Its an effect that has long been around in video games, but being the latest craze in web design, I thought I would give it a crack. The concept is rather simple, with the site simply using different backgrounds to great an unbelievable 3D effect.

And the results I must say, are pretty awesome. Its a clear and concise way to lay out all your personal details and really tell a story to the user.

Want to know more about parallax sites? Have a browse of the following inspirational designs to get your own ideas flowing.

Anna Safroncik

KRYSTALRAE

Bagigia

Landrover – Victoria Beckham Edition

Now I am no means perfect when it comes to the practice, but I quite often found myself being overruled from an art direction perspective. It always seemed that the powers to be in the fashion industry were unwilling to compromise on the image they had in their head in order to gain conversion. Which seemed silly given as retailers we are in the industry of selling.

So I find myself asking, how important is it that anyone involved in email marketing have at least a small amount of tech know how so that decisions are not compromising results?

Looking through my inbox from the last week, I stumbled across at least 10 emails which were even design with the ability to have the copy hard coded in. Instead, they just simple sliced it all as images.

Why not get this content straight in front of the user before the images have been loaded? Surely this lack of understanding is hurting the quality of what we do and something that could be fixed with some fairly simple training.

Standard responsive design currently tackles 4 major screen sizes, with them being in very simple terms, desktop,  horizontal tablet, vertical table and mobile. But the reality is, how many users really fit within the 2 tablet sizes and how much does all this extra design work, really benefit the experience?

With the largest size usually featured in responsive websites being that of around 1000px wide, wouldn’t it be better to shift your attention to the users that are on today’s reasonably priced, oversize screens? What about looking at replacing the horizontal tablet screen size with a 1300px to 1400px wide resolution, or alternatively just adding in a 5th size.

With all businesses that I have worked across, analytics clearly show that the biggest percentage of users, have a screen size well over the standard 1024 x 768 resolution, so wouldn’t focusing a bit of attention on these users, help maximise eCommerce returns and really change the user experience for those people still shopping from their desktop? While the shift towards mobile is well and truly here, lets not forget the fact that standard screen size resolution is on the rise and its important to find a balance between optimising the mobile and desktop experience. There seems no reason to me why businesses can’t have the best of both worlds.