Like the Bob Dylan song, titled a little like this post, times are changing; not only in life and on the streets, but also on the internet. No longer can you have just a web page with a generic shopping cart, throw a bunch of money at some ad campaign, and expect to be an instant hit.

And it isn’t all about the money any more either. People actually want to interact. They want to befriend, become knowledgeable of, and feel a part of the sites they are interested in. Ultimately this does run over in to e-commerce. But I would hope that businesses would realize by now that they need these relationships as much as the people want them.

It is with that in mind that I have been developing sites for big names for the last few years. I am devoted to helping web visitors build friendships, relationships, networks, and knowledge bases wherever they can. As soon as possible.

One of my main goals with Wexford Jewelers is to help build a community around jewelry, for and by those who are interested in jewelry. I feel the weight of this task daily. I have to constantly balance store software needs and user needs.

Well there is one need that has tipped that balance towards the users; our navigation. Even though our site is very new we feel like we haven’t got the navigation down right yet. It’s extremely hard to keep a clean look and have a lot of functionality at the same time. The struggle is to keep the site as uncluttered as possible, so that the jewelry will stand out and be the main attraction.

Here are four things that we are doing immediately.

• We are moving the wishlist; I’m not sure where yet but that room needs to be usable
• We are adding a collection browser in the wishlist’s place
• We are subcategorizing all of our main categories
• We are adding filters such as a color bar to select items by their color or ranges of colors

We feel that that will greatly improve our navigation. Then I can go on to funner things. For instance moving this blog on to the main site, adding user profiles, comments, ratings, item galleries, friends list, and full real wishlists (multiples). I have a ton of things that I want to include on the site. For a three person dev team this all takes time. We will get there, eventually.

Until then thanks for hanging in there.