On my latest flight back home from Hawaii, I found myself checking out the Sky Mall magazine, intrigued by some of their cool gifts and gadgets. After the flight was over, I made sure to visit their website later when I got home. And after browsing their site today, I must say I was really impressed with the overall user experience.

The design of the site is nothing too fancy – just a clean, simple, easy-to-use user interface. Right off the bat, I noticed the site translated quite well from print to online. One of the things I attribute this too are the “infomercial style” product images that really catches your eye – which makes it easy to quickly identify items you find interesting. But besides the easy navigation and nice product images, the one thing I really liked was the ability to view their virtual catalog.

The same catalog that was available on the plane was available through a nice integrated virtual setup that allowed you to browse pages, highlight and purchase items. This was surprisingly useful because the sky mall catalog is very nicely done and almost easier to browse versus clicking through the entire site. Having this feature made a huge impression on my experience as a user. The entire virtual catalog integration is definitely a great study for any e-commerce site that sell items both offline and online.