This 404 error page best practice from online store Ballard Designs, seems so obvious I’m surprised I’ve never seen it mentioned before. In addition to providing your visitor with the usual links to home, search, customer service, etc, why not provide them with actual product recommendations?
UX Design
Image Carousel Click-through Rate Analysis
Following on from my recent post about why you shouldn’t use rotating image carousels I wanted to share the actual stats for a auto-rotating carousel on a key page of an ecommerce site I manage in order to look at how effective it is for showcasing multiple pieces of content. Read More

Why You Should Not Use Image Carousels on Your Website
A web design element that I have commonly used is the image carousel or image slider. However, I recently caught up with some articles that highlight usability issues with them.
This has caused me to question my fondness for them as a way to present hero content above the fold when space is limited.
Read MoreGet Buy-in Faster with this One-page Usability Test Plan Dashboard
I often struggle to get stakeholders to read project documents, even if they are something as simple as a two-page creative brief. Read More
Is “The Fold” Really a Myth?
Sometimes it feels like “the fold” comes up in every design-related conversation I have with stakeholders. “Can’t we put more content above the fold?” “This banner pushes the call to action below the fold.” And so on.
Read More
Improving Ecommerce Site Search with Redirects
Jacob Nielsen recently posted an interesting article on how to improve the usability of website search, given that users are typically so poor at using search effectively.
Read MoreForbes Doesn’t Care About the User Experience
Check out this slideshow from Forbes about America’s Most Miserable Cities. Other than the paper-thin amount of reporting going on, the main thing that strikes me is the amount of advertising on each page.
Read More2012 US Election Maps: How the Media Presented the Results
I’m always interested in the different visual approaches that news outlets and other media organizations take to representing major news events, and this year’s presidential election was no exception.
Read More12 Landing Page A/B Testing Results That Will Surprise You
The folks at unbounce have rounded up a great collection of landing page A/B tests where the results may not be what you’d expect at first glance.
Read MoreDesign Patterns: When to Use and When to Break the Rules
As a proponent of design patterns, it was interesting to read Design Patterns: When Breaking The Rules Is OK in Smashing Magazine recently, in which the author highlighted the potential inadequacies of design patterns.
Read More