Shaklee

Shaklee is a shining example of how to structure an online store. It’s not difficult to see hints of Amazon.com splashed throughout Shaklee’s product pages. And given the fact that we think Amazon is the premier archetype of commerce on the Web, that’s quite a compliment. Additionally, a robust collection of “breadcrumb trails,” PDFs, sound bytes, clinical studies, tips, and more make Shaklee a must-see.

AtHome America

It’s not easy to pull off a simplistic design really well. But AtHome America manages to do just that. A clean layout aids navigation and visual presentation. And a good color palette, use of whitespace, and strong photography combine to make a fabulous website. The only area they lost points? There’s virtually no “clean content” on the homepage (see tips below). But overall a great site.

The Pampered Chef

Who doesn’t love food? And who doesn’t love a website that crowns content as king? The Pampered Chef blends these two passions in a concoction that’s chock full of recipes, tips, and suggestions, coupled with a design that’s equally delectable. The only suggestion we’d make is the same we made for AtHome America—more “clean content” on the homepage. Other than that, we tip our toque to The Pampered Chef.

XanGo

We’ll be frank—XanGo almost didn’t make our list, only because their site is rendered primarily in Flash. Nothing wrong with Flash, just that we’ve heard scores of complaints from executives and distributors about full-Flash sites. That aside, XanGo easily rides atop our list as an extremely well-designed brand, both online and offline. An amazing level of detail and fun interactivity make XanGo.com a tasty visit.

American Longevity

Allow us to preface the last of our five featured websites with this disclaimer: We did the site design for American Longevity. Although we’re extremely pleased with the end result in terms of design, we’ve included them on our list for the sake of advocating standards-compliant design and code. American Longevity’s site is viewable across a wide range of platforms (handhelds, various browsers, etc.) and is even accessible to those with disabilities (see tips below for more information).

Honorable Mentions

With so many unique designs within this industry, we had to include the following three honorable mentions. Definitely worth mentioning—and worth a click.

• Jafra - clever copy and great photography
• Northern Lights At Home - clean layout, good for small to mid-size companies
• Fuller Brush - well-rounded website with online shopping, tips, and more

Tips For Improving Your Company’s Website

As we reviewed dozens of company websites, we were pleased to see the variety of features and design styles in use. We also noticed a few small items that, if used properly, can go a long way for improving the overall effectiveness of your website.

“Clean content” on the homepage - Surprisingly, the majority of the sites we reviewed lacked what we call “clean content” on the homepage. Google, which performs over 75 percent of all Web searches according to industry experts, indexes websites using primarily two criteria: 1) the PageRank of your website, and 2) the actual page copy (what we call “clean content”) on any given page, NOT the meta tags. Therefore, if your homepage consists primarily of images instead of HTML text, there isn’t really any clean content for Google to index. This makes your website much less likely to be placed near the top of search results for keywords related to your product and biz opp offering.

Standards-compliant design and code - If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, listen up: Standards-compliant design and code yields so many benefits—for both corporations and their site visitors—that it would take another two issues of our newsletter just to explain them all. In short, designing and building with standards in mind “simplifies and lowers the cost of production, while delivering sites that are accessible to more people and more types of Internet devices” (WaSP). Translation? You'll save money on development and bandwidth, pages load faster for the user, your site is accessible to a variety of browsers and Internet devices as well as to those with disabilities such as blindness, and more. For more information, please visit The Web Standards Project (WaSP).

Update your copyright - A picky detail, we’ll admit, but an outdated copyright is usually a sure sign of stale content. Many of the sites we visited had copyrights dated 2003 or even 2002—nearly four months into 2004.

Divide and Conquer

So there you have it. Our first top-design acknowledgments. With a few minor improvements here and there, your website may make our list next time around. Until then, divide and conquer.