Letter to a Client: eCommerce Design Tips

The following is an extract from an email I sent to a client today - I seem to share the same advise over and over, so why not post it with my readers?

...definitely bad etiquette having any sort of media start automatically. A glittery animation makes sense and will draw the eye to the rich content.

In terms of having a tag cloud- I do recommend these. Not only can you optimise more keywords, but most people don't perform searches in search boxes (unless they're conducting a search on Google or Yahoo) because most people lack trust in the internal search to propagate the content they're after (mostly because of semantics- you say tomato I say tamato). A tag cloud negates semantics and helps a user by serving up more ideas for items to look for.

If it comes down to needing to eliminate elements - the main rule of thumb is the bottom line "will this end in a sale?" - content for the sake of content is not more important then merchandise.

Also, in 4-6 months you'll likely want to make a few changes and modify certain elements. The canvas is never complete- there will be plenty of opportunities to make adjustments and refinements. The best way to determine what to keep and what to get rid of is the analytics from user behaviour- we can make all kinds of assumptions about what will have the most impact now, but the best director is consumer behaviour.