe and digest food.
There is currently no cure for Cystic Fibrosis.
Whether it’s for dad for Christmas or your Grandad for his birthday, these books and limited edition prints make a fantastic gift. You’ll also be supporting Cystic Fibrosis.
View the gallery of over 200 celebrity caricatures and buy the limited edition prints.
Buy online at Peopleoftheday.co.uk →
Also, any referral fees we collect will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis charity fund.
Christmas isn’t far away now, 38 days to be precise, and if you’re even a little bit festive there’s a chance your place of work may do a Secret Santa. It’s a fun way of buying a colleague a Christmas present without them knowing who sent it. It’s also fair because everyone normally has a small set budget in which to purchase the present. We use a simple online Secret Santa organiser that randomly pairs present givers and receivers. Simple enter the names and email addresses of each participant and each person will receive the name of the person they need to buy for, all done surreptitiously.
4 simple steps
Design by committee is a coined phrase to describe a collaborative approach to designing and, as I experience way to much, is bound to produce suboptimal results. Best described by the maxim “A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee”, I firmly believe this approach is severly handicapped. To illustrate it better let me regale you on a fictional example from the web design world, roll the tape Jack!
A tried and tested approach to efficient, time saving, quality controlled design.
Luckily the designer chose C and Susan was the designated first contact
I think by this point to see it’s not the ideal situation for any designer to be in. They can set out a strict spec, claim a deposit before the work is started but there’s always this middle grey area that can very easily go out of control. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and it takes a strong and experienced person to manage feedback. Some are changes, some are just ideas but at the end of the day it’s just not a situation a cherish being in.
There was a really funny exchange between Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington on his podcast the recently. They started talking about Chinese proverbs and quickly devolved the conversation into Noah’s poor decision to let similar animals onto the Ark.
This is paraphrasing, but you get the idea…
Ricky: “One of my favorites is, ‘A camel is a horse designed by committee.’”
Stephen: “Carl’s already wondering who’s on that committee.”
Karl: “I was just thinking why would you request the hump bit, cause that’s just gonna get in the way, innit?”
Ricky: “Ok, Karl. I’ll give you an animal, and you tell me where it has gone wrong. The Octopus.”
Karl: “It should have some bones. I never understood why it would like to get in a jar anyway.”
Ricky: “A Giraffe.”
Karl: “Noah should have seen some of the animals coming in and said, ‘Hold on. Just saw one like you.’ and then throw it out.”
Not sure if I captured the humor there, but, regardless, I like the premise of the initial statement. Design-by-committee is bound to produce suboptimal results, and I recommend to every designer to think carefully before accepting such projects, they can be more trouble than they’re worth.
Did you know 95.1% of users connected to the Internet in the UK are on broadband connections, according to Weboptimization.com. Here’s a quick roundup of some other interesting technology based statistics.
Eurostat ‘ICT Usage by Enterprises 2008′, ICT Statistics, December 2008
IAB/PwC, ‘Online AdspendStudy H2 2008′, April 2009
Eurostat, December 2008
Websiteoptimization.com, December 2008
Net Imperative, December 2008
TechCrunch, January 2009
Enders Analysis, March 2009
QuickPlay Media Inc., February 2009
eMarketer, December 2008
eMarketer, March 2009
eMarketer, March 2009
eMarketer, March 2009
eMarketer, March 2009
MobiAd News, March 2009
Deliotte, April 2009
Times Online, February 2009
Internet Retailing, May 2009
NMA, March 2009
Enders Analysis, February 2009
The Floating Frog, October 2009
This set of points is designed to help you critique a design, specifically for ecommerce websites, to make them perform at their optimum, to help with usability and inevitably increase sales and conversions. Each point may or may not be relevant to the design you are working on so use them purely as a guide and point for discussion. Time and budgets may also play a part in the design process so all these points may not be actionable.
Does your design pass each of these common ecommerce mistakes? If not then you have room for improvement and the potential to make it perform better.
Write as much information about your product as possible. Include sizes, weights, shapes, colours, everything you can. Put yourself in your customers shoes, what information would you want to know about your product. Try to answer the questions yours visitors may have. Remember this unique, detailed information also has an SEO benefit so the more you can write the better.
Upload as many detailed product shots as you can. You can convert a new visitor to a customer simply through quality product shots. Consider having your products professionally shot, this will improve confidence in quality and service in your customers and make your business look more professional.
Make this important stage as simple as possible and remove any unneccessary obsticles to allow the customer complete their order with minimum distractions. If you have a multi step checkout process then consider streamlining this down to maybe one or two pages. At this stage you have them searching in their purses for their payment card, the last thing you want to do is lose them now through a complicated long drawn out payment process.
Consider displaying your contact information in a prominent place. The header is an ideal place as this is a place that typically stays the same throughout the site. Show your phone number and a link to a contact page with a contact form on it. Give them every reason to think you will look after them in case they have any questions. Customer loyalty and return business is the foundation of a successful ecommerce shop.
Allow them to purchase your products without an account but highlight the benefits of creating an account prominently. Selling products in the most important part of your business, making them signup yields further benefits for your business but should always be optional as to allow the transaction to complete, as quickly and as easily as possible.
A comprehensive search tool is imperative for shops with hundreds of products and sections. Searches allow a visitor to by-pass the lengthy manual search and allows them to see the products they are interested in. If your search doesn’t work or is limited then it may be doing more harm than good.
Build confidence and a lasting relationship with your customers by supporting their needs. Be upfront with contact details and customer service option and display them prominently throughout the website. After service support helps eliminate bad press and improves your businesses reputation as being a quality, trust worthy etailer.
Your product images should be big enough to catch the eye and of high quality to provide the visitor with a good interpretation of the product.
A good shopping basket should allow a customer to purchase a product quickly and easily while maximising on upselling related products. Keep it clean and clear. Allow users to add multiple items, edit the quantities and remove any unwanted items. It should do all this while staying transparent to the visitors eye. Without a well thought out design a sale and the potential of repeat business may be lost.
Consider implementing more than one payment option on your shop. Users who find that their desired payment method isn’t accepted will not in most scenarios continue with the purchase. By accepting as many payment options as you can increases your catchment and inevitably sales. It may be a little extra work for you but in today’s highly competitive online marketplace every advantage helps. The same goes with your competitors, if your don’t support a users payment method then you could potentially steal the sale.
Related products are crucial when trying to upsell. A pair of trousers maybe land you a sale, but my recommending a belt, a t-shirt, a pair of shoes and a jacket, that sale could really be boosted by this lucrative upselling method. Related products have two obvious places where you can implement them, firstly on a product specific page and secondly in a users shopping basket once an item has been added.
Your websites navigation should be clear, well structured and fixed. Be clear as to what you call each link and don’t be too creative with the language. If a section of your shop sells trousers then call it trousers, if it contains disposable barbeques then call it what it is. Devise a clear site structure that is clear and removes as many levels as possible. Remember the three click rule, make sure every product page can be reached within 3 clicks or less, failing this may render the shopping confused and frustrated.
Ecommerce sites should focus on professional, crisp and well presented product imagery. Forget about designing fancy headers with bright graphics and this will detract the users eye away from your products. Keep the structure light, clean and clear and focus your efforts on presenting your products effectively in your online shop window. Conventional shop windows are filled with the latest products and intices a walker-by into the shop. The same principle should be applied online with a strong product line or offer to lead the visitor through into your website.
Free icon sets – Need some free icons? Looking for those detailed 16×16 Silk icons from FamFamFam or the impressive Tango collection? Then look no further, below is a plethora of links to free icon sets. Each free icon set has it’s own license attributed to it so please read it carefully before using them.
Top Tip: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.
Download Instructions: Simply click on each image to visit the download sites.
“Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format.
“Mini” is a set of 144 GIF icons available for free use for any purpose.
“Flags” are 247 icons — in GIF and PNG formats — representing most countries in the world as small pixel icons.
Hundreds of desktop icon sets
182 web application icons
Official feed icons
113 10×10 gray scale icons in GIF format.
320 mini pixel icons
1. Zeusbox Feedicons – 34 feed icons in 32 and 16 pixels size with PNG format.
2. FastIcon – a series of CSS3 icons, currently updated.
3. IconDrawer – high quality Mac OS X PNG format icons sets.
4. IconFactory – quality free icon sets for Windows and Mac.
5. ColorCons Free Icons – PNG 128×128 format.
6. Designmagus – a series desktop icon sets.
7. Silvestre – six series desktop icon sets.
8. Ganato – free PSD Icons.
9. Tango – desktop icons with 16×16, 22×22 and 32×32 format.
10. Greyscale – a set of 40 icons which each fit into a 34 x 34 pixel area.
11. IconsDesigns – Vista style icon sets.
12. Marko Webcontrol Icons
13. Yellowpipe Free Icons
14. Iheartny – a series quality desktop icon sets.
15. Crystalxp – PNG icon sets.
16. Enhancedlabs – quality desktop icons.
17. Icon Archive
18. Freeiconsweb – 15,000 free icons for Windows, Macintosh and Linux Systems.
19. Zyotism
20. Pixelpressicons – icons for Mac only.
21. Websiteicons
22. Vista Icons – free Vista style icons.
Funny cos it’s true! You need sound. If you like it there’s a load more on Youtube. A bit of Friday fun
Being an Apple fan boy and owning pretty much everything Apple branded, it came as a shock when I read on TechRadar that Apple have released their new range of iMac computers, with the largest being an incredible 27″ beast! I was so excited I bought one within 20 minutes of hearing about it.
“The iMac is widely praised as the best desktop computer in the world and today we are making it even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With brilliant LED displays and the revolutionary Magic Mouse, the new iMac delivers an amazing desktop experience that we think customers will love.”
…what sorry did you say something? Sorry sorry I must of been somewhere else, like in the world of beautiful 27″ iMacs, fluffy clouds and red bank statements. Thanks again Apple for plunging me deep into my overdraft again.
Quietly, and almost overnight, Google have moved into another market. At the time of writing there is not yet any announcement on the Official Google Blog but it looks as though Google have begun the process of unveiling maps based on their own data.
The Google Maps product that we have all grown so used to was driven by data from Tele Atlas, a Netherlands-based company, as witnessed by the map data copyright notice that appears in the bottom right hand corner of a Google Map.
But now Google Maps, in the US at least, have started to replace these with Google map data copyright notices. We should probably expect to see these changes rolled out elsewhere in due course too.
Although Google have not revealed the sources of their map data, the suggestion is that it is a by-product of the work they did in building Google Street View with additional data coming from other public domain sources, such as the rather poor quality TIGER data in the US. Interestingly, Google did blog about the introduction of the Street View Trike in the UK and how they are being used to reach those parts that they cannot easily reach by car – they even invite readers to suggest locations that are poorly mapped.
The other big map data provider is NAVTEQ who provide data for roughly 85% of the world’s in-car navigation systems as well as for portable GPS devices from Garmin and Magellan and for Bing, MultiMap and Yahoo! online maps. Last year NAVTEQ was acquired by Nokia and Tele Atlas was acquired by TomTom. I would imagine that both NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas are now feeling rather relieved.
One of the first indications of a change was that users had noticed a sudden degradation in the quality of Google’s maps. Roads that used to be mapped no longer appeared on the maps and roads appeared where buildings had recently been built. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the quality seems higher in those areas that have been visited by a Street View car and lower elsewhere. Google has started to aggregate data from a number of public sources and to combine them with their own map data, in particular, US land parcel data is now also visible on the maps. Some users have observed that buildings which had previously been unlabelled, for security reasons, are now clearly labelled.
Google have introduced a link at the bottom of the map inviting users to report problems that they spot. They must be aware that the map quality is not as good as it used to be but they must also be confident that any failings can be rectified by their enormous user community. Perhaps this early lack of quality is the main reason why the whole process has been kept quiet. Rather hypocritically, for a company that started the Data Liberation Front whose mission statement says:
“Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products.
Our team’s goal is to make it easier for them to move data in and out.”,
Google don’t provide a mechanism for users to retrieve the map corrections that they have submitted to Google. I wonder if that will change.
All of this is probably very good news for users of mobile map devices. The licence that Google had previously signed with Tele Atlas precluded the use of the map data for turn-by-turn applications. Such navigation applications are often expensive because of the extra cost of purchasing such a licence which has to be passed on to the end user. Google will now be able to move forward without being tethered by such restrictions.
An advantage to Google of owning their own data is that a mobile Google Maps application will now be able to pre-download map data to the device, enabling the maps to work where either there is no reliable mobile signal (such as in the Lake District in the UK) or in places where the cost of downloading the map data over the mobile network could be prohibitively expensive (such as when travelling abroad with a mobile data plan). Currently, on the iPhone at least, this kind of offline mapping is only available at no cost to applications that use the excellent OpenStreetMap data, such as the OffMaps application.
The value to Google of the flow back of data from mobile devices that are using Google Maps is enormous. Feedback from Android phones and other devices that allow background processing will almost certainly be used to enhance map data. As an example, consider a GPS enabled mobile device travelling in a vehicle along the road network. The Google Maps application running on the device will be able to feed back to Google not only information about the likely locations of new and unmapped roads, about one-way streets and permanent and temporary speed restrictions, but also information about the average speed at any given time of day on any road. This kind of information can be used to provide accurate and optimum routing. And once you know all of this information, it is not difficult to see how, by comparing it with new real-time data, it can be used to spot traffic incidents and hotspots as they occur. Nokia and TomTom already have agreements in place with mobile phone providers that allow such data to feed back but Google will be cutting out the middle man.
If you haven’t already contributed towards the construction of the map of your own town or city you should really take a look at OpenStreetMap and contribute at least a little of your time to enhance the excellent free and open map of the world whose data belongs to everyone.
OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of the mapping world. As other Wikipedia-like sites prove there is really only room for one such successful system at a time (remember Google Knol, Citizendium, and the late Encarta). Both Knol and Citizendium still exist, but how many times a year do you refer to them? The ease with which ordinary people can contribute towards the construction of accurate maps of the world and the effects of such crowd sourcing is evident in the surprisingly high quality of the OpenStreetMap maps. It is still a work in progress and some parts of the world are better covered than others. But at the current rate of improvement it has been estimated that within a year or two, OpenStreetMap will also contain enough good quality routing data to start to compete with the commercial offerings from Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ.
OpenStreetMap is possibly already the biggest threat to Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ but now that Google has entered the mapping market other large companies may be persuaded to lend their support to OpenStreetMap. Yahoo has already allowed OpenStreetMap to use their aerial imagery for the purposes of tracing map features. What if Microsoft or Apple were to get involved? It is likely that within a 12 to 24 month time span Microsoft may well re-enter the mobile market with a competitive operating system. It seems unlikely, however, that they will be happy to display the Google logo on their maps.
With feedback from mobile applications and the input of ordinary users OpenStreetMap could well be the map data source of the future. But there is clearly going to be a lot of competition from all of the data providers to gather a good deal of accurate and useful data and to offer it at a reasonable price. In the meantime, for those of us who are mobile map users, I think we are in for a good time.
©2006 - 2009 The Floating Frog
