For many retailers, there is no hotter word right now than mobile commerce. Many big name companies have already launched mobile sites and features for their brand and the buzz may entice smaller businesses to quickly jump on the mobile bandwagon. However, before even putting together a mobile strategy, there are several factors to consider.

You don’t need a degree in design to craft a strong user experience. While a professional may know a lot more than you do about crafting a functional and beautiful website – that is their job after all – not everyone can afford this expertise, especially when first starting out. However, instead of struggling along with a poor UX until you can afford to hire a design company, lets talk about a few simple ways you can make your website more user friendly.

Welcome to Beginning UX, a series dealing with the importance of crafting a strong user experience – and why, no matter how amazing your product is, it’s worth learning the techniques necessary to take your website from the most basic level of user friendly design all the way to incorporation of social media and more.

I came upon an interesting new service for Online sellers the other day and I wanted to share it with all our readers as an eCommerce Idea article. It’s really unique, useful and right in line with current eCommerce trends.

Before we get into the new service I wanted to briefly mention our last eCommerce Ideas article on Using Creative Linkbait and Engaging Customers At The Same Time. It featured another really creative eCommerce idea that at least one merchant is using. This idea article has the same concept, in that it’s a unique or creative idea that eCommerce merchants can use to improve or enhance their stores, however it’s not related to linkbait and customer features as much as it is related to eCommerce video content and store usability. Same concept, different topic basically.

Why eCommerce & Shopping Cart Usability Matter:

eCommerce and shopping cart usability matter mostly due to the fact that if a store is not easy to use, and simple to buy from, it can greatly affect it’s ability to generate regular sales or increase those sales over time, which makes it more difficult for merchants to grow their stores to the next level. Many of the most successful merchants got that way by following strict usability guidelines, search engines guidelines and by abiding by other Online selling best practices. It’s no accident that the best eTailers got where they are by doing what works and continuing to try to improve, although little bits of luck here and there certainly help and may sometimes also contribute to many of the big named companies success.

Online store usability and eCommerce shopping cart usability are extremely important factors for all online sellers, especially for the ones who hope to improve over time and are serious about increasing online sales to their potential. Many merchants forget that even the most simple changes can dramatically effect how their stores perform, both for users and search engines. In this article I will be mentioning 21 different factors that can dramatically increase results for nearly any type of Online store, especially ones that focus on an industry niche or cater to mass amounts of shoppers.

Network Solutions recently released a new whitepaper with information about how merchants can better plan and prepare their sites for the upcoming holiday season. The whitepaper is called, “7 Steps to Improve Your Online Holiday Sales” (link goes to the form you need to fill out in order to download the PDF). The paper uses data and statistics from other trusted industry sources such as Internet Retailer, eMarketer, Vertical Web Media and Practical eCommerce.

The whitepaper provides pretty good insights into eCommerce holiday shopping preparedness and also includes some hidden gems of information within it, however I thought they could have done a lot better job on the document length, topics covered and release date timing. Overall, I still enjoyed reading the PDF and recommend others read it, but in my opinion the topics and tips they provided were things that all merchants should practice, not only before the holidays, but year round.

Just when you thought Online shopping couldn’t get any better, Yahoo Shopping rolls out a few new features and shows us just how to make comparison shopping easier and more usable. Last week, Yahoo Shopping announced a brand new feature into their comparison shopping engine, Shop-by-Color. the new shop-by-color feature allows Yahoo Shopping users to browse for clothing and other items based on 56 different popular colors.

Shop.com has recently introduced several new features to their shopping portal and platform including a new shopping lifestyle blog (The Shopping Vine), a Facebook shopping application and gift registries for multiple stores. Shop.com hopes the new features will give customers more ways to shop and exchange information Online.

Microsoft Expression Studio, a set of professional design tools designed to give users the flexibility to bring their visions to reality, whether they are designing standards-based sites, rich user experiences on the desktop, or managing digital content. The Studio tools include Visual Studio 2007 Standard, Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Blend and Expression Media.

You can purchase Expression Studio for $599.00 or you can upgrade any of the individual Expression tools to the complete Studio for $349.00. A complete set of Studio FAQ’s and Individual Expression Program FAQ’s are available here.

404 is the code a Web server returns for certain pages the cannot be found when access is attempted. It’s what Web users see when they land on a page (usually when following a link or manually typing in a Web address) where the link location has changed, moved, or no longer exists. Webmasters have started using custom pages instead of the default Web server 404′s in an attempt to retain more visits and better serve the user base. Custom 404′s have become a trend over the years as more and more eBusinesses attempt to direct customers, who find pages that cannot be found, to a custom page that keeps users on the site giving them another chance to navigate to a different page.

There was a post the other day on eCommerce Cache about custom 404 pages that featured 26 different examples of top merchant 404 page designs and features. It features 404 pages from big names like Walmart, GAP, Netflix and more and includes ‘essential elements’ of a 404 page alongside the ‘things you should avoid’ using on your 404′s. The post is in depth and interesting, however I recommend using a different method to direct users who manage to land on a 404 page.