Top 10 Most User-Friendly Sites

Looking for clean layouts

[is300]

Are there any sites where I can view layouts and/or study award winning e-commerce designs? I have an emergency shopping cart I need to put together and am very concerned about developing a user friendly and SE friendly interface.

I thought going to popular sites like amazon would make a good guide but to me that site is cluttered disaster.

Any ideas for award winning layouts? Has anyone seen any books on the subject or sites dedicated to e-commerce design issues?

[victor]

Check out past/present webby award nominees / winners for examples / inspiration.

[PFOnline]

coolhomepages is also good for insipiration, and even has a listing of "very clean" sites, like you are looking for.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 2:08 pm (utc) on June 3, 2004]
[edit reason] "Unlinked URLs" are discouraged [/edit]

[Morocco]

OverStock

GSI Commerce Sites

YouCanSave

These are just a few.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 2:10 pm (utc) on June 3, 2004]
[edit reason] URLs removed [/edit]

[hannamyluv]

You know, I wouldn't write off the big, popular sites like Amazon and eBay. While they may look cluttered, you have to remeber that those companies spend thousands, if not millions on usability and marketing testing. They have what they have because they know it works.

There is something to be said for clean design, but you have to be careful there too. I have seen lots of "clean" design websites that were put together badly from a marketing standpoint. Things like checkout buttons being too small and too blah because they looked "cleaner" being small and the same color as everything else on the page.

Be careful of the awards too. Some of them go purely on a design perspective, so again, the sites may look nice, but it's no garuntee that they are sites that will convert.

[hannamyluv]

Just another thought. If you are looking for a clean checkout, you can't get much cleaner than Amazon's. They took out every possible link so the customer can't get distracted.

[wackal]

why are the URL's being edited out? I've read the TOS a few times and I can't find anywhere where it says that you can't post URL's

[is300]

does anyone think etoys is a good site to model?
jacob nielson seems to think this is a good one.

[digitalv]

those companies spend thousands, if not millions on usability and marketing testing

A lot of people think this is the case, but really it's not ... they don't spend any money on this stuff, they just watch their web stats and user feedback. The webmasters they hire already "know" what look works and what doesn't (usually..heh). Also the top brass, often times Internet idiots, use the site themselves and they'll let the designers know if something is annoying or not.

[Robino]

Overstock doesn't work too well in FireFox.

Nordstrom has a pretty clean, user-friendly layout.