E-Commerce Design Patterns

On 12:45:48 13 May 2006 textor wrote:

 

I think what Mike has in mind is that software people are big on reusable code, so that they don't re-invent the wheel every time they sit down to create a piece of software.  

Design patterns seem to me to be the designers equivalent, and I can see that they have huge potential.  

I can give you one design pattern that i see over and over again (including our sites.).  You hit checkout and you get a form that asks if you are a returning user, if so please enter your email and password, otherwise click here to continue.  I see the same design over and over again which is a good thing.

There must be dozens of such situations that a bit of standardisation would not only formalise best-practice and would also help customers a lot in finding their way around.  After all the reason that MS windows is so successful (I believe) is that it imposes a set of design patterns on software developers that makes it so much easier for users to start using unfamiliar applications.

Now a beef.  

A lot of designers want their site to look and work differently to other sites.  Its the 'creative' thing.  So you get scroll bars that don't work like regular scroll bars and radio buttons that look like checkboxes.  Bad bad bad.

Bob