Plan a Flash Application

Purpose, Audience, Treatment, Specifications

Some of us like to jump right into Adobe Flash and start designing. This is where a lot of developers waste time and money. Have a plan.
The first thing to do is decide what you and your client are looking to accomplish, a purpose. This is a good way to keep anyone involved in the project on track.
Secondly, determine your audience. This is very important. If it is being designed for children, you may want to include animals with moving parts whenever the cursor is rolled over an animal. After all, you can't aim to hit a target if you don't know where the bullseye is at.
Next, decide how the application will be presented to the user: Tone, approach, and emphasis on the different multimedia elements in the application.
Fourth, create a flowchart and storyboard to start placing the elements together in line with your ideas. Specifications include the arrangement of elements and the functionality of each. A flowchart will help to pinpoint any aberrations in navigation scheme before work begins. Planning out the user interface of an interactive project is important because employing design guidelines becomes more crucial. Such elements here to scrutinize are optical balance, unity, movement, and simplicity.
After all of this be sure to test the application for consistency and user control functionality.

E-Commerce Web Design Tips

I recently have undertaken an E-Commerce website, and begun to research effective strategies I would like to share . . .

1. Image accounts for a lot, and when your potential customer is checking out your products or services online, they want to do what they would normally do in the store (or as close to it as possible), online: For your business, this means taking excellent photography that shows your product in different contexts, or environments, and at different angles.

2. Let your customers know they are secure before they get to the 'Pay Now' purchase page. You can do this by signing up for a $2 a month SiteLock badge (the site conducts security constantly monitors your site to ensure your information is not being compromised), or if your website has another method, make sure it is posted on the homepage of your website somewhere along with subsequent order pages.

3. Your website: Clean + Professional = Trustworthy. Simple as that.

4. Link to your businesses contact information from every page, and make that link easy to be found.

5. Streamline your checkout process: Don't ask for someone's information before they have agreed to make a purchase. Then have options to 'Log In' for a repeat customer, or is a new customer, check a box if they want your site to retain their information for future purchases. Then have another check box to be added to a mailing list.

6. Offer some form of guarantee or a discount. Be sure to make this pronounced on the product page.

7. If the word 'FREE' is ANYWHERE pertaining to a product, make it bold or easy to point out to a page onlooker.

8. Give your customers more than one payment method to 'checkout' with.

9. Don't confuse your buyers: Place a limited amount of information on each subsequent page leading up to checkout, so they will be focused on what they set out to do: Purchase your product! If they see an advertisement and click on it, or a link to a news article of interest, they may not return!

10. Lastly, give your customers navigation tools when checking out and a 'progress bar' on each checkout page to let buyers be aware of where they are at in the checkout process.

Any suggestions would be of aid, as a website viewer.