E-Commerce Web Design Toolbox
By Steven Snell | Published July 27th, 2009 in ResourcesThis post is part of e-commerce week, which features e-commerce related content on DesignM.ag and the Vandelay Design blog, as well as e-commerce design inspiration at CartFrenzy.
In this post we will provide links to more than 45 resources to help you in your work of designing and developing e-commerce websites. The resources found in this post include shopping cart options, tutorials, template resources, inspiration and more.
Shopping Cart Options:
Choosing the right shopping cart for your site is a critical decision. There are plenty of options to choose from and most designers prefer to get to know 1 or 2 of them very well, rather than having a little bit of experience with many of the options. Here you will find some of the most popular choices, but if you are looking for more, please see 37 Shopping Cart Options for Developers.
Tutorials:
The tutorials listed here will offer some help for creating a shopping cart or designing an e-commerce site.
Build a Shopping Cart in ASP.NET
Build an AJAX Powered Shopping Cart
Build a PHP Shopping Cart with PayPal Integration (video series)
A PHP-Based Shopping Cart (a four-part series)
PHP MySQL Shopping Cart Tutorial
Using FoxyCart for eCommerce (video)
Building a Drag-and-Drop Shopping Cart with AJAX
E-Commerce Templates and Themes:
Many owners of e-commerce sites choose to use a template or theme that they can purchase (or download for free) rather than having a full custom design. Of course, the templates can also be customized. Here are some resources for finding templates and themes.
Hello Themes (Magento)
Silver Themes (Magento)
MagThemes (Magento)
TemplatesMaster (Magento)
eCommerce-Themes (Magento)
Template World (osCommerce)
Icons:
Having the right icons can make a huge difference for an e-commerce design, and here you will find some quality icons for this purposes. For a more extensive collection, please see a post I did for Six Revisions, 30 High-Quality Icon Sets for E-Commerce Designs.
E-Commerce Design Inspiration:
If you’re designing e-commerce sites, it can be extremely helpful to see examples of other well-design e-commerce sites for your own inspiration.
More inspiration from roundup posts:
- 50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs
- 25+ Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs – Part Two
- 20 Well-Designed E-Commerce Websites
Best Practices:
These two articles are helpful for any e-commerce designers.
- eCommerce and Shopping Cart Usability: 21 Best Practices
- 5 Universal Principles for Successful eCommerce Sites
