Alright, so my company has the time and money to do a complete redesign of our E-commerce website. We have already determined requirements and upgrades needed as we have had the site up for ~10 years. We are using Magento as the core for the new site.

We have approx. 350 different products grouped into 20 different categories. We don't really need pictures as the products are books - they all look the same but have different titles.

Just looking for examples of nice landing pages you may have come across that would capture attention... Our current customers know exactly what they are looking for - we are more interested in attracting new customers. The best example I could find that would fit our products is http://www.viosoftware.com. We likely will not have the images and logos everywhere like they do. I'd like to see some examples of other sites similar to this. Any suggestions?

11/5/2008 5:43:52 PM

http://www.amazon.com , no really.

you'll need images (at least a couple) as images = visual interest, if your page is all text, it won't be as appealing.

like the colder weather we're having today?

[Edited on November 5, 2008 at 6:44 PM. Reason : ,]

11/5/2008 6:42:21 PM

personally I really like barnesandnoble.com and target.com

11/5/2008 7:02:31 PM

^ditto, amazon was just the first that came to mind, those are 2 excellent one's.

11/5/2008 7:10:13 PM

i can tell you a popular e-commerce website design NOT to follow: http://www.godaddy.com i like them for buying domains but every time i look at that website my blood pressure goes up.

[Edited on November 5, 2008 at 8:07 PM. Reason : .]

11/5/2008 8:07:36 PM

Yeah GoDaddy has wayyyy too many choices on the home page and the categories are scattered everywhere.

The site will have some images, mainly well-known logos from our partners/affiliates. Unfortunately, all of our products look exactly the same, minus the different titles of the books.

I definitely like http://www.viosoftware.com and I think our site will resemble theirs, save for the middle section. That will probably contain announcements/new courses/upcoming courses, etc. Any other suggestions? I have looked at all of the bigger sites of course, just wondering if you've seen any other software/tech e-commerce sites resembling the above.

11/6/2008 10:18:37 AM

http://www.google.com/search?q=css+gallery

11/6/2008 12:43:46 PM

I work at a search marketing firm here in raleigh, creating landing page content is a large part of how I spend my day.

-People are impatient, clickhappy, and lazy. Whichever format you decide on, you'll want to have a prominent product title and a relevant image. Regardless of how generic the product is, an image will drastically reduce the bounce rate and drastically increase the time on page; people rarely start reading content until they've deemed the page relevant to their query.
-Avoid long, drawn out paragraphs (as people are lazy.) This is particularly true if you plan to engage in paid search. Obviously you'll need enough content to adequately describe the product, for more complicated goods/services a combination of short paragraphs and bullet points works best.
-Be consistent, meaning format every page the same way. It seems like a common sense suggestion, but a lot of people seem to miss the boat on this one; title, image, description, conversion action (add to cart, sign up for mailing list, etc) in the same place everytime; Amazon.com has this down pat.
-Make your conversion action prominent. Several people drop the ball by making the "add to cart" or "sign up" button blend too well with the other elements, people are lazy, some of them will look for it but most of them won't.

11/11/2008 10:58:03 PM

be sure to put a BLINK tag around the button that people click to give you money

11/11/2008 11:52:58 PM

http://www.hungates.com

11/12/2008 1:03:44 PM

^^^ VACO Raleigh is submitting their mock-up of their landing page to me early January. They'll likely be doing most of the design, colors, etc.

It was quite bizarre - I couldn't think of anything to get my dad for XMas so I figured I'd just send him some steaks. I went to http://www.omahasteaks.com in late November and their site was almost exactly what I was looking for when I asked for examples (as far as layout, ease of use, some design). Kind of funny that the products we sell are completely different but there are similarities in # of categories and products offered.

12/22/2008 3:57:09 PM

^ That has to be one of the greatest-designed shopping sites I've ever visited. Most times I go to a site like that and spend 10 minutes looking for something. On that site everything they sell is easily accessible from the front page.

No pop-up menus that disappear while you're trying to click on them, either. Whoever made that site did a really good job.

12/22/2008 5:22:50 PM

There are many, many things I like about it. I had never ordered from them before and the process is exactly what I have envisioned for my current, archaic site. The overall site is kind of dated (fonts, tabs) but I have a few of my own ideas to share with the design team. I am extremely pleased I came across it. The layout is perfect and adding multiple items from different categories to the cart is simple. No need to have to keep going back to the home page, etc.

12/22/2008 6:00:30 PM