A captivating and unique e-commerce website design has always played an important role in a successful online sales and marketing strategy. A beautiful design and excellent user experience can enhance the perceived value of your products.
What Does a Good E-Commerce Store Design Look Like?
The best e-commerce sites all share one thing in common: they focus on the user experience from the first visit to post-purchase. There are four main components that all e-commerce businesses should consider when designing their site.
1. Build Trust with the Customer
When someone visits your store or website for the first time, they may not know anything about your brand, the quality of your products, or your commitment to customer satisfaction. Deals may pique their interest, but they will need to trust you before they can actually complete a purchase.
Customer trust is the hardest thing to earn when you don’t have any customers, so you should ensure the following elements to build trust while developing your site:
- Contact Information: You should include an email address and, if possible, a phone number and mailing address on your contact page and in the footer of your site. This type of information, along with an “About Us” page, helps potential customers feel like they are buying from a real person.
- Return Policy: Not only does a return policy make it easy for people to return products they are not satisfied with, but it also boosts sales by reducing cart abandonment and giving the customer peace of mind that they can return the item if needed without any handling fees.
- Technical Certifications: By adding Shopify Payments to your e-commerce site, you’ll gain access to advanced features and payment services equipped with the latest security technologies to protect your customers’ information. Include illustrations or badges to show security compliance and all the payment methods you accept.
- Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Many e-commerce solutions have app integrations that allow you to import content to your site. This includes customer photos, your Instagram feed, and even customer reviews. These are signals to potential customers that your brand is trustworthy.
2. Create an Engaging Visual Experience
First impressions are everything when selling your products online. People form their first impression of your e-commerce store in seconds. Using your Shopify store, making this impression relies heavily on high-quality images, consistent branding design, smart use of psychological design, and clear visual hierarchy.
Photography:
Product photography serves as an ambassador showcasing the promise of your product online. Capture product images against simple backgrounds and from different angles. Lifestyle images are important to show your product in use and in context within an environment. They also enhance brand aesthetics.
Color:
Color is one of the strongest tools you can use to evoke interest and emotion on your e-commerce site. It can also be used to draw attention to specific parts of your site and guide the customer journey. Smart use of colors can also help improve accessibility.
Fonts:
While the words you write on your e-commerce site contribute to conveying information, it’s the fonts that convey the emotion behind that information. It’s good to stick with two fonts and create a hierarchy between them. Choose one font to be the headline or title and another to be the body text.
Psychological Design and Visual Hierarchy:
Using principles of psychological design, you can influence the customer’s decision-making and visual journey by strategically placing elements, colors, and text on the pages.
3.Focusing on Responsive Design for Mobile and Desktop Devices
The average daily time spent by people on mobile phones in the United States is expected to reach 4 hours and 39 minutes by 2024. Fortunately, if you are building your business using Shopify, your store is already responsive. This means that the site is user-friendly on various devices and screens, whether customers are viewing it on a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.
4. Clear Navigation Design
Your website’s navigation should help customers find your products quickly and easily. Good navigation also helps improve your site’s ranking in search results.
Stick to only a few main headers in the top navigation of your site. Be clear and straightforward when naming these headers — this is not the time for cleverness. Important main headers in your top navigation could include: Shop, About Us, Best Sellers, Contact Us.
Additional navigation links can go in the footer — the bottom part of your website. Here you can link to your return policy, terms of service, and contact pages.
25 Examples of E-commerce Website Design (And Why They Work)
1. Thesus
The sustainable shoe store Thesus builds trust by promising customers an incredibly easy online shopping experience. It highlights its shipping and return policy, along with an installment payment option for shoppers who may not have the cash upfront. Excellent customer support is also emphasized right on the homepage with a helpful size chart and links for returns.
2. Welly
Welly is a fun first aid brand with a colorful and vibrant website design. The brand’s aesthetic is woven throughout the site, including engaging text and clear CTAs to shop now. The homepage is bold and dynamic without being cluttered.
3. Fred Jourdain
Artists wanting to sell their artwork online should take inspiration from Fred Jourdain. The artist’s homepage allows the art to speak for itself, filling most of the page. You can also find interviews on the site and read more about how he creates his art. This content provides value to the customer with a subtle hint to purchase the artist’s works.
4. MVMT
MVMT’s core brand value of “style doesn’t have to cost a fortune” is reflected in their website design. It offers sleek, sophisticated colors and a layout that showcases watches, sunglasses, and jewelry at affordable prices. Additionally, it highlights collaborations with designers and features a section for the latest designs on the homepage so that people can quickly check out the newest items.
5. Pure Cycles
Pure Cycles uses a straightforward design that clearly shows why you should care about the brand and showcases its best bikes. Product pages also provide a personalized experience while shopping online. You can see close-up images of specific parts, learn specifications, and read other information you need to make an informed purchasing decision.
6. Verve Coffee Roasters
Verve Coffee Roasters uses customer testimonials to build trust throughout its e-commerce site. The online coffee seller also employs compelling language paired with elegant imagery to keep customers engaged on the page. For example, it promises to be “classic and delicious” and meets that expectation with evocative words like “golden jam sweetness.”
7. Finn
Finn offers pet owners what they are looking for: large pictures of happy dogs that inspire them to pamper their own pets. The brand’s website also utilizes simple fonts, plenty of contrast, and a page sequence that directs visitors to either shop now or take an interactive quiz that helps customers feel more confident in their purchases.
8.Hardgraft
The Hardgraft store builds trust with buyers who are looking for luxury goods and appreciate natural beauty and strong elegance. The brand’s mission and values are immediately displayed, informing visitors about what it stands for. The product pages present clear and bold images showcasing important product features and valuable offers. Additionally, secure and global shipping adds appeal to a wide international audience.
9. Topo designs
Topo Designs’ outdoor clothing store uses images that resonate with its target market – young people and fans of stylish outdoor fashion – utilizing unique backgrounds to stand out from other outdoor clothing brands. Another good web design practice is how the brand communicates sales and incentivizes higher demand values with free shipping over a certain threshold. The brand also offers newsletter subscription benefits with a 15% discount, encouraging customers to take action.
10. KETNIPZ
Ketnipz is a brand empire established by Harry Hambley on Instagram. You can find the main character Bean worldwide, across social media, and even tattooed on fans’ bodies. The design of the Ketnipz website reflects Bean’s quirky personality, with vibrant colors, unique fonts, and seasonal updates to align with upcoming product launches.
11. Chubbies
The design of the Chubbies website evokes the brand’s values with engaging product photography and clever text. The sidebar navigation, although different from most e-commerce website designs, provides an organized list where shoppers can quickly and easily find their products.
12. KITH
KITH’s homepage design grabs your attention from the moment you land on it. The site feels clean, yet it sparks interest at the same time, with links to treats and content such as comics, films, magazines, and more. KITH’s catalog is vast, but product categories are presented in a way that allows you to quickly explore and find what you’re looking for.
13. Personal Fav
Personal Fav targets its audience using trendy color palettes and fonts, with provocative imagery. Although the site is bold and colorful, it is not cluttered. The top-level navigation allows customers easy access to the brand message and product pages.
14. Satya Organic
You can see that the brand prioritized the design of the Satya Organic skincare website. Once you land on the homepage, you’ll find earthy colors and references that say “If you’re looking for plant-based products, you’re in the right place.” The site’s footer clearly displays product benefits and certifications like USDA organic, cruelty-free, fragrance-free, and Indigenous-owned.
15. Beardbrand
Beardbrand takes a sophisticated, mature, and global approach to presenting beard care products through its website design. Using a questionnaire, founder video, and readable articles, the site encourages you to stay, engage with the brand, and make a purchase.
16. Kylie Cosmetics
As soon as you land on the Kylie Cosmetics homepage, you’ll see an image of Kylie Jenner, the beauty icon of youth. Her endorsement gives the site a significant boost in trust and credibility. Each product is also well displayed against a white background; additionally, when hovering over an image, you can see someone using it in action.
17. Allbirds
The sustainable clothing store Allbirds positions itself as a trustworthy brand for environmentally-conscious shoppers through targeted language in its texts, such as “made from natural materials.” Trust is also achieved through B Corporation certification and a whole section of the site dedicated to sustainability and transparency. Allbirds’ everyday lifestyle images feature models who fit its target audience, making customers think, “This is the kind of clothing I love.”
18.Tiny Organics
The Tiny Organics website is designed to care for children in a way that alleviates the anxiety of stressed parents. With high-quality images showcasing the ingredients in each meal, a transitional box for testimonials from real parents, and endorsements from doctors and nutritionists, Tiny Organics answers burning questions from parents and reduces common purchasing barriers. The testimonials and media endorsements add to this sense of security.
19. Tessemae’s
Tessemae’s utilizes fan photos on its e-commerce site – user-generated content created by customers to help build trust. It tells visitors that Tessemae’s products are loved among current customers. Additionally, the brand offers inspiration for various ways to use its dressings and sauces to create delicious meals, providing an extra purchasing incentive.
20. Death Wish Coffee
Death Wish Coffee boasts a truly bold brand and is unafraid to express it in its store. It claims to sell “the world’s strongest coffee,” and everything from the site text to the use of red in its website design makes you feel as though you’ve just had a cup of it. Death Wish Coffee knows why most people land on its site: to buy its beans. As soon as you scroll down the homepage, the first thing you see is the option to purchase ground or whole beans or coffee pods.
21. Almond Surfboards
Almond Surfboards uses soft, stylish colors throughout its online store to give it a sleek yet beachy feel. The imagery is creative and unique, making it look like a high-quality brand from the moment you land on the page. It sells images within a lifestyle context – even if you don’t need a surfboard, you may feel compelled to own a piece of the brand through t-shirts, accessories, wall art, and more.
22. Leather Head
The homepage design of Leather Head is simple and aligns with the brand’s sense of sophistication and luxury. The choice of color, font, product imagery, and text tone all reflect the brand it aims to target. Even if you’re not interested in sports, you’ll surely want to browse the site and find a product for a friend or loved one.
23. Pura Vida Bracelets
To foster trust, the jewelry vendor Pura Vida Bracelets showcases five-star product reviews from thousands of customers on the landing page of its e-commerce site, along with reviews from relevant media geared towards its target audience like BuzzFeed and HuffPost. Pura Vida Bracelets employs a strong, simple CTA of “Shop Now” to prompt customers to click. The footer bar features highlights of promotions such as free shipping.
24. Boba Love
Boba Love is a small business that directs visitors straight to the shopping experience. It uses lifestyle images and product photography to convey the brand’s values. Boba Love gets the product layout right – clean and clear in directing what visitors want to do: buy boba-inspired products.
25. Partake Foods
If you love healthy cookies that are environmentally friendly, you’ll adore the Partake website design, which immediately showcases reassuring text including “gluten-free,” “vegan,” and “allergy-friendly” on the homepage. The deal is confirmed through abundant social proof – media mentions and glowing customer reviews. The footer builds trust through allergy-specific testimonials.
8 Best Tips for E-commerce Website Design
1. Keep it Simple
Simplicity is always key to increasing sales in your e-commerce business. The more distractions you place on your e-commerce site (like banner ads, pop-ups, and excess colors), the more it becomes the one thing that deters you from completing a sale. A good e-commerce platform should have a range of e-commerce website templates to choose from to help keep your design simplified.
2.Express Your Brand
It doesn’t matter if you’re a photographer, stylist, or running an online business. People want to buy from trustworthy brands that they feel confident in and recognize. Take the time to define your brand and understand what sets you apart from competitors – then apply it to your website design.
3. Use the Right Platform
Use the best platform for your e-commerce site. By using a platform like Shopify, you can set up a beautiful and user-friendly store with robust e-commerce features and sell online quickly. A good e-commerce platform should be flexible and easy to use, allowing you to customize your online store to meet your exact needs. You can use Shopify’s online store builder, which provides the necessary functionality to create your own store from scratch.
4. Be Empathetic
Put yourself in the shoes of potential customers. How easy is it to navigate your e-commerce site? How does a person feel while shopping? How easy is the checkout process? Think about what the customer needs to complete a purchase in your store and design accordingly.
5. Upload High-Quality Images
Images can increase the conversion rate on your website by 40%. But they need to be high quality. Invest in good product photography and use images from free stock photo sites to help increase visual appeal throughout the shopping experience.
6. Start with Professionalism
Do you want to start an online store that builds trust with shoppers? You will need a professional website. Customers won’t part with their hard-earned money or sensitive information like credit card numbers if the site isn’t professional.
7. Leverage Social Proof
When designing your e-commerce site, look for places where you can showcase social proof like positive reviews and user-generated content. The more shoppers see the good experiences others have had with your products, the more likely they are to buy.
8. Focus on the Checkout Process
Even if you have a beautifully designed and innovative e-commerce site, if the checkout process is painful, customers may not buy from you. Make your e-commerce checkout process simple, easy, and quick. Use payment gateways like Shop Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal, and Stripe, along with other accelerated payment options to make the purchasing process as easy as possible for shoppers.
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