I do not even want my web site designer to think that a box exists, and looking for a talented visionary to help build out a bookstore web site. We have spent the last year building out the backend of the web site that we punted on the most important part, the User Interface. After going through one bad UI after another on more web sites than I care to mention, it is time to bring the UI back into the fold.

With the startup doing as good as it is doing, it is time to take a look at the web site and think about incorporating it better into the overall scheme of the business. Right now, it is a blog and an OS Shopping cart, not very sexy. Nevertheless, you know, shopping online should be sexy, streamlined, easy to use, and fast to page load. It should tell people about the product but also make it possible for people to learn more about the products. It should be a way for people to learn, and lust over a product.

We have gotten used to every store looking the same, and when a comment came back about the online store “there is nothing innovative here,” I have to admit that they are actually correct in their dismissal of the website. There is nothing sexy or page turning about the startups web site. Currently the web site is a neglected, poorly updated, and semi-integrated, with a half-implemented attempt at using social networking wrapped as a blog and a shopping cart. However, it got us to where we are today, to the point where I can spend money on a super website redesign that blows the socks off the internet. It should be the best of breed and beautifully constructed in essence a usable fun work of art.

It is time to bring back sexy to shopping. So I am looking for a great web site developer who wants to put a whole new spin on shopping online while making it fast, fun, informative, entertaining. Not looking for what everything else looks like. It is time to bring sexy back to the UI and bring to fruition what a real online bookstore should look like.

There are elements of other sites that are good ideas, like remembering what other customers bought and recommending products, simple easy checkout, social media/networking components, SEO (good SEO, not bad SEO), a web site that makes you want to spend time on it. Not too worried about selling gobs of stuff, I am more interested in pushing learning and community. Shopping for stuff is something important, but equally as important as the social process of what we are selling.

Books start conversations, and we would like to have our website be part of those conversations. That is where the UI comes in, it has to be warm, inviting, fast, and can withstand being roughly handled by users, hackers, and administrators.

Drop a note here, and make sure your website has a portfolio of sites to go look at, do not put the links in the response here other than your web sites link; it will be zapped as spam.

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