E-Commerce Design Patterns

What is a design pattern? A way of describing the principles underlying a problem that occurs frequently in a specific context. In other words, they are a distillation and summary of best practice, that can be applied quickly and effectively to create a variety of specific design solutions (see Design Patterns Defined ).

Is anyone using Design Patterns? In February this year Yahoo! started to publish the design patterns they use in the design of all their web properties. These are actually the patterns that their developers created to make sure they capture what best practice means to Yahoo! and to minimise the amount they need to re-invent the wheel.

How can I use them? E-Commerce Design Patterns are available free to all E-consultancy subscribers. Furthermore, we are developing ways to enable corporate subscribers to keep their own in-house design patterns automatically updated with industry best practice, using the latest Web 2.0 technologies (contact us for more information).

How do I find the right pattern to use? The navigation menu below is designed to give you access to the design patterns in two ways: firstly they are arranged by typical tasks done by e-commerce teams . Secondly they are organised thematically - patterns that relate to similar elements of e-commerce sites are grouped together. 

Join our E-Commerce Patterns Community? There are two ways to get involved. 1. Read about Patterns in our E-consultancy blogs and comment. 2. Offer to help - the more people are willing to help write, refine and test our design patterns, the more robust and valuable they will become.  
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Background to the E-Commerce Design Patterns and comments.
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The Patterns

IMPORTANT: At present we are exploring the role and value of patterns within e-commerce. To test this we have published 3 patterns, all on search and are preparing another small set of patterns on the checkout process (subscribers only). If such patterns prove valuable, however, the navigation menu below shows how we envisage E-Commerce Design Patterns evolving and how they might be organised for ease of use.

Find by task:

Customer acquisition: Home page; Product-specific landing page; Email promotion landing page; Refer-a-friend link.

Sales conversion: Navigation; Search ; Product category page; Product page; Up-sell/cross-sell; Feature filtering; Product description; Product images; Add to basket process; Checkout.

Customer retention: After-sales email; Registration; Email promotions; Privacy policy.

Whole site review: Site architecture; Navigation; Search ; Feature filtering.

Find by theme:

Whole pages: Home page; Product category page; Product page; Search results page; Shopping basket/cart; Checkout page.

Page elements: Navigation panel; Search box; Up-sell/cross-sell; About us; Contact us; Shopping basket elements.

Customer journeys: Help me find; Help me choose; Help my buy; Add to basket process; Checkout.

Author: Mike Baxter | Blog entry on Design Patterns Defined | Last modified: 6th June 2006
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