Econsultancy’s newest Buyer’s guide has been released and is aimed at companies who are investigating the e-commerce platforms market. There are profiles of 30 leading UK vendors, including Salmon.

The report also provides details on the various issues and trends affecting this sector, as well as advice about how to select the right platform.

If you are about to conduct an eCommerce Platform replacement project – this really is a must read.  Unless you are a member of Econsultancy it is a paid for report (£150 get you the report, £195 annual membership and access to ALL their reports) but a sample is available (625.8 KB PDF)

Separate to the report, you can also view Salmon’s company profile on the Econsultancy website for a better idea of who we are and what we do.

As Twitter becomes more popular – and continues its shift from the (lunatic) fringe to mainstream, it is interesting to be able to take a sneak peak into several retail Twitter accounts in action. Visit No Turn on Red’s Retailer Twitter Aggregator (screen grab below) for a real-time perspective.

This resource displays on one page, a glance of some of the retailers who are using Twitter to connect with their customers.   Take a look at the conversations that they are having, the sales information they are posting, and the helpful advice they are sharing.  Useful?  Worrying that you might be missing out?

There is no doubt Twitter use in retail is growing fast.  e-consultancy just published a list of UK Retailers with Twitter accounts.  The names are surprising – and the list is growing fast (look at the comments!).   EDIT 13/03/09: e-consultancy Just added a list of US Retailers on Twitter.

The Retailer Twitter Aggregation is maintained by Tom Sullivan of No Turn On Red. You should contact him on Twitter (@noturnonred) with any feedback.  Needless to say I am on Twitter too (@chrishoskin).  My advise is for you to join in the conversation.

Right now, it seems, nothing fires up a design debate better than the term ‘Web 2.0′. For every positive argument for features like drag and drop – there is a counter argument relating to conversion rates. For every advocate of a single page checkout – there is the overall Customer Experience to think about. And so it goes on: semantic web, widgets, mashups or folksonomies etc….lets not even go there.

But the debate, and the point at which web design is at today, does mask the simple rule that great web design is (and always has been) about implementing appropriate design – as opposed to doing simply what is technically possible.

Yesterday, two more insightful pieces emerged that might well fan the flames of debate for a while yet, with both pieces sitting on the ‘pragmatic but effective’ side of the fence.

First up e-consultancy reported how Argos is beating their competition with “user friendly web design” (disclosure: this is a design implemented by Salmon). And secondly, Mike Southon (in an FT piece) in reference to Will McInnes (from NixonMcInnes) debates a possibly counter-intuitive suggestion of “having an ugly but effective website.”

What is clear is that if you are investing in web design you need a thorough, detailed, holistic understanding of web 2.0. And because every brand is different, finding out where to draw the line between ‘appropriate’ and ‘possible’ is a smart move indeed.