Raising The Bar: E-commerce Designs That Stand Out From The Crowd

Lets face it, 99.995% of e-commerce designs are ugly and boring! (Except the sites in this gallery… of course!) Templates are often purchased out of the box with little or no customization. Product pictures are uploaded, descriptions written, prices entered, and slapped into the store. Next step – successful e-commerce website…. right? WRONG!

If you care about the products you are selling in your e-commerce store then you should care just as much about the message communicated by your store design. I’ve gathered a selection of e-commerce sites that stand out from the crowd. These sites represent the tone of their products and do an amazing job of getting the attention of their target user base.

Madsen Cycles

Madsen Cycles has a clean and easy to use site that is a pleasure to navigate and browse. Sometimes simple is better – right? KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid!

Supermarket HQ

Supermarket HQ has an incredibly clean and easy to use site. The design is minimal which allows for the unique products to stand out. The homepage features a large amount of products with big and clear pictures. One nice detail of the site is show on hover over the products image: a lovely wood background shows up. Design is in the (minimal) details!

Ligature Loop & Stem

This site sells typographic products and the style and slickness of the site design shows it! The site also features a horizontal format which makes it standout from most e-commerce stores.

Wire & Twine

The Wire and Twine store does a good job of grabbing the viewers attention by combining a clean design with real life textures and elements. Tape, wood background and cloth tags are just a few of the elements that make this a great eye catching design.

Shirt Fight

Spy vs Spy, Designer vs Designer – conflict is a familiar concept that is utilized in this design. Shirt Fight has a fun, rough and tumble design that fits the concept of their product and business structure. The quirkiness and distressed typography and texture make this site stand out.

Teez

Teez features a big in your face layout from the get go. Navigating deeper into the site reveals a seemingly random layout of t-shirts, sprinkled with random tweets and funny videos. While this layout and design may not work for every company, I think this makes the Teez site standout and reflects the personality of their product and brand.

Type Tees

Good design is all about attention to detail. (Did I say that already?) Typetees by lovely folks over at Threadless have some fun hidden UX features that make browsing the store pleasurable. Hover over a t-shirt to see an unfolded view of the shirt design.

Chop Shop

The Chop Shop Store has fun eye catching animations in the header that grab the users attention. The animations also reflect the tone of the site and speak to the target audience – Designers!

Giraffe

The design of the Giraffe shop is fun and quirky. The bouncing on the slider and drop-down on the homepage reflects the quirkyness of the design. The attention to detail makes this site fun to navigate.

Narwhal Company

Narwhal Company has a nice slider on their homepage that cycles through their line of wallets slot machine style. Nice detail that grabs the users attention and shows the variety of their products.

What do YOU think?

We would love to hear your input on the design of the sites in this roundup. Let us know if we missed any well designed e-commerce sites that stand out from the crowd.