'Net Features : Zappos

Design Inspiration from the Web 100

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:55:00 GMT

From innovative navigational elements to design based on customer feedback, Web 100 companies design for the user experience. These top digital destinations are also setting the bar and changing consumer expectations.

Here are six companies, one from each Web 100 category, that are improving their bottom line with design.

Chase.com

Category: Finance
Design Takeaway: Listen to your users!

A clearer, simpler Chase.com arrived in late 2012. The redesign centered on cleaner, more user-friendly aesthetics, including clearer language and navigation that is more purposeful. For example, all of Chase’s products and services can be viewed in just one click.

The redesign was the multiyear product of incorporating feedback from customers on what they want to see from the number one most visited banking website. Even though customers wanted a new Chase.com, not everyone likes change, however, especially such a drastic one. The financial company took a ‘rip off the Band-Aid’ approach, but explained the new home page to users visiting the site for the first time since the re-launch and even made the login area take up nearly 50 percent of the page’s real estate.

Visitor cookies eventually take over and indicate to Chase to swap out the re-design content (for things like credit card offers) and a smaller login space. The image below is with cookies.

Coca-ColaCompany.com

Category: Lifestyle
Design Takeaway: Break the mold.

Visit nearly any corporate website, and dull design is sure to follow. Visit Coca-Cola’s, and you’ll get a website that uses content marketing and visual elements to spark your interest and bring you into the Coca-Cola “journey”. The iconic brand completely reimagined the way a corporate website can look, feel and function. The site doesn’t fit into one category, but is a destination for investors, businesses and consumers. Its home page caters to all of these groups seamlessly.

Coca-Cola uses its above-the-fold assets to promote articles and videos, while the below-the-fold area features visually appealing company statistics, conversations and social elements. Again, it’s difficult to pinpoint the direction that Coca-Cola wants to take you to when arriving on the homepage, but that might be the goal – to get lost in the Coca-Cola Journey.

Pinterest.com

Category: News & Media
Design Takeaway: Images are everything.

When Pinterest pinned itself as a contender in the social scene, it did so in a way we had not yet seen. Its main content comes in the form of images, which users can pin, repin, like and comment on. Pinterest’s use of image tiles was the real groundbreaker, as many other companies – including eBay and Interscope – have imitated the design and have seen increased engagement levels. Pinterest also offers a streamlined navigational bar and search function that helps users sorts through the countless pins of Pinterest.

Moreover, while the social network still brings out all of our crafty sides, Pinterest has major e-commerce benefits, as merchants are increasing website traffic, conversions and finding creative ways to make the site grow their business.

Zappos.com

Category: Retail/Consumer Goods
Design Takeaway: Leave a trail.

Between millions of dollars of ad spend on Facebook and its partnership with Commission Junction, Zappos knows a thing or two about acquisition. The customer-first brand also knows it’s their job to provide an effortless user experience. One of the ways Zappos achieves this is through its use of breadcrumbs, which can work by either showing users other available product options or by providing a list of refinements that users have made to filter their searches (this helps users trace their searching steps).

Besides easier navigation, breadcrumbs also make the structure of your site more transparent to readers.

att.com

Category: Service Providers
Design Takeaway: Never stop innovating.

AT&T is a ubiquitous think tank that drives and delivers innovation in seemingly impossible ways. Its website, att.com, keeps up with this momentum. In 2012, the brand made several enhancements as part of its continual improvement of the online experience for its customers. Upgrades to the site design and technology have made it easier and faster for customers to get what they need, whether they are shopping, managing their accounts or need help.

For example, AT&T redesigned its account management page to make the most common tasks and most requested information easier to find.

Apple.com

Category: Tech
Design Takeaway: More is less.

There’s a reason why Apple’s product packaging is often kept as long as the products themselves. Not only is nothing about the wrapping wasteful (everything has a function), but the product inside is so high quality you are sure you’ll be able to repackage it and repurpose it.

Apple.com works in much the same way. The design takes a minimalist approach that makes the site easy to navigate and visually appealing – almost like a tablet or mobile-like experience.

Zappos Tracks Pinterest Conversions with Pinfluencer

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:15:00 GMT

As Pinterest continues its slow but steady ascent to social media greatness, brands are turning to the platform in droves to raise awareness with their target consumers and, in some cases, even turning a profit. As more and more enterprises start leveraging the platform, there will be a greater need to understand, on a high level, just how well they are performing.

Case in point, Pinfluencer (a marketing and analytics solution for Pinterest) has announced that online apparel and footwear retailer Zappos has selected its solution to provide performance analytics about its campaigns focusing on the social media site’s audience.

“Pinfluencer creates a web-based platform for us at Zappos to easily track online performance of our boards on Pinterest,” said Graham Kahr, social scientist at Zappos. “Through Pinfluencer, we have been able to boost audience engagement, site traffic and virality which results in increased earned media conversations and sales for our company. We now have a way to actually measure the ROI of our Pinterest initiatives. This is huge for us as a company and for the industry.”

Zappos will have quite a bit of actionable information available to it which will further fuel its already impressive social media and content marketing initiatives. Using Pinfluencer, Zappos will be able to track the pins that are driving engagement, clicks and revenue, and most importantly to track user eligibility of contests that are run through the platform.

Pinfluencer to date has been one of the only solutions on the market for brands to get direct value out of the Pinterest platform. Brands who ran their contests and sweepstakes on Pinfluencer increased their follower acquisition rate by 156 percent while their pins/day jumped by 125 percent. Since the October 2012 beta launch of its promotions and contests platform, Pinfluencer has hosted and tracked more than 100 promotions for brands such as Gilt, Jetsetter, WayFair, Martha Stewart and Shape Magazine.

Types and Tips for Online Security Threats

Administrator — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 16:11:00 GMT

By Americaneagle.com Chief Technology Officer, Ryan McElrath

There are many common threats against websites today. According to the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and McAfee, close to one in five Americans report being victimized by a crime that was committed over the Internet. Whether it is a social media website such as Facebook or Twitter, an e-commerce website or a company website, every online platform is vulnerable to security attacks. It’s incumbent upon you to be aware of these types of attacks and make sure you and your hosting company are prepared to handle them.

While online threats are always evolving, there are a few in particular that are currently popular among hackers:

1. There are Web application attacks where hackers exploit vulnerabilities within the website code or Web server security. Common techniques for this include SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting. A hacker may use an attack like this to extract sensitive information (like credit card data) or post malware, which is then downloaded by unknowing end users of the site.

2. There are distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks where hackers attempt to take a website offline by overwhelming it with traffic rather than trying to gain access to sensitive data. Botnets of potentially thousands (and thousands) of infected computers spread out around the world are typically used to launch these types of attacks that can last for multiple hours or even days. Outages caused by DDoS attacks can result in heavy financial loss, as well as significant damage to a company’s reputation.

3. There are also social engineering attacks where hackers trick humans into giving them privileged information over the phone or via email, which is then used to log into unauthorized systems. Phishing is an example of this – this is when a hacker sends an email that appears to be legitimate and tricks the email recipient into typing his or her login/password into a website that resembles the real site. The hacker then uses that login/password to gain access to the real website.

Within the last several years, Sony, LinkedIn, Zappos, Yahoo, the South Carolina Department of Revenue and several major universities have all been victims of security breaches that exposed the personal data of millions of people. Meanwhile, large-scale DDoS attacks have knocked a number of high-profile websites offline, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, MasterCard, NASDAQ, the FBI and the CIA.

With each of these types of security attacks, companies need to be aware that no matter how large or small they are, hackers are constantly looking for weaknesses within websites.

Below are a few simple tips on how to reduce the risk of the most common threats that will pay tenfold in the long run:

1. Using a Web application firewall (WAF) is a very effective way to help defend your website against application attacks that attempt to extract sensitive data from your site. A Web application firewall sits in front of your website and filters all requests, blocking requests that match the pattern of common attacks such as SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting. Imperva’s Cloud WAF is an affordable software-as-a-service (SaaS) product for small to mid-enterprise businesses that offers the highest levels of website security without requiring a large equipment investment.

2. A common misconception about distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is the idea that your Web hosting provider will be able to stop any attack against your website with the firewalls within their data center. The reality is that these attacks continue to increase with intensity and regularly overrun even the most powerful of firewalls, causing outages for your website. The best defense against these types of attacks is to have protection through a DDoS mitigation provider that can filter requests through their scrubbing centers before the attack reaches your site’s infrastructure. These scrubbing centers allow legitimate traffic to continue through to your website while stopping the attack traffic that is attempting to knock your website offline.

3. Organizations can better protect themselves against social engineering attacks by training employees on security issues and going over specific methods that hackers may use to trick them into giving up personal information. For example, some common techniques used by hackers include acting like an internal employee or pretending that they’re conducting a survey as a way to justify the types of questions they’re asking. It’s important for employees to know that if they’re suspicious of a call or email, to ask their manager before releasing the information.

Organizations should create an incident response procedure to be used in the event that your website’s security is breached. As part of the procedure, your organization should notify the necessary authorities regarding the attack. This includes your local FBI office as well as the major credit card associations if card data is exposed during the attack.

About the Author: Ryan McElrath is the chief technology officer of Americaneagle.com, which is a Web design and hosting company based in Park Ridge, Illinois. Some of their 5,000-plus clients include Hobby Lobby, New York Giants, NASCAR, Stuart Weitzman, Garrett Popcorn, Chicago Bears, Abbott Laboratories and the U.S. Army.