I touched upon the idea conventions in my post about Play.com’s searching, but conventions are a big part of pretty much any site. If your design can help visitors quickly identify what it’s about, they’ll immediately make sub-conscious assumptions about what they’ll see.
- A blog will have a list of categories/tags; a series of posts; a search and maybe a calendar, etc.
- A shop will have basket functionality; product searching and categorisation; promotions, etc.
- And so on…
Looking at the second of those – shops – Smashing Magazine have listed 15 common errors shop designers and implementers make. A lot of these are linked to the user expectation. Some are framework issues (i.e. the base cart application), some are issues of content (i.e. the fault of the people who are actually populating the shop) and some boil down to a lack of appreciation for what the user expects when they visit an e-commerce site. (My post on Play.com certainly relates to point 6).
There’s certainly an amount of good advice here if you’re trying to deliver an e-commerce solution.