A lot of web designers strive to be original, to make each site design unique. The motivation is to differentiate yourself as a creative artist. This is a worthy goal, but (like the call of the mythological Sirens) the call to continuous creative originality can also be deceiving. It leads many virtuous designs onto the rocks.

The fundamental problem is: most truly new things (ideas, products, or genetic mutations) fail. That is the way of the world.

• One in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.
• The social network and blogging audience is becoming more diverse in terms of age: the biggest increase in visitors during 2008 to 'Member Community' Web sites globally came from the 35-49 year old age group (+11.3 million).
• Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking. Nielsen found UK mobile Web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23 percent (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19 percent in the US (10.6 million people).
  
• These numbers are a big increase over last year – up 249 percent in the UK and 156 percent in the US.

Fortunes are made out of recessions. A lot of entrepreneurs get going in the economic depths because the barriers to entry are lower.

Searches for several terms related to the economic downturn showed dramatic gains during the past year. Among the most notable increases were searches relating to the deteriorating job market, including searches using the term “unemployment” (up 206 percent to 8.2 million searches) and “unemployment benefits” (up 247 percent to 748,000 searches). Meanwhile, terms relating to personal asset situations, including “mortgage” (up 72 percent to 7.8 million searches), “bankruptcy” (up 156 percent to 2.6 million searches), and “foreclosure” (up 67 percent to 1.4 million searches) also grew strongly. And Americans, resilient as they are, are seeking ways to save money, as evidenced by the increase in the number of searches for “coupons” (up 161 percent to 19.9 million) and “discount” (up 26 percent to 7.9 million).

Women's sites were one of the fastest growing Web site categories in 2008, gaining 46% more unique visitors than that category saw in 2007, according to ComScore. Their growth rate is only 4% behind job search sites, the leading category in that stat, and the 102,146,000 total unique visitors to women's sites trumped job sites by 18,826,000.

A website wireframe (also "web wire frame", "web wireframe", "web wireframing") is a basic visual guide used in web design to suggest the layout of fundamental elements in the interface. Because of this they are often completed before any artwork is developed. When completed correctly they will provide a visual reference upon which to structure each page. Wireframes also allow for the development of variations of a layout to maintain design consistency throughout the site. This is an important part of the initial development stage because it creates user expectations and helps to develop an awareness of and familiarity with the site.

Mr Robertson is confident that Asos's market-leading position will not be challenged soon. He said: “Our economics are different to the economics of the high street. If you have a successful store, somebody can open a shop next door. Nobody walks past you on the internet. It's hard to shake up as long as you're doing things right.”