How we design with actinic

[fleetwood]

You are of course correct Nick - I'm sometimes a bit heavy handed when I wish to make a point

What I was tring to get at is that we can sometimes agonise too much about whether our site looks good, when customers will respond more to a site that works well (and of course has a good quality of service behind it).

[Luddite]

You are of course correct Nick - I'm sometimes a bit heavy handed when I wish to make a point

What I was tring to get at is that we can sometimes agonise too much about whether our site looks good, when customers will respond more to a site that works well (and of course has a good quality of service behind it).

Completely agree (not about me being right - thats rarely the case!) - design for designs sake can be very tedious. On these lines, I sometimes wonder whether to dump the main image on my own homepage in favour of a more product led approach? Not sure - it gets good comments, but nice product images might generate more £££, and thats what its all about.

[fleetwood]

If by the main image you mean the animated pad layout - don't dump it, I think its great, and an intriguing lure to look further.

[wjcampbe]

Nick, I'm with Martin - don't you dare change that image .

I spent quite a while on your site when I was reviewing it for the directory, and became quite fond of that little pic!

[Luddite]

Nick, I'm with Martin - don't you dare change that image .

Thanks Martin & Bill - I appreciate that.
Nick

[pinbrook]

The photoshop thing - I use photoshop elements and I love it. Much the functionality of photoshop is taken away, what this means for a user like me is that I don' spend hours trying to undo something that I don't know how I did it in the first place.

Photoshop Elements was developed as a cut down version of Photoshop to provide software for the digital photographer.

Thus for photography it is an excellent tool but the graphic artist needs the full monty.

[compendia]

An interesting discussion. Jo - you're right about photoshop elements, probably the reason I like it is because I'm not a graphic designer. If I was I'd probably find it quite limiting.

I do take my hat off to actinic, my website's been going for three years now and there's no way I could of got going so quickly without what it could provide out of the box. For the most part I also enjoy designing with it now that I'm beginning to want more control over my site.

If I have one criticism its that there is a gulf in the learning curve. I've got so far and now I need to leap that gulf to go any further, but I've decided that it might be because I'm not trying hard enough.

We all work with the same basic functionality, the ability for the customer to put something in the basket and buy it. The elements of design that sit round that can't make a successful site but they certainly contribute.

For instance, when I first started there was no way to get between the sections except by going back to the catalog page. Now customers can see and get to all the other sections no matter where they start from. Considering that nearly all my pages act as entry pages this allows each customer to see the whole site as soon as they arrive. This is a very simple and obvious design element that can increase business, my carts now have more multiple items. One that is available out of the box.

I'm not looking for the perfect design that will sell anything (though, like everyone else I'd take it if it was offered to me.) But I do think there are elements of actinic, specific things that I can do, that will help my site. I just don't know exactly what they are, or where I want to go.

(As well as non actinic things, like better photography.)

I guess one of the difficult things is that its easy to get feedback from the people who liked and trusted my site enough to buy, but more difficult to get feedback from the cusomters that didn't. And I think all of us who work alone get to that 'can't see the wood for the trees' stage.

Which is one of the reasons this forum is so useful.

[wjcampbe]

How many of you would accept this as a category 4?

http://www.rivierapublishing.co.uk/

[jont]

Is their site down Bill as I cannot connect using either FF or IE at the moment?

[jont]

Came upon this site using Actinic http://www.elementsgifts.co.uk/acatalog/index.html which to me is a great example of how design has been used to lift and create a great feel to the site yet the Actinic stuff and product layouts etc is little beyond a basic hack of the templates

[wjcampbe]

@jont #24
I have been having sporadic problems with them today, was fine all day yesterday.

[jont]

Ok have the Riviera site now - based on the original criteria for categorising actinic sites I personally would say it is a 2 maybe a 2.5 ... the homepage has certainly had a fair bit of work on it but inside remains much more standards IMHO

[Luddite]

How many of you would accept this as a category 4?

http://www.rivierapublishing.co.uk/

I agree with Jont - the homepage looks on its way to be being a 4, but there are plenty of actinic hallmarks on the inside - i'm impressed though!

[pinbrook]

Yep - Riveriera is a 2

Elementsgifts gets a 3 from me, the design is excellent, but there's still to many actinic bits and pieces

[Pneumatus]

IMO Riviera has a great FP as far as not looking actinic-like but the main catalogue inside looks very actinic-like... only a 2 for me. I really like Elements design... its nice and clean, doesnt look _too_ actinicy but they succesfully managed to leave a default page name from the original sections in their site (http://www.elementsgifts.co.uk/acata...om_a_List.html) Elements gets nearly a 3 from me

Personally for me, http://www.calibresupplies.co.uk/ is very close to a 4, especially in the Paper and Flash Memory sections but it definatly suffers from the fact it went through 1, 2 and 3 to get to where it is now modifying templates all the way from actinic v3 leaving a lot of very nasty code in there and areas that still look nearly actinic default.