Magento Design Guidelines

The purpose of this guide is to raise awareness of designing for a specific purposeand technology (Magento), while implementing general best practices fore-commerce design.

IntroductionWho should read this? Well, everyone involved in creating Magento e-commerceexperiences, meaning: The designer, web-developer and finally the client. Educatingeveryone about the process, platform and the approach is essential.

It's MagentoMagento as a framework is now three years old and even at the beginning it hadone huge advantage over the competition (besides being the powerhouse it is andits marketing): a well designed default theme which exposed its possibilities loudand clear. In fact, the Modern theme (http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/modern-theme.html) alone made me take a better look into the wholeframework making it my profession today.

The point is that just by installing Magento you get years of experience, testing andbest practices in e-commerce. Whether you take a look at the product page,

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catalog page, or the whole checkout process, good foundations are already laid outfor you. It's not all appropriate for every shop of course, and that's where you comein.

In this guide I'll go through all of the important page views in Magento

It's necessary to go through the whole shopping experience to get the feel for theplatform you're designing for. The best way to do that would be to visit the demostore (http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo) after reading this guide and to gothrough the process of shopping for products, searching for a specific product,reviewing the process of checking out as a registered or unregistered customer.

The next step would be really putting yourself in the position of the store owner bygoing into the administration panel to get a perspective of how settings and inputsfrom the administration panel affect the front-end.

In this guide I'll cover important aspects of designing the user experience by goingthrough all of the important page views in Magento. By doing so, you'll have acomplete outlook on the store, making it easy to keep track of project progress, andit will help you present your design decisions/propositions to the client.

Let's begin...

Main Parts of the StoreThere are several major sections that need to be covered with each Magentodesign:

CMS pagesCategory product listing pageProduct view pageUser login/register page – (logged or guest view)User account pageCheckout process

In order to fully grasp the sections mentioned above it's advisable to go over to theMagento demo store (http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo) and take sometime to explore both the front-end and the back-end. At the bottom of the demopage there are three choices for Front-end, back-end and then the multi-store demofor the Magento Community Edition.

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Home page

Home page is the store front and should always address both newcomers andregular customers, registered or unregistered, with your store to keep theminformed and engaged.

One of the best practices is to display featured and new products for loyalcustomers, besides displaying main product categories for newcomers. Presentingusers with clearly defined options that engage instantly is the key, although findingthe balance is actually hard work that involves real data testing. Luckily, you canalways use different layouts and content variations while doing A/B testing and seewhat works.

This is also an excellent place to state the not so obvious: Shipping availability,Secure shopping, Info about the shopping process, links to store policies and so

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on. Everything that can resolve doubts, answer questions is welcome. In return, itensures a good relationship from the start.

I won't go into detail about this particular page since there are a lot of articlesaddressing this challenge already.

Category PageDemo URL: Category page (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/catalog/category/view/s/living-room/id/22/)

The belly of your store needs extra attention. This is where your catalog has toshine from both an architectural and front-end standpoint. You can't afford to haveto go back and re-design the whole thing just because your shop inventory wasn't

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set properly, attributes, categories, prices etc. I'll address this either as "Catalogdesign" or "Catalog Architecture"

Assuming you've set your product catalogue with care and attention you'll nowhave these important aspects of the page to care of next:

Product Filtering

Grid viewList view

Presume you'll need both down the road, it's important to design both these views.

Product Sorting

This is a feature which reflects how well the "Catalog Design" has been carried out,and you'll need to pay extra attention to the needs of your customers if you intendto empower them to find what they're looking for.

By default in Magento, sorting the products in a category and its respectivesubcategories is done by way of a drop-down containing the list of attributes you'veset to be sortable in the admin panel.

From a usability point of view, you should consider customizing this one byremoving the need for that "arrow" which is used for ascending and descending thevalues.

Tip: It's only a few hours of extra work but it pays of to have the options of "A-Z"and "Z-A" listed one below the other than using an extra unintuitive click for that.

Prices

Sooner or later you'll have to deal with: "Special prices", "Tier prices", "From-to"display of prices, "Price as configured", so it's better to have those planned alreadyin wireframes. Prices have their own section later on in this article(http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow-tutorials/magento-project-guidelines-for-designers/#tut-prices).

Rating

Besides all of the data for a single product listing on the category page here, ratingsare another aspect that needs to be planned ahead early in the wireframes, or atleast at the design stage.

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They are particularly interesting since their visibility can be set on a permission levelso that only registered users can actually review. This creates different versions ofthe page based on viewing permissions.

Category page is also the perfect place to tag products that are "On Sale", "HandPicked" or perhaps "Coming Soon" with some nice looking informative graphics.

Product Page

With Magento you have 6+3 product types at your disposal, where those +3 areplaced across the store as "Up-Sell", "Cross-Sell" or "Related" products.

You need to know the platform you're designing for

It is essential to discuss what types of products will be used in the store, so thatyou can effectively design for the particular ones.

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At this stage, designing the product page, this is the moment you'll really need toget yourself acquainted with the layout and template structure if you haven'talready. Alternatively, consult with Magento experts about what implications yourdesign will have on developing the actual page.

Simple ProductDemo URL: Nokia 2610 Phone – Product page(http://demo.magentocommerce.com/nokia-2610-phone.html)

The following elements of the "Simple Product" are, in general, common to allproduct types:

Tip:Use "Firebug" or "Web inspector" to take a look at the elements on the actualdemo page for yourself.

Product essential box

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Product collateral box

Product essential box

Product image box

Product imageImage Zoom sliderMore views – image thumbnails

Product shopRatings boxAvailability boxPrice boxAdd to box – holding add to cart button and "Add to wishlist" and "Addto compare"Quick Overview box

Product collateral box

This section of the product page is dedicated for the "Details", "Up sell products","Reviews", "Tags" etc.

One Magento quirk here is the "Reviews" which was is shown to the user after apage reloads, replacing all other content in the collateral box. Bear this one in mindwhile designing, or check out these (http://inchoo.net/ecommerce/magento/get-product-review-info-independent-of-review-page/) articles(http://spenserbaldwin.com/magento/show-product-review-on-product-page/) onhow to make it work for you out of the "default" template content flow.

Simple Product with Custom OptionsDemo URL: Simple Product with options (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/acer-ferrari-3200-notebook-computer-pc.html)

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Simple product with custom options adds an options section with "Add to Cart"box placed inside, since the product's acquisition depends on both required andnon required options. This must be kept in mind since this page has to be updatedin the design for the simple product.

Price can be set as "Special price" or "Regular price" in which case both need to beaddressed in the design. Also, there is an option of Tier pricing which is explained inthe Magento knowledge base (http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/how-do-i-use-tier-pricing).

Bundle ProductDemo URL: Bundle Product (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/my-computer.html)

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The Bundle product page has a similar layout to the simple product, with theexception of the price that can be displayed as "From/To" and "As low as", and withthe addition of "The price as configured.

In Bundled product types, there are also differences in the General and Pricespages, as follows:

Bundle Items: Bundled Items appear in the store as a list of available options. Foreach option you can configure the title, input type (single and multiple selectionfields are available), whether the field is mandatory (for example: it can be True for acomputer processor and False for an additional battery of a laptop computer) andits position on the page.

Price View: Specifies whether the product's price is shown as a range, from theleast expensive component to the most expensive (Price Range), or is only the leastexpensive shown (As Low As).

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Grouped ProductDemo URL: Grouped Product (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/magento-red-furniture-set.html)

The only significant difference when compared to the "Simple Product" page view isthat all the products of a group are presented inside a table.

Configurable productDemo URL: Configurable product (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/cn-clogs-beach-garden-clog-83.html)

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This product type page has the configurable product options in form of a dropdown similar to the ones seen on the "Bundle product".

Downloadable ProductDemo URL: Downloadable Product (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/pivot-table-excel.html)

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The layout is very similar to the layout of the "Simple Product" and has the"Sample" feature that provides a link to the downloadable portion of the actual"Downloadable product".

After the purchase, customers can download the product from the checkout page.

If you haven't already, you should get to know all the products inside-out by goingthrough the Magento documentation (http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base) and exploring the inner workings of the layouts and templates.

The main point of listing each and every "Product Type" page view is that you'llneed to pay attention to where you place the actual "Buy button" in your designs.As a logical rule of thumb, it should always be positioned after all the choices andoptions are listed. Common mistakes like placing an extra "Buy button" both on topand the bottom of the product page are usability and technical nightmares, yet I'veseen such examples backed by the "The button is way below the fold" reasoning orworse.

This example is an extreme one but it illustrates well what happens if the designstrays from the path of usability or just breaks the function of the page.

One other common case is when the product is out of stock, yet is still visible in thestore. In that case the "Add to cart" section is not displayed. This needs to beaddressed in the design as well.

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Up Sell, Cross Sell and RelatedProductsAs mentioned at the beginning of this "Product types" section, they are not specialby type, but by placement on the page or the site section.

Up Sell productsDemo URL: Up Sell Product (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/microsoft-natural-ergonomic-keyboard-4000.html)

Up sell products are displayed on the product page in the product description. Thisexample presents a more expensive keyboard and other products as up-sells to theless expensive keyboard.

Cross sell productsDemo URL: (Add something to Cart first) Cart Page(http://demo.magentocommerce.com/checkout/cart/)

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Cross-sell products appear next to the shopping cart by default. When a customernavigates to the shopping cart page (whether automatically after adding a productor otherwise), these products are displayed as cross-sells to the items already in theshopping cart.

Cross-sell products can be seen as impulse purchases, like magazines and candyat the cash registers in grocery stores.It's advisable to use this space in situationswhen there's no cross sell product (not available, out of stock and so on) for a storebanner, message to the customer and the like.

Product types and Price(s)This is the point where I'll need to make a recap of the product types and variousprice options. Please refer to Magento documentation afterwards.

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Types of products:Simple product and Simple product with optionsGrouped productBundle product and "Bundle" with optionsConfigurable product and "Configurable" with optionsDownloadable product and "Downloadable" with optionsVirtual product and "Virtual" with options

Types of prices:Regular priceSpecial priceFrom/to pricePrice as configuredTier prices

Every product can have a special price in addition to the regular price. Also, aspecial price can be set to start and expire on a desired date.

"From/to" and "Price as configured" are displayed on a bundle product where theprice is ranged from the item with the lowest price up to the item with the highestprice in the bundle. On the category page there will be only a "From/to" pricedisplayed for the same product.

Tier pricing is a promotional tool that lets you price items differently for higherquantities. This is an effective way to move more merchandise.

For example: you sell office supplies and you want to create a promotion wherecustomers who buy three boxes of printer paper save money compared to buyingjust one box.

Next we'll go through the "Cart page" thus getting one step closer to the actualCheckout process.

Shopping CartDemo URL: (Add something to Cart first) Cart (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/checkout/cart/)

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Obviously, there are two states of the Cart : Empty and Populated.

Populated CartHere we have the page laid out in two rows. The first being the table displaying allthe products waiting to be purchased. Below them we'll usually have the "CrossSell" products (see "Cross Sell" products), Discount codes, Shipping and Tax andfinally the checkout section with subtotals, grand totals and the "Proceed tocheckout" button.

In brief:

Shopping cartCross sell boxDiscount & shipping & checkout button

The shopping cart is a table displaying the cart items with class names foralternating the styles of each table row. This helps distinguish products from eachother when there are more then 4 products in the cart.

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Cross sell box appears only if the product has an cross sell product or productsare assigned from the store admin panel. Please see the Cross Sell page.

Shipping & Discount codes with the Checkout button are placed inside a div(.cart-collateral-block) and since they contain input fields which aredisplaying error messages those need to be designed too.

Empty Cart

The empty cart page is displayed when there are no products in the cart, so it's agreat opportunity to make it valuable to the user by designing it with some call toaction content. You can place a category listing, Advanced search box and/orprovide the link back to the last Catalog page visited.

Checkout (One page)Demo URL: (Add something to Cart first) One page Checkout(https://demo.magentocommerce.com/checkout/onepage/)

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There are two main sections in the "One checkout page":

"Your checkout progress" – displays checkout progress"Main content" – Checkout steps in tabs

Checkout MethodBilling InformationShipping InformationShipping MethodPayment InformationOrder Review

The purpose of the "One page" checkout is to avoid the "many steps" feeling youwould get if every part of the checkout process from the "Main Content" was on aseparate page. Therefore, here we have all the steps combined on one page andthe data is passed back and forth to the server via AJAX.

Unless you're challenged with creating a fully customized checkout it's stronglyadvisable to just "skin" this part.

By doing so you'll get fewer headaches with development and it will be easilyupgradable in the future (something to advise the client for sure).

One possible change in behavior of "tabs" is to make them visible one at a time anduse CSS3 or JavaScript animation for sliding for the next or previous step. Ofcourse, you'll still need the "Progress indicator" which can be set on top of thecheckout steps indicating all the steps in the process and highlighting the currentone.

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Finally, once the order has been placed, Magento will display the "Success Page"and that's a great candidate for adding extra information about the purchase,product shipment date, order summary and maybe some incentives to continueshopping which are more engaging than the plain old "Continue Shopping" button.

If things don't go as planned with the checkout, well, then the user gets an errormessage which we'll go through next.

Message BoxesIn Magento all of the contextual interaction between the user and the store ishandled by message boxes. Message boxes can have "Error Messages" or"Success Messages" presented to the user.

Since these interactions are an essential part of the user experience their designand placement should be considered as a priority and not as an after thought.

Error message example in context:

Success Message example after submittingvalid data:

Error Message example after submittingnon-acceptable data:

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Notice Message example after submittingdata:

Primary consideration should be the placement of message boxes minding layoutand context.

Design should be pretty straightforward, since they only need to fit into the look andfeel of the site.

SearchDemo URL: Search result (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=computer)

Magento's built-in search function on the frontend has three ways of searching forproducts:

Regular search – using the search boxCatalog Advanced search – using a separate page with options for the searchsettingsSearch with Autocomplete – search with automatically suggested results

It should definitely be a key factor in every online store strategy. That's why you'llneed to pay special attention when designing the page for the following:

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No Results page

What will the user get to see besides the default "Message box" informing thatnothing was found?

Will you provide them with suggestions in case of a misspelled word, and/or anadvanced search page where your regular informed or savvy users can search bySKU among other criteria?

Advanced Search

Advanced search form

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Advanced search results

Search Autocomplete

404 pageDemo URL: There's nothing to see... (http://demo.magentocommerce.com/nooooway)

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The 404 page comes as default with Magento but, just like the favicon, it can slipthrough the cracks and not get the attention it deserves. Being a CMS page youcan plan for the "Oh No!" user scenario by making it less stressful and provideemergency strategy for the user.

Sidebar BlocksI'm using the "Sidebar blocks" term for everything that appears outside of the maincontent, for example, in two or three column layout templates.

Layer navigationCurrency selectorNewsletterPopular TagsPollProduct ComparisonRelated ProductsMy Cart

There's no need to go into detailed description for each, I rather just listed them foreveryone to serve as a reminder.

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My Account and TransactionalEmails

My AccountWoohoo! We finally got to the part that in the end matters the most.

The My Account area of the site is what users will regard as their own place to getall they need concerning the status of their orders, shipment and any other featurethat you have in store for them.

It's a great place to establish trust between the customer and the store, avoidingunnecessary communication by informing registered users about each and everyaspect of their shopping experience.

Designing the "My Account" area without any real data about customer needs istricky, but try to search for inspiration on other sites by becoming their customers orpinpoint what's good and the bad about the stores you're already registered to.

Transactional EmailsThese are the PR and Customer Relations' right hand. For every order that's beenplaced, shipment or general inquiry being sent to the customer each of theserepresents the store and determines how well it's perceived.

You should have the designs for these emails ready before the launch since theyneed to blend in with the rest of the brand's visual identity.

Luckily, Magento allows you to have complete control over them. You can findanswers in one of my older posts (http://inchoo.net/ecommerce/magento/custom-transactional-emails/).

ConclusionI realize this one was a bit of a long read so I'm listing some of the highlights andimportant stuff at the end.

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You should come back as often as you can and refer to this article as a sort ofgeneral guide or a reminder when discussing projects and during design.

General guidelinesGet to know the platform – you'll need that for your designs to workShopping experience – It's invaluable. Get one.Consult Magento experts – Prompt feedback when in doubtThink – Back and forth: As a customer, store owner and developer

Design deliverablesThese are recommendations regarding your PSDs delivered to a developer or aclient. It would also be great to use some kind of a "Cloud Service" like "Dropbox"for sharing.

One PSD – Organize in Layer Comps or Layer GroupsAdd notes – Describe What, Where, How and Why when neededDefine Colors – This one is extremely helpful when coding CSSDefine hover, visited, active and normal states for links

This is it. You've come to the end of the article and will hopefully use theseguidelines in your project. Be aware that you can always come back and referenceit when you need to.

Remember, nobody notices what you do until you don't do it.

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