Rasa Design Studio » eCommerce

The debate between tableless and table-based designs usually take place in the dark, smoke-filled virtual rooms of design and marketing forums and rarely make it out into the open as anything more than one obscure item on a list of features for certain applications. The question, “is tableless better?” is not even asked, anymore from anyone seriously in the field of design and marketing. The answer, “yes, it is a lot better” has been proven time and time again.

Tableless Structure in design is better for marketing, SEO, file sizes styling. It’s cheaper to maintain by designers that got past their first HTML tutorial before hiring themselves out and sites designed tableless have a much faster turn-around time.

The performance of our Tableless XHTML/CSS osCommerce demo store shows the power of this type of web site as it relates to Google and this is the number one reason why the tableless mark-up was considered the main component of our rewrite of that application.

Some designers (the ones least comfortable with CSS) will claim that it nested DIV tags aren’t a real improvement to nested Tables and will point to sites such as CSS Zen Garden as a prime example of nested DIV’s. This misses the point of CSS Zen Garden, which was using the mark-up to be more flexible to ALL designers and not reduce file sizes or redundant coding… a point it makes clearly on the site. Further, the designers don’t suggest how they would be able to achieve such a vast array of designs from a single chunk of XHTML with tables. The same designers also ignore the pudding that the proof is really found in: Google.

Where all else is the same and the number of incoming links are the same, tableless sites consistently out-perform tabled sites in everything from seo, w3 specs, load times, search engine rankings, file sizes.

The cost and time to make a design change with a single CSS file is reduced sharply compared to changes in tables across every document of a site. I’m able to produce a CSS osCommerce site in 7 – 10 days as compared to the 21 – 42 days for an osCommerce classic site. At $30 per hour, that translates into a huge savings.

Server performance is another issue with osCommerce. Most osCommerce designers use a template system to design their osCommerce site and this increases the load on the server significantly, slowing the site down during peak hours for visitors. The alternative is to STS or some other template is to code the PHP directly and that involves wading through thousands of lines of code across hundreds of documents. Tableless CSS osCommerce has the structure grouped together on a few pages and the design — using CSS — is located on ONE page.

No templates needed. Server gets to breathe a sigh of relief.

The newest applications and blog software use tableless mark-up for one real reason: It’s better.

Anyone who thinks that a picture is not worth a thousand words in the world of eCommerce is ignoring the tens of billions of dollars that are spent each year on exactly that. Whole magazines such as Vogue are devoted to high-end photographs of products with the idea of creating desire in the hearts and minds of readers. With the thousands that can be spent on the design and marketing of a web site, though, it’s remarkable that most designers and design clients seem to miss the boat when it comes to the presentation of their own products.

It’s not enough to throw up a bunch of snapshots of products and hope that a visitor will ignore the poor quality enough to purchase a product. Getting quality photographs, though, requires more than hiring a photographer with a good reputation and portfolio. The components to a good commercial shoot requires planning, thought and coordination. Depending on whether there are models involved, a typical shoot also requires several specialists working together as a team.

If you’re working on a small, or even non-existent budget, there are several solutions that will enable you to achieve the photographs you need.

The Retail Clothing Photography Team

To shoot for a retail clothing web site, the following is needed:

Studio: An indoor studio with backdrop and lighting may or may not be available from the photographer. If you decide to hire a photographer, but the photographer does not have access to a well-stocked studio, then consider rental studios. Most cities have several photography studios available for hourly, half-day and daily rates.

Photographer: The photography portfolio of a good commercial photographer should contain catalog-quality shots that emphasize the products being sold rather than the models. If the budget for a photographer is very small, consider a trade arrangement in which you give credit on your site for the photographer in return for the photographer’s time and work. www.modelmayhem.com (link opens new window) is a good source for models and photographers.

Models: Models, starting out, need to build a portfolio by making trades called TFP: “Trade For Print” or TFCD: Trade For CD. Again, www.modelmayhem.com (link opens new window) is a good source for models and photographers. It’s relatively easy to find attractive models on their way up in the profession that are willing to exchange their time and image in return for credit and the ability to show the images on their own portfolios.

Hair-stylists, Makeup Artists, Wardrobe Specialists, etc. www.modelmayhem.com (link opens new window) is a good source for models and photographers and also other specialists. Forgetting these specialists spells the difference between an amateur and a professional shoot, though. TFP and TFCD arrangements are common for professionals that are just starting out and budget-conscious web site owners can make use of such arrangements for mutual benefit.

Rasa Design Studio is currently working on a new web site to be launched at the beginning of 2010 to provide a commercial photography infrastructure to the mid-atlantic states: Washington, DC, VA and MD. Check back on these pages for more information in the near future.