Must Design

Beats By Dre Web Design Lessons
A friend shared the impressive NEWSJACK Dr. Dre and his Internet markeing team pulled off last week. Beats By Dre (http://www.beatsbydre.com ) has some cool web design tricks to steal too such as:

* Consistent images across channels (the Richard Sherman image rode the crest of the wave created by his "controversial" statements after last Sunday's game).
* HUGE RED BUY NOW Call To Action on the home page.
* Hero moves but does so SLOWLY so it isn't jarring.
* They've programmed their Richard Sherman page so his picture matches to every style, something I bet the site does for all celebrity endorsements (cool and NEW).
* Their social buttons are a little low for my taste, but they are well labeled as the "Beats Army" and every major social net is there and they are robust and fresh on all social nets.
* I like how they handle the colors too via the small swatches.

All in all a great ecommerce site in support of one of the best NEWSJACKS I've seen (see my notes on Dr. Dre's multi-channel attack of the web here:   http://sco.lt/8bJiDJ

Had fun creating CureCancerStore.org with my friends Eric and Cynthia Garrison's Agile7 template. As I worked I was reminded of a few tips that may help any web designer, and aren't we all web designers now, work with templates including:

* SEO Don't Forget it.
* Adjust YOUR Perspective Not Other Way Around.

* Get Creative and Modify What is THERE.

* Improve Shopping Cart LATER.

* Tables and old HTML are TOUGH.

This last bullet is important. The world is HTML5 and CSS3 and if you don't have CSS skills templates are both a Gift from God and a Curse from the Devil. If, like me, you still can write <tables> don't expect them to look like what you expect because their display is controlled by CSS (style sheets).

I tend to bull forward and do the best I can until a firm understanding of where and how we are making money. Once I understand how the site makes money I can invest intelligently in designers with more talent than me (not hard to find those btw lol).

This post should help anyone know how to work with templates better to design a website or blog and templates are in all of our futures because they are great, getting better and cheap.