I'm fired up about FireFox 3. I wasn't a big user until this latest release. I love it when technology blends speed + simplicty + sophistication in a single app. Making it my default browser gave me the excuse I needed to comment about a much lesser known Mozilla product: the Mozilla Store. 
As a frequent reviewer of many corporate stores (swag stores, promo stores, branded products: whatever you want to call them), I found that the Mozilla store equals their powerful browser's traits: the site is simple to use and, like the LinkedIn Store, it is fun! I love how they incorporated the official FireFox 3 t-shirt into a contest. The store's design is very consistent throughout. Coolest of all, both at checkout and on the front page, you can subscribe to a newsletter that promotes new items (or probably helps move discontinued branded merchandise - all the stores we create have a marketing competent like this built in - most stores fail because they do not promote their merchandise). Following are a couple of take-aways from the Mozilla store that you can use to build a smart store for your branded products:
- If you build it, they will come - once. Maybe twice. It takes consistent marketing (usually in the form of newsletters or flyers or both) to keep a store healthy
- Remain consistent, even with the little things (like fonts) throughout the site
- Make navigational buttons and purchasing options big but keep descriptive commentary small, this causes the eyes to drift to the most important aspects of the screen: the purchasing buttons
- Mozilla pulled it off better than most I've seen, but if you can, do not photograph your branded products flat, always either place them on a person (employees, fans, etc.) or a mannequin
Congrats to the Mozilla crew for a creating a smart reflection of a brilliant browser.
