Lily Of The Valley Designs

As an up and coming e-commerce consultant I like to stay up to date on the latest e-commerce news. You can take a look at my blogroll and find out what e-commerce blogs I have subscribed to. But my favorite e-commerce blog is Get Elastic.

The reasons are:

• daily content
• great content
• good advice
• and did I say fresh content daily..

Get Elastic is offering a great contest called ‘The Big Ecommerce Conference Contest’ . You can win full conference passes to one of 3 e-commerce events and a book.

I have been to an e-commerce conference and as a small business owner with an-e-commerce site you can really learn a lot to help your business and meet a lot of great people.

All you have to do is subscribe to their blog for the latest e-commerce news delivered to you daily for a chance to win.

There are two buttons that I like to make they are: The starburst and the shop now buttons.

The starburst is a very popular web 2.0 button that is an eye catcher. First I start of with my image and add a starburst with the custom shape tool.

Then I draw the starburst and make a gradient overlay. Layer > Layer Style > Gradient.

Then give the star three dimension with a drop shadow. Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadaw.

Then I write SALE on the starburst and walah!

To create a shop now button I first get the rulers to help me make a box (Ctrl + R). Then I drag the grid lines to make the perfect square.

Second use the grid to make my lines with the line tool.

Next I type in the words Shop Now in all Caps. One more finishing touch I create an arrow with a custom shape tool (Note I use Arrow 6)

And Wallah there you have it.

You know when you leave something in the refrigerator for too long it gets stale. It’s not a pretty site or

smell for that matter. Websites are similar to food they can get out-dated easily. It is very important to continually update your website or users will become disillusioned. Does your copyright date still say 2005? Continually freshen up your home page, it is the window to your website and needs to reflect current graphics and text.

“Web Design is a continuous process.”