In May 2010, Ecommerce Developer readers focused their attention on inspirational newsletter promotions, Magento theme development, JavaScript tutorials, and more.
It is important to us to meet reader expectations. So we monitor article readership very closely. This feature, "May 2010 Top Ten," gives you a chance to learn what other site readers are interested in and, perhaps, find a post that you missed during the month. But it is also a way for us to check in with you. If you think another article was a better read or better matched our charter, please let us know in the comments at the end of this post.
"Ten Examples of Great Newsletter Promotion and Execution"
Many ecommerce clients want to build lists of customers, who represent repeat sales and a source of feedback about products and marketing efforts. As an ecommerce designer or developer, it may be your job to integrate newsletter offers into the site design, site templates, or even manage a confirmation email's programmatic response. In this showcase, you will find a list of ten sites that do a good job of integrating a newsletter offer into the page design.
"Building a Magento Theme Start to Finish, Part 14: Facing the Horror"
Part of an ongoing video series, This Magento theme post was the second most popular article in May 2010. The video and article describe the process of setting up product category pages.
"Create a 'Quick View' for Product Images"
In ecommerce, sales conversion is, perhaps, the single most important measure of a successful site. So ecommerce web developers and designers are wise to focus their code and aesthetics on what will transform a digital window shopper into a paying customer.
One technique is to give potential customers good product information as early as possible in the site hierarchy. As such, this tutorial demonstrates how to use JavaScript to create a "Quick View" effect that will allow site visitors to see detailed product information at the product category page level, even before those shoppers click to see a particular product.
"Sixty Examples of Using Humans in Site Design"
We are all social creatures, which may be why there is anecdotal evidence that including pictures or video of real people using the products an online retailer is selling can boost conversions. But what is the best way to include pictures of people in your designs? In this showcase, you will find a collection of 60 examples of humans in site design to help inspire your projects.
"Finding Free Fonts for Commercial Use"
Beautiful typography can distinguish your web design and development projects from the competition—an important edge if you work for an agency or as freelancer. In this post, you will find some of the best sites that offer free-to-use fonts for even commercial (ecommerce) projects. And many of these sites even package the fonts for use with the @font-face rule.
"Build a Simple Content Slider from Scratch"
This tutorial demonstrates how to create a basic content slider without the aid of a JavaScript library. Certainly, there is a lot of amazing content slider plug-ins already available that are free to use in your projects. But often these have more features than I really want or need and, therefore, add unnecessary file bloat.
"Hover-to-Play Ecommerce Videos with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript"
Popular women's apparel and accessory brand Roxy has introduced a great hover-to-play product video feature to its well designed website. The feature transforms what appear to be product images into product videos when a shopper hovers, providing an effective form of interaction and product demonstration that will almost certainly help the company boost conversions.
"The U.K.'s Top 11 Online Retailers"
The United Kingdom has a thriving online retail trade. The sites that lead it in terms of traffic may be able to show the world a thing or two about site design. In this showcase, you will find a list of 11 of the U.K.’s most visited online stores as reported by the Interactive Media in Retail Group, a membership community for online merchants that seeks "to maximize the commercial potential of online shopping,” and Experian Hitwise, a custom data firm.
"Ten Shopify Themes Worth Trying"
Shopify recently launched a challenge to encourage developers to create themes for the company's new theme store. In that store, you can post themes that Shopify users can purchase and quickly add to their own stores. In this showcase article, you will find ten examples of well-done Shopify themes. Think of them as your competition.
"CSS for an Apple-like Brushed Metal Menu"
In April, Ecommerce Developer contributor Drew Coffin published a great Adobe Photoshop tutorial about creating the graphics for a "Brushed Metal" top navigation bar. Drew's tutorial was a hat tip of sorts to Apple's award-winning website and the company's well-known graphic and industrial design.
Drew's video sparked a request from one of our readers, who wanted us to demonstrate how to take the graphics Drew had created and apply them to a page. Well, here you go.
Trending Upward
Well there you have it. These were the most read articles of the month. But there was one other post that deserved a mention. "Performance Testing 7 Ecommerce Platforms" was published on May 26, 2010 with just four publication days left in the month. Usually, articles that show up this late don't have much of a chance of breaking the top ten. But this one was something special. The post was one of the fastest trending posts Ecommerce Developer has published to date. Give another three or four days, it was likely to outperform every post mentioned above.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Would you like to see your work on this page? Consider contributing an article. Don't want to write a post, but have a suggestion for us? Great. We would love to hear it. Please just email Armando.
