Hungry Hikers

Last Friday I launched Hungry Hikers, the web store front of a local Portland business that sells quick-to-make meals for hikers, cyclists and outdoorsy types.

The Client decided they wanted to use Shopify as their e-commerce solution and I couldn’t have been happier. While certainly not perfect, Shopify has powerful tools that help get your store up and running as well as let designers and developers be able customize the experience. They have a pretty good support forum and a developer community that is always finding ways to use their proprietary code called Liquid to its fullest.

The design was done by Josh Leo whom I’ve been working with on the last few projects. He’s also an outdoors enthusiast, so he jumped at the chance to add his quirky and organic designs to such a product.

Hungry Hikers also has a grocery section that has a few items I’ll certainly pick up (like the powdered coconut milk!). Head over there and check it out!

While you can see I’ve concentrated much on using WordPress as a light-weight and easy-to-use CMS for my clients, I’ve also done a few sites that worked better as hand-coded HTML and used J-query to give it some motion and playfulness.

I’m currently available for hire and would love to work with you!

For those of you hungering for more of my work, you can check out the older Portfolio page here.

Happy New Year!

One of my clients (iheartpolly.com) is on this little Microsoft Spot. You can even see the website in the background, yay!

I bring this up because Velo City Bags, makers of fine bicycling messenger bags and accessories, whose products I love, just redesigned their website to be full of motion and side scrolling. It’s slick, it’s pretty, the motion is smooth the coding is solid. But it fails as an effective e-commerce site, because it takes at least six clicks to add one thing to the cart (and that’s not even clicking on any of the options).

This site is a perfect example of where pretty can actually hurt your sales. I’m a firm believer that if anything takes more than two clicks to do, no one is going to do it, much less buy it. Your e-commerce site doesn’t have to be ugly or plain, there is a balance that can be reached, but it’s important to remember the function of an e-commerce site is to make money, above all else. Keep that in mind during the design process and you’re golden.

Check it out: The Mysterious “Save For Web” Color Shift

I only wish I found this years ago.

I’m Writing a Book. from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

Merlin talks about his upcoming book (should he finish it) and rants a little about WordPress blue.

Hmm, gonna let this one steep a bit before I upgrade.

So here’s the situation: Every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font. That means you can write a bit of CSS, include a URL to a font file, and have your page display with the typography you expect. For designers and developers, this is a significant step forward. No longer will you need to trap your content in images or Flash just to express yourself visually. Pages will be more usable, accessible, and indexable. This is a massive upgrade for the web.

via Introducing Typekit « The Typekit Blog.

The only thing that bothers me is the definition of “major browser”, but I know several of my clients will be happy to see this news once it becomes available!

However, I will still steer my client’s clear of using Old English Gothic text for their post texts!