Microsoft .NET Server Solutions for the Enterprise

The Shopper Perspective

Retail Web sites have been around long enough that most of us have a pretty good sense of what we expect as shoppers. Some features are found on virtually every retail Web site, but the elegance of the design varies. Other features are less common, and tend to vary from site to site. These features, broadly defined, are as follows:

• Navigation. We expect to be able to browse around the site without having to tell the site who we are. There needs to be an obvious paradigm for moving around the site. Perhaps the most common paradigm involves a navigation pane on the left and a content pane on the right. Sometimes, there is a standardized navigation bar along the top of each page as well. Common activities, such as looking for contact information, what's new, FAQs, or help, should be very uncomplicated to find.