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Linux CD Mall Reskinned

Posted March 2nd, 2008 in Case Studies

Earlier this week I launched a "reskinned" version of my Linux CD Mall website. The functionality is largely the same, but the navigation has been moved and improved and I prefer the new layout a lot more to how it was previously. This post contains screenshots and some information about the changes.

Layout changes

The first two screenshots below show the Linux CD Mall website's homepage, first with the new skin and then with the old look. As you can see, the new skin uses the same template as used on my blog (i.e. this website) and the navigation has been moved from the left to the right side. The shopping cart information now appears on all pages even if the cart is empty and is a lot easier to see than previously.

I have split the list of Linux distributions into "Popular Distros" and "All Stocked Distros". This makes it really easy for people to find the more popular ones without having to look all the way through the huge list, but I still have the full list of each page so people can easily find everything from any page they are on.

The other major change is I've removed the big blank space that appears at the top of the page; this means visitors will see much more of the site on their screen when it's first loaded. The blank space originally had some banner ads with internal site advertising, but I got rid of that a long time ago.

Functionality Changes

Currently the only functionality change is to add in a currency selector to the right side navigation and add some additional currencies. Previously the product pages had a list of distributions and versions available and the customer would click the amount in the currency they wished to order in. Because I'm now offering more currencies there would be too many to display this way, and I feel it's a lot easier and less confusing to have just one currency on the page and then select which one you want from the navigation.

The default currency selected is based on IP address geo targeting. So for example if you are visiting from the United States then the US Dollar will be selected by default, if visiting from France, Spain etc then the Euro will be selected by default.

Distribution Order Page

Again there are two screenshots below with the new version followed by the old version. This page shows the CentOS page, and there's an item in the shopping cart in both versions of the site.

Shopping Cart

The final two screenshots show the shopping cart page. In the new version, I've moved all the additional ordering information to display below shopping cart instead of above it. This means when you click through to the shopping cart it's really obvious what page you are on without having to scroll down.

Summary and Future Development

I reskinned the Linux CD Mall website because I was a little bored with the old design and wanted to move things further up the page; in doing so I may increase the conversion rate (or may not - but it's worth a shot) because it should be more obvious what you are doing from page to page without having to scroll down as much.

There are also future developments I would like to do to the site, and modifying the navigation and changing to a fixed width layout are required for the changes I want to do in the future.

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