The Ecommerce Graveyard: How 37 Popular Sites Used to Look
People don’t really judge a book by its cover, do they? Of course they do!
Whether it’s the presentation of food at a fancy restaurant or the latest Apple product, humans seem to just love things that are beautifully designed. The same principle applies to websites, especially in the eCommerce field. If you’re not presenting your visitors with the best website design and packaging your products nicely, you’re definitely leaving money on the table.
Attractive, cool website designs have always played a key role in a successful online sales and marketing strategy. That’s because beautiful design and an excellent color palette can increase the perceived value of your products.
Whether you’re about to create a brand new eCommerce site or you’ve been thinking about redesigning your current site, the following list of the 27 best website designs (and more!) should give you ample eCommerce website design inspiration.
What makes a good eCommerce website?
People judge the design of your eCommerce website the minute they land on it.
In fact, studies have shown that it takes 50 milliseconds for browsers to decide if they’ll stay on a site or not. You get .05 seconds to impress users, which is why website design is so important for your eCommerce business.
What makes a good eCommerce website can be defined by four elements:
1. Trust
Imagine walking into a retail store and seeing a huge disaster. Clothes are everywhere, it’s dirty, no one greets you or makes you feel welcome. What are you going to do next? Probably get out of there as soon as possible.
When someone visits your store for the first time, they may not know anything about your brand, the quality of your products, or your commitment to making customers happy. Deals might earn their consideration, but they’ll need to trust you before they actually go through with a purchase.
Customers need to know that when they buy from you, they’ll receive the product as advertised.
There are three essential trust indicators every business should include on their website:
Contact information
Nothing throws potential customers off more than a website without contact information. Include an email and, if possible, a phone number and a mailing address. This type of information, along with an About page, helps potential customers feel they’re buying from a real person.
A return policy
A return policy not only makes it easier for people to bring back products that don’t satisfy them, it actually increases sales by lowering shopping cart abandonment and instilling the customer with a sense of confidence and trust that they can send back an item if they need to, without any transaction fees.
Technical certifications
By adding Shopify Payments, you’ll have access to advanced features and payment services featuring the latest security technology for protecting your customers’ information. Don’t hesitate to use graphics or badges to show your security compliance and all the payment methods you accept.
Customer trust is hardest to earn when you don’t have any customers, so you’ll want to incorporate these trust indicators as you design your store.
2. Good visual appeal
Visual appeal is essential to help customers envision your products online and click Buy.
Perception is everything when selling your products online. People form their first impression of your site in mere milliseconds. With your Shopify store, making that impression count rests largely on the quality of your images.
Think of it this way: your product photography is like an ambassador, sharing the promise of your product online. Your customer can’t try, taste, feel, or wear your product before they buy, so they’ll rely heavily on your visuals to decide if that product is right for them.
Generally, you want to include product photos with a white background, as well as lifestyle photos of your products in use. Outdoor Voices’ homepage features lifestyle images to communicate its brand side-by-side with more product-centric images to entice visitors to learn more.
Products photographed on a white background are the gold standard of ecommerce photography. That’s because the white background makes it easier to see the item in detail and strips away the branding so your product can appeal to different demographics.
Whether you’re selling through your own Shopify store, Amazon, or eBay, lifestyle photos are important because they allow customers to envision using a product in their day-to-day life by picturing themselves as the model being shown.
Your product photos are a key factor in your store engagement, conversion, and retention.
Beyond product photos, you also need to consider your site’s colors and fonts. You may have the most incredible product, but if the aesthetics of your website—specifically its colors and fonts—don’t work, your customers will be put off and may not make a purchase. The look of your store plays into the overall experience of buying the product.
Color is one of the most powerful tools you can use to spark interest and emotion. It can also be used to draw attention to specific sections of your website and lead your customer down the buyer’s journey.
Limit your site to two main colors—a primary color and a secondary color. To choose your colors, you can use two great resources. Go to Dribbble to search for a color palette. For example, if you type in “red,” you can see examples of websites that use red in their color palette and decide which options are most visually appealing.
Here’s an example where the business used simple black on white text with shades of green as its accent colors.
Another key consideration is your website’s accessibility. You want the colors you select to contrast enough that people of all ages and abilities can read and see your text.
Lastly, you’ll want to give some thought to typography. Customers expect to see dynamic and interesting typography on websites, not stale fonts like Times New Roman. While the words you write share information, it’s the typography that communicates the emotion behind that information.
The good news is, with a store builder like Shopify, you can access templates with recommended fonts and designs. You can use these fonts on your website or choose fonts from another source to make the necessary customizations you need.
As with colors, it’s a good idea to stick to two fonts and create a hierarchy between them. Managing multiple fonts can be tricky for non-designers, and your website can become very messy looking. Using just two fonts simplifies things. Choose one font as your header or title font and another to be your body font.
Supergoop does a great job of selecting a title font that reflects its brand while its body font is simple, clear, and easy to read.
A unique header font can add some flourish to your brand, while the body font will be your workhorse, used for all the other copy on your website, from product descriptions to checkout instructions.
While display fonts can have a little more flourish because of their size, it's important to pick a body font that's readable. Not every customizable font is designed for screen reading and picking the wrong one (a thin sans serif, for example) could drive customers away if they can’t read your site.
3. Responsive format for mobile and web
According to comScore, nearly 70% of digital media time is spent on mobile devices. Unfortunately, many eCommerce solutions don’t optimize for mobile and are built only with desktop browsing in mind. This can result in a fair number of lost new sales.
If you’re building your business with Shopify, your store is “responsive.” This means the site is user friendly on different devices and screen sizes, whether customers view it on a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.
When choosing a theme based on mobile optimization, it’s best to personally test the ease of use to see if you’re happy with the transactional flow. If you’re not, there’s a good chance your customers won’t be either. Elements like cart drawers and easy-to-follow mobile navigation are crucial when finalizing your choice.
4. Easy navigation
Your website navigation should help customers find your products quickly and easily. Good navigation also helps improve SEO on your site so you get found in search results.
Good navigation improves the online shopping experience and helps merchants increase their sales and profits. Navigation can also influence the theme you choose. For example, if you have a large catalogue of products, a theme with a bigger menu might be best for you.
Here are some guidelines to follow when designing your store: first, try to stick to only a few menu headers in your navigation. Be clear and direct when labeling these headers—this is no time to be clever. Here are headers you can use for top-level navigation:
Shop [Product Category]
About Us
Bestsellers
Contact Us
Here are three great examples of menus that make navigation simple. The visitor knows exactly what they’re getting each time. As a beginner, I still think you should start with the four listed above, but over time, you'll learn what your audience gravitates to.
Additional navigation links can go in your footer—the section at the bottom of your website. Here are the labels I recommend for your footer:
Shop [Product Category]
Return Policy
Terms of Service
Contact Us
You can always change your headers if you notice they’re not being clicked on or add on a sub-navigation menu to include links to other important pages or product collections.
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