Below is a quick run-down of what I’ve seen out there. What are you using?

Zen-Cart
Well-known and well used, with years of development behind it and an active community of developers and supporters. Powerful features, integrates with any number of payment gateways, and plenty of free add-ons/modules available, but still very old school looking. Will it ever get to Zen Cart 2.0?

UberCart
 Due to its integration with Drupal, UberCart seems to be taking off with a lot of developers. Allows for custom product fields, anonymous checkout, and one-page checkout.

VirtueMart
All the standard features you’d expect, but like UberCart and Drupal, VirtueMart’s main virtue seems to be its integration with Joomla and Mambo.

Magento
One of the most attractive packages out of the box, with the ability to manage multiple stores under one admin. Paid support available. Still very new, just out of beta, I’ve heard mixed reviews of how ready-for-primetime this software is yet.

PrestaShop
Just ran across this European offering, with a neat, easy-to-understand backend admin. Doesn’t seem to have a lot of payment gateways supported as of yet.

Considering Amazon doesn’t have a retail store front where physical products – the product’s packaging doesn’t need to be marketing or theft-proof.

A round of applause for Amazon for coming up with this innovation and for having the pull with manufacturers to implement it.

Not only does this save frustration, it also uses fewer materials, less ink, is easier to dispose of. Overall less energy across the board. It’s also a fantastic example of how Amazon is completing with physical retailers by not replicating them.

Ideal Candidates have:

• Expert knowledge of hand-coded HTML (XHTML and DHTML inclusive), CSS and JavaScript based on web standards and best practices for code optimization, accessibility and SEO.
• Ability to quickly troubleshoot HTML / CSS / ASP / JSP / PHP / JavaScript / Web Browser / Network Issues / DNS / etc. related problems.
• Proven ability to speak to groups and evangelize solutions or concepts and explain them in business terms including the ability to review existing or 3rd party code and deliver feedback.
• Willingness to diversify knowledge in a small team of web developers by a continuous teaching and learning cycle between members.

Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree with 5+ years of experience or an Associate degree with 8+ years of experience.
• 5+ years: Advanced HTML, CSS, and JavaScript hand-coding and troubleshooting skills.
• 4+ years of web development experience on large, complex websites.
• 3+ years: ASP/JSP/PHP or similar web coding experience and troubleshooting skills.
• 2+ years: Demonstrated consultative experience architecting, proposing, and collaborating with business teams on web initiatives and applications.

Note: Candidates dependent upon WYSIWYG applications to complete their work will not be considered.

To see a full description and apply for this position, please see the job post on CareerBuilder.

I’m familar with most of the pros/ cons of PNG and have utilized them for their benefits in gradients and tackled the whole IE transparency issue. The question is, would you bother with PNG?

Here’s the process I expected:

1. Click Membership in the top nav of Costco.com
2. Click on a ‘Renew Now’ button
3. Enter my membership number and a credit card number
4. Get back to work

Instead, they made it much more “engaging”:

1. Click Membership in the top nav of Costco.com
2. Create an “online” Costco account with a bunch of profile info they already have in my existing membership
3. Create a password. Such a bad idea, if passwords are to be meaningful, they need to be generated by the site – not the person.
4. Click ‘Renewal’ in the left-hand nave of the resulting page
5. Click the only option they offer me in the main page body
6. Then, they want me to guess how much my membership fee is (seriously). They know my membership number, they can just tell me.
   
7. After guessing a few times, I decided to call them
8. They were experiencing “heavier than expected call volumes” and my hold time would be 20 minutes.
9. I hung up, closed the browser window and got back to work

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to renewal anyway. They made it easy to decide.

So, you can see why I’m not impressed by the pissing match between Target and Disney.

“Our space, signing, promotional programs and the hundreds of millions of consumers in our stores annually should not be undervalued.” – Target President Gregg Steinhafel

Mr. Steinhafel – I completely agree, Disney is selling movies on iTunes for less than they’re charging you because – the digital versions are in-fact less valuable; lower quality, not pre-backed-up, hyper-touchy DRM, can’t wrap it up and stuff it in a Christmas stocking.

I ran across this section of a form today and thought it could use some improvement, simplification, etc. Rather than saying, ‘this is bad’ and leaving it at that, I thought there could be an interesting conversation about how to improve it. With that, it’s the first of what I’ve dubbed the ‘lunchtime redesign challenge’.

With that, I challenge you – interaction design superstar – to take a minute over lunch today or tomorrow and sketch up an improvement and post it in the comments. You have until 1pm Central, Friday August 4th 2006. I’ll post my solution and the offending website at that time as well.

RE: Fred’s questions below:
The company in question is a service company with operations in the US, Canada, and the UK. The online form is used by customers to schedule visits to the customer’s location. The phone number is then used by their agents to confirm the scheduled appointment.

UPDATE – MY SOLUTION:
My solution echos the solution Michael Cook mentions in the comments (Hi Michael, good to hear from you…been awhile). A single ‘Phone’ field.

This reduces confusion on the company’s part (which number should we call?) and greatly simplifies the form. As an added benefit, this single field could be used for both the UK and the North American sites as it makes no assumptions on number formatting.

If a second phone number is needed, put the burden on those with multiple phone numbers, something like this:

If you’d like to see this field in context, walk through the booking process at 1-800-Got-Junk

Can you put the Apple iPod deal into perspective?

It is part of our overall digital strategy, something Bob Wright had laid out for us for more than a year now, which is to make our content as ubiquitous as possible, to have it be available on as many screens as possible. We want it to be on all the platforms.

Will TV as we know it die? How will TIVO and it’s brethren fair when all media is downloadable (legally) via the web?

I imagine there is going to be years of shakedown between these media formats. In the end, consumers will win, but there will be lots of victims in the process. I feel on demand, content when you want it– is going to win vs. hard copy (DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, TIVO).

*****
This just in…

According to this www.ilounge.com article. We may be seeing HBO joining the fray.

First, a look at what activity based shopping should be. They don’t have a brick and morter market to visit, but simondelivers.com has the right idea. When you make your list, you think- “I’m going to make fajitas… I need, chicken, tortillas, cheese…” and add those to the list. Online shopping of course, lets you click “Fajitas” and then lets you tweak from there. Big time saver, especially if you just take what they give you. Simon takes it a bit further though. There are several different methods of choosing a meal, with most you can choose the main course, and add sides and dessert or others as you see fit:

• Healthy- this appears to not be available for me, but you can sign up to get a full weeks worth of healthy fresh meals that are rotated amongst 100 or so different meals and capped at a calorie limit
• One click meals- you click on pasta, and you get a handful of meals with all the items you would pick up in the store shown there. You can buy each one, or the whole meal at once. Ideal if you actually like to get a pot or two dirty
• Ready to heat- place in oven or microwave.
• Ready to cook -raw meats and veggie type meals. Steak and potato type meals
• A la carte-Parts of the above meals as near as I can figure
• Simon’s Diner- fresh prepared meals that are “ready to heat”

There are so many choices here, that I haven’t quite figured out the differences available between all those (Simon’s diner vs ready to heat?, one click versus ready to cook?). The cost is $6,delivered to my apartment in special containers to keep the colds cold. Beats the line and hassle of the local market.

Speaking of which, my local grocery store (Hy-Vee, Rochester MN) is doing its part. It allows you to build your order online and for 5 dollars, will have someone compile everything for you. You pull up to the store, someone rolls out a cart and loads you up. You don’t even need to get out of the car. There’s a little focus on the meal or “activity”, but the website is not nearly as easy to use as simondelivers. Hy-Vee goes one step further by allowing you to enter your grocery list as you would using say notepad or something,and it will search for matches… you type “yogurt” ‘and it will pull up all the yogurt there, and you add the one you want to your cart. Simon delivers will remember master shopping lists as a starting point, but I would welcome that function in the simon site.

Meal (activity) based shopping and all the ecommerce trimmings makes for an interesting discussion by itself, but there’s something I found just slightly more interesting about all this. Namely, it flies against everything I’ve thought about supermarket layouts and design; it’s no surprise that you have to walk completely across the store to get milk or eggs, or bread. It’s so that you get exposure to as much product as possible. You might impulse buy. The layout of the aisles is changed once you’ve memorized it for the same reasons. They seek the balance of convenience for the shopper and maximizing exposure (convenience for the store).

So what’s this online stuff? Where is the convenience for Hy-Vee (simon is different since they only exist online)? Is a pleasant customer experience really what’s driving this for them? The Hy-Vee site I use does not push any products at me. The closest it comes, is if I click “allow substitutions” they fill in with the store brand (I hope this is substituting if the original is not available, and not just on a whim to inflate store brand numbers). The simondelivers site has a main page of ads that focuses on both sale products and services offered.

Most importantly though, grocery shopping is finally supportive for the budget conscience (who isn’t?). Just like any other online app, you can see exactly what you are being charged as you go, and if you are over budget, you don’t have to run back to the other side of the store to put the frozen pizza’s back, you just remove it. Again- this is not news to anyone, just another step towards a nice UX. I’ve always wished markets had a “go back” self near the cash registers. I always go over budget and realize it as I’m heading to the register. I don’t want to burden the checker with the items I don’t want buy, and I certainly don’t want to return them to the shelves throughout the store. I see most people just shove them in crevices in and around the checkout stand. If there was an area nearby to place unwanted items, I would use it.. but I’m certain it doesn’t exist because a large enough number of people will just buy the unwanted items anyway.

I’m (pleasantly) surprised that these services exist. I’m curious what the motivations are for the stores to offer them. Is the 5 dollar charge worth the overhead? Is Customer satisfaction guiding all of this? How many people use these services? I hope they continue to grow and improve. Speaking of which, the web application Hy-Vee uses has some usability issues (simondelivers is very slick), but baby steps my friends, one thing at a time.