Having an E-commerce Meltdown?

Are you working on an e-commerce project and in desperate need of some inspiration? Well, I think you will find Monster Meltdown e-commerce collection quite helpful. Not only does this inspiration set provide you with a heaping helping of ideas, it is broken down into 22 parts that cover the wide range of pages and issues e-commerce sites face.

You may already know that the entire collection is not free, but some of it is. And this is why I really wanted to take a minute to focus on the portion of the content that is free. This not only allows you to get a taste for what you will get with the full collection, but also serves as a valuable inspiration tool even if you can’t justify the purchase.

While the free content includes the digital books introduction, it also contains the first three topical chapters. These three articles on their own represent a huge set of inspiration. Let’s take a look.

E-commerce Site Design Styles

This is the first chapter of the E-commerce Meltdown collection and is a great introduction to the topic. In this article I break down all 120+ of the featured sites into various design styles. Since this looks at the topic of ecommerce from a very high level it is most likely the sort of inspiration that will be helpful early on as you build a new e-commerce site.

I find that e-commerce sites are most often categorized based on the type of product they offer. This is rather logical of course, but in my opinion somewhat limited. As you will find in this set the styles come from a wide range of industries. Even better it includes sites that do millions of dollars in business all the way down to tiny shops with much lower revenue.

The end result is a breakdown of beautiful e-commerce sites into various overall design buckets. Some really diverse ideas and samples can be found here for lots of fresh ideas.

Browse the free chapter Site Design Styles.

E-commerce Home Pages

Chapter three of the collection features e-commerce home pages. Given that home pages tend to get the most attention, and are a reasonable place to start, you will find that home pages is really where this book begins its journey.

In an effort to take a fresh look at the topic, this article breaks down e-commerce home pages into various layout formats and strategies. Again I find that most often we look at industries, not strategies. This is why I personally love this chapter. I really think it demonstrates that we can take a different look at an age old topic and draw some fresh new ideas.

Read the free chapter E-commerce Home Pages.

E-commerce Category Pages

What I really love about this collection as a whole is that it affords the opportunity to look at many of the less glamorous nuances of an e-commerce site; category pages are one such topic. While such a part of the industry might never warrant many write ups, this one provides a heaping helping of samples.

This free article breaks down over 100 e-commerce category pages into some common layout patterns. As you dig through you can easily see a very wide range of solutions to a given approach. As always, the idea is to inspire and challenge. I hope this set can really bring some fresh ideas to your everyday work on such pages.

Checkout the free article, E-commerce Category Pages.

Conclusion

As the first collection on Monster Meltdown, this set is a great first look at what is to come and hopefully the free chapters can really provide some fresh ideas on their own. And of course I really hope you find enough value in them to justify purchasing the full collection. Regardless I am happy to be able to publish content in the spirit of the original Design Meltdown for free!