Customer Reviews

Designing Web Sites That Sell (Design Whys)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As I went through this book, the word that kept creeping to mind was: Wow! This book is incredibly rich. One thing I know working in the information architecture/experience design field for so long is that it's all about "connecting the dots" - but first you have to know what the dots are. This book, while written from a designer perspective, brings all the relevant dots to the surface and connects them for you. It does a fantastic job of setting the cognitive contexts for concepts and defining terms in a clear way. Another thing that struck me about this book is its own information design: this book practices what it preaches from a communication perspective.

The reason most companies hire me into a Creative Department is to bring the type of consciousness to a project that this book embodies. This book educates, not just designers, but everyone on the team. It's very nearly a complete compilation of best practices to date, worthy of a classroom textbook.

I LOVE this book. Being a Visual Communication Designer I look for how-to books that are user friendly and this book certainly is that.

This colorful book is laid out with easy to follow step-by-step information with wonderful visual guides. For me this book made eCommerce a joy to learn. Finding the right mix of aesthetics, brand identity, and interactivity are just some of the processes found in this book that lead to creating a successful commercial web site.

This book is mainly geared for graphic designers ( as Authors Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis book title says "DesignWhys - designing web sites that sell - for graphic designers") but I think that anyone interested in eCommerce can also benefit from this book too.

This comprehensive guide covers all the basics, from building a customer profile that drives all design decisions to evaluating the usability of a site on real customers. Others have mentioned the real-world examples -- they're worth the price of the book alone. But what sets this guide apart from every other UI design book out there is the discussion of the design (and launch) process, the different roles that are essential to maintaining a site, and the technologies that a web designer needs to know about (technologies that impact design).

A valuable guide for newbie designers and experienced pros alike. An excellent reference book that I'll turn to again and again.

A super read for anyone getting started in creating e-commerce sites. Especially valuable are the real world examples. They dive into nitty gritty details and go beyond the basic offerings of the case studies in other books (e.g. the extensive info on shopping carts/checkout and the visual examples that accompany).

Bowman and Willis put together what should be considered required for all graphic designers and web designers. Too many in the field have forgotten the importance of designing for the user in mind. The authors cover just how imperitive it is.

It is simple, straight-forward and has plenty of full-color illustrations and design examples...for reading impaired designers like myself.

You want to design a website that works? Want to design one that tells you a lot of things you never learned in your graphic design classes? Want to learn what is important and what is not? Pick up a copy. Like I said, this should be required reading.

Two thumbs WAY up.

This book should be required reading for executives, owners or business develment professionals involved in any aspect of e-commerce. Concisely writting, this book is a wonderful primer on what makes a successful e-commerce site. The topics are logically grouped into easy-to-digest chunks and supported by illustrations that both clearly articulate and add to the understanding of the subject.

Think of this book as the "Cliff Notes for Successful E-commerce." The authors have done a wonderful job researching and reporting the best practices for the entire development cycle for an e-commerce web site. And because the book is about process and not specific techniques or applications, it should serve as a valuable reference tool for years to come.

The Whys guys have written a book that is jam-packed with great info, clever examples and invaluable charts that alone are worth the cover price. They have absorbed the best thinking on the topics of web design and human motivation, infused it with their own vision, and the result is a must-have resource.

Need to build a new ecommerce site or fix an ailing one? This book offers principles that give a framework for thinking and then doing. For example:

- 6 Principles of Good Commerce Design. (Number one, surprise, is SPEED.)

- The 3 steps to success, outlined as: Know thy customer; Know thyself; Design for One Person

- The tenets of customer-centered design, including the Principle of Least Effort; the Rule of Tenacity; and the Use of Scenarios to Get Inside a Customer's Mind

Design Whys features graphics and charts that are as helpful as they are handsome. Here's a few you should rip out and tape to your wall:

- The Process: Pure gold for anyone who has to get a project from concept to completion. A related chart, Who Has a Stake, will help you avoid the most common pitfalls -- the human ones.

- The Work Flow chart on page 74 and sample budget projections.

- How to Optimize Your Checkout Process, which parses the element that can make or break your site.

Practicing what it preaches, Design Whys is elegantly designed so that you can't miss the salient points. Heads and breakouts make it easy to find the actionable info.

And it's leavened with wit. In the demo copy for a nonexistent shoe site, for example, you'll find lines like "da eyelets have it." A made-up site called bikinirepair.com has a logo featuring a two-piece with band-aid.

A whole section of the book is devoted to real-life examples of web sites, deconstructing them to show how they work or fail. You learn from the best--and know why you're doing it.

This book is so good that even when after the technology moves on, or you're confronted with the unexpected, you will know what to do.

This book is great for designers who are new to commerce design and interactive design in general. It focuses on usability more than most other books aimed at designers and that is refreshing.

Topics covered:
- knowing the customer (good treatment for those who didn't read Siegel's "Secrets..." or Kelly Goto's redesign book);
- a short primer on the technology behind ecommerce sites;
- information architecture basics (decent treatment, with a quite few useful bits of information even for who read Lou Rosenfeld's IA book);
- user-centered design and prototyping basics;
- components of an ecommerce site (one of the best sections overall);
- presentation guidelines for different parts of an ecommerce site (good section, too);
- a little about usability testing and QA;
- a handful of very short case studies (I would have liked to see a more in-depth analysis here).
All in all, a broad, if not deep, design manual in the context of ecommerce site design.

Conclusion:

While breaking little new ground, the book manages to present the variety of issues surrounding the design of ecommerce sites. Seasoned professionals, however, will likely stay away from this one, opting for more specialized works like Nielsen's "E-Commerce Use Experience", or my own book at paulgokin dotcom. While there are better references for almost all topics covered, this book manages to pull out many useful nuggets of wisdom from the current literature, making it a good primer of ecommerce design, especially for designers coming from the print world.

This book should be required reading for executives, owners or business develment professionals involved in any aspect of e-commerce. Concisely written, this book is a wonderful primer on what makes a successful e-commerce site. The topics are logically grouped into easy-to-digest chunks and supported by illustrations that both clearly articulate and add to the understanding of the subject matter.

Think of this book as the "Cliff Notes for Successful E-commerce." The authors have done a wonderful job researching and reporting the best practices for the entire development cycle for an e-commerce web site. And because the book is about process--not specific techniques or software applications--it should serve as a valuable reference tool for years to come.

While breaking little new ground, the book manages to present the variety of issues surrounding the design of highly interactive ecommerce sites. Seasoned professionals, however, will likely stay away from this one, opting for more specialized works.