ClothingK

Features:

• Dynamically generated product showcase, pulled directly from search using Ajax.

Fascinating article from the www.WebPerformanceToday.com blog.  Walmart had a problem with their pages being slow and wanted to see how page load speed impacted sales.

The article is pretty technical but here are the cliff notes:

• For every 1 second of improvement they experienced up to a 2% increase in conversions.
• For every 100 ms of improvement, they grew incremental revenue by up to 1%
• SEO benefits for entry pages and reduce bounces

Bottom Line: faster eCommerce stores sell more.

Read the full article

After spending time in a template with horrific markup.  Here are some random unordered thoughts regarding CMS templates.

• A site's template is not just the "skin" of your site.  It should be evaluated just as critically as any other extension of the site.
• A pretty template doesn't mean it's a good template.
• Pick your 3rd party template vendor wisely.
• If a client "loves" the look of a template you know is complete crap underneath. Rebuild the template.
• Bells and whistles (ie. pretty faders and sliders and such.) are of limited value in the long run.
• Once you pick a template, you have essentially delegated/abdicated all design decisions to it.
• Templates can have an amazing impact on the speed and performance of a website.
• The more options a template has, the greater it's complexity, and the more difficult it is to perform custom development and styling.