Must Design

Angela Jones, a freelance designer in St. Charles, Illinois, uncovers how 7 websites promote their products in exciting ways.

Marty Note - Great From Boring
Loved this post, but they bury the lead. Their tips aren't sub-heads but buried in the copy about the example. I liberated their 5 tips to create exciting sites for boring products:

* Employ imagery and icons that speak to the benefits (i.e. tell a story and match with cool visuals).
* Focus on HEADLINES that describe your benefits (i.e. use trusted sources and let THEM tell your story).
* Write creative copy (there are NO BORING PRODUCTS only boring stories lol).
* Minimal and easy to navigate (always a winner in my  book too, but especially if what you are selling is boring. YES I will spend 3x the time it should have taken to order the new iPhone despite the horrible web design, your product...not so much, so make it easy to buy.)
* Create Community & Let THEM (your customers) supply the amazing stories. When YOU tell your brand's story it is always more boring than the same words from a customer.
* VISUALS - boring products benefit from great visuals. Tilt your boring product, hang it from the rafters, find a way to depict excitement and excitement flows downstream to your product.

25 Great Web Design Tips From Forbes

1. The 5 Second Rule **

2. Proper Messaging

3. Call to Action **

4. Building Trust

5. Keep it Fresh

6. Incorporating Social Media
7. Don’t Make Me Think **

8. Web 2.0 – It’s About the User’s Needs, Not About You

9. Video **

10. Don’t Reinvent The Wheel

11. Don’t Fall Behind – Your Competitors Will Beat You

12. Security

13. Start with SEO in Mind **

14. Avoid Long Page Forms
15. Don’t Make Me Squint

16. Be an Industry Leader

17. It’s No Longer Just About the Desktop

18. Don’t Attempt to Target Everyone

19. Monitor Site Performance

20. It’s Web Pages, Not Websites That Rank

21. Your Website is a Component of Marketing

22. Good websites grow businesses.

23. Flash is dead.

24. Respect text.

25. Future requires wearable tech integration.

All 25 are great web design tips. Our favorite 5 are highlighted in bold.

The 10 most egregious UX offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.

Marty Note
If you took a day and fixed any of these Top 10 Web Design Mistakes That Apply you would make 50% more this holiday season. These are "cost of poker" fixes that can easily remain for years and years. Every year one of these mistakes exists your website is 10% less effective.

When you make 2 or more of these mistakes you pay with an order of magnitude more pain for each added mistake so 2 mistakes doesn't cost you 20%. No 2 mistakes cost you 200% of what your website could be doing for you.

Fix all 10 of these basic problems and your site is on its way to its "mission critical" place in your company.