How Great Design Will Help You Sell More Online
How many times have you nearly forgotten someone’s birthday, whipped out your phone, and within a few taps averted the crisis with the *literal* gift of next day delivery? That’s the beauty of ecommerce for you.
Combine this convenience with tech innovation, international delivery networks and global lockdowns, and it’s easy to see why ecommerce is predicted to account for 22% of all retail sales by 2023.
Everyone and their gran is an e-convert.
As brands shift to digital, it’s clear just how important effective design is in the consumer purchasing journey. Simply put: Good design sells!
Here are five ecommerce sites that nail it when it comes to effective design, with a breakdown of why they work so well.
Simply Chocolate
Fasten your seatbelts because Simply Chocolate’s website is a whirlwind for the senses. Its creativity perfectly visualises the texture, taste, and even the smell of its products in an extremely interactive customer journey (which has your mouth watering with every scroll). This is a perfect example of how to blend creativity and strategy to create an exciting experience that keeps users engaged and wanting more.
Strengths:
Simply Chocolate’s site is as experiential as they come, and this is underpinned by the animations surrounding the mouse. Every scroll or click is partnered with an animation acting as a cue for the consumer. The perfect example being the pulsing mouse tempting the you to tear open the chocolate bar, leading to further information about the flavours. Super engaging and experience-led stuff.
It’s important to have a site centred around the product, but Simply Chocolate quite literally has the product as a fixed element smack-bang in the middle of the viewer’s screen. The animation shows the wrapper being teared open, followed by the reveal of the texture and colour of the chocolate, and the final bite animation as the ‘add to cart’ section is revealed. Having this fixed element not only adds dynamism to the experience, but it also gets the taste buds jumping as the consumer tries to figure out which flavour takes their fancy.
It’s cool to have all the fancy visual tricks, but it’s just as key to make your tone of voice and ethos match. Simply Chocolate’s copy is amazing at creating those craves. You’ll notice, they don’t shy away from leading statements that allure the consumer to purchase. Their ‘Bite into it’ call to action, paired with visuals showing the fluffy insides of the bar, works a charm and makes it very difficult to scroll past. I’m speaking from experience.
Key Takeaway:
Create a dynamic, interactive and sensory journey that shows the product’s best bits or main benefits.
Two Chimps
Two Chimps Coffee’s website is a festival of visual goodness. The page’s loading time is masked by the animated illustrations which appear on either side, as the content loads into the centre of the screen. This animation keeps you engaged from the first click.
A common mistake found on ecommerce sites is that they talk about the ‘what’ far too much, which risks creating friction with the consumer before they purchase. Instead, as popularised by Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why, it’s important to focus on the more human-centric aspect of why the brand exists and why the user should buy into the brand. Two Chimps nails this with its punchy copy that clearly explains its no nonsense, ethical, climate-positive stance.
Strengths:
Two Chimps adopts a narrative-led customer journey, from first landing on the site, all the way to the purchase point. The brand adopts plenty of focus on promoting its ethos combining this with engaging product shots.
Consistent feedback with hover animations, as every scroll or swipe is greeted with interactive animations making the site feel more personable and alive.
A fixed widget can be found on the lower right side promoting a sample pack. This allows the proposition to consistently be in the consumer’s line of sight, which is likely to amplify conversions
Key Takeaway:
Start with why.
Myro Deodorant
Myro’s website gets straight down to business. For its header, it perfectly integrates bright product imagery and quirky copy which is tied together with a clear call to action. Keeping your ecommerce site focused on conversion from the beginning is a great way to embed the notion of purchasing right from the start.
Strengths:
Myro’s hero header is energetic and product-centric, with fun copy leveraging direct address to make the site much more personable. This is a great example of how to make your first impression fun and fresh but still having conversion as your main focus.
Myro adopts GIFs to bring the product experience to life on the page. Adding movement to imagery makes the site much more engaging and allows a more natural viewing experience of the product, as you are able to see it living.
The brand breaks its message down into concise chunks. It’s important to make your brand’s web copy as easy as possible to digest, and Myro illustrates this by identifying its four strengths, all with contemporary icons followed by fun summary copy.
Key takeaway:
Use GIFs and video to show your products in motion, bringing them to life.
Buffy
After 5 minutes on this site I was two clicks away from purchasing the product myself. Buffy’s store is drenched in personality from top to bottom. From their ‘Try Buffy for free’ campaign to their humorous reviews, Buffy has relied on tone of voice and tactical product integration to make a super entertaining and captivating user journey.
Strengths:
Buffy’s hero header is as strong as they come. Their ‘Free Returns’ and ‘Free Trial’ cues pinned to the top highlights Buffy’s confidence in its products, while reviews from popular media companies also build trust. Paired with the humorous headline, it’s easy to see how a consumer would ease their way into the website with zero pressure from the brand, making the consumer feel fully in control of their customer experience.
Creativity is a fundamental aspect of any effective ecommerce site. Buffy’s product shots show that they don’t always have to be mundane and one dimensional. The brand instead opts for imagery that is centred around the human aspect of sharing a quilt and alludes to the relationships we share as humans. Another brilliant example of how starting with the ‘why’ can help elevate your imagery.
Buffy’s ethos and tone of voice marry together perfectly, and this alignment is carried throughout the whole site superbly. Even the curation of reviews sits perfectly alongside its own copy. A great example of how squeezing all of the personality you can into your site can work a treat.
Key takeaway:
Build trust quickly with reviews, confident statements about your products, and human-centric product photography.
Malika Favre
Malika Favre’s website is where simplicity meets beauty. With the global ecommerce climate shifting due to the pandemic, Malika Favre represents a whole host of artists turning to ecommerce in order to find new ways to monetise their brands. Favre’s print shop is a tightly gridded gallery of her best works. The artwork is so tightly compacted there is literally no escaping her wonderful imagery and this also makes the customer journey short. Very pretty but straight to the point.
Strengths:
The strength of Favre’s format is how easy it is to use. There are only three clicks between entering the site and the ‘Buy Now’ call to action. With her tightly gridded shop window, Favre has adopted a mouse hover effect that instantly reveals the name, size and pricing of each product. This means every movement from the user is greeted with information that makes the customer journey efficient.
It’s a great tactic to integrate your social channels into your ecommerce site and Favre does just this with her Instagram added to the main menu. This will act as social proof for your consumer and brings your site to life, as it offers a more intimate behind-the-scenes look, allowing customers to fully buy into what you stand for as a brand.
Overall, Favre’s site is perfectly aligned with her product aesthetic. Colourful quirks on the mouse hover, short and efficient copy, and the minimal visuals perfectly align with the mystique Favre has built around her work, allowing it to stand centre stage. It’s about nothing else but the art.
Key takeaway:
Tightly align your site’s aesthetic with that of your products and make the journey to purchase as efficient as possible.
And there we have it. Some of the most effective ecommerce sites of 2021 thus far. It’s an ever-competitive marketplace, but if you keep your site firmly aligned with your ethos, start with the why and bring your product to life with considered design like the sites above, there’s no reason why you can’t be a success too.
