Breadcrumb trails can be a useful secondary navigation tool for large sites such as online stores. Read More
Showcases
Web Button Design Showcase
Buttons are a small but critical part of a web site design. In the best designs they create a strong call-to-action — add to cart, sign up, or learn more — as well being one of the details that reinforces the overall quality of the design. Read More
Mega Drop-Down Menu Design Showcase
Back in March, Jacob Nielsen made a surprising recommendation for using “mega drop-down menus,” saying that:
Big, two-dimensional drop-down panels group navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain the user’s choices.
Video Game Web Site Showcase: 75+ Examples of Game Site Design
For such a large industry, not much is written about video game web site design. The only article of note in my recent memory is one by Smashing Magazine which offered some useful insights into good and bad game web site design practices. Read More
Forum Design Showcase
Compared with the current state of design across many areas of the web (look at all the great themes being developed for WordPress, for instance), the state of forum design leaves much to be desired. Read More
MMO Free Trial Landing Page Design Review
A free trial has become something of a pre-requisite for a subscription-based MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). In fact, of the major MMOs only Age of Conan does not offer a free trial.
With so much competition for players to choose from it is critical that MMO free trial landing pages are effective at communicating their value proposition and answering potential questions in order to convert visitors into trial accounts.
Let’s look a little further into the key elements of a successful MMO free trial landing page.
Shopping Cart Design Showcase
In doing research for some ecommerce work I wanted to see how online retailers approached the layout of different types of store pages.
Perhaps my Google skills were lacking, but I couldn’t find any examples of where someone else had done something similar. I’ve seen showcases of shopping cart icons and add to cart icons, but nothing where the layout of a whole page is examined.
Error Message Design Showcase
An important part of designing any kind of registration or login form is how you handle when things go wrong — a required field is missed or data is entered incorrectly. How do you inform the user that they have made a mistake and help them in fixing it? Read More
Are These Really Web Sites of the World’s Best Brands?
Interbrand recently published their 2008 list of the best global brands. I thought it would be educational to take a look at the websites for these brands and see how they compared.
Read MoreWeb Site Navigation Design Showcase
Just a quick note to say that I’ve gathered together a navigation design showcase with 70+ examples. I’ve specifically avoided including (too many) examples where the navigation is overly creative as I figured these wouldn’t be as useful to a wider audience.
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