Design Showcase Of Creative Online-Shops
Times when online-shops were boring and unattractive are over. To attract customers’ attention designers tend to design online-shops according to the atmosphere it has to create. An online-store in which retro-products are offered is designed in a retro-look. And shops which are aiming to attract young customers are designed in vibrant colors and modern style. Furthermore, interactive browsing through the store, implemented with Flash and JavaScript, gains on popularity as well.
This post showcases 45 examples of creative and unusual designs of online-stores. Being creative doesn’t necessarily mean that the designs are successful since unconventional approaches often increase the time users need to climb the learning curve and figure out how they can achieve their goals. Still, how can you present your products in a distinctive way and how to design a truly unique online-store? Let’s find out.
Trendy design elements such as wood background, textures, handwriting, collage and grunge are quite popular. Reflections, shadows and similar elements from the times of vivid Web 2.0 are used rarely; however, designers of t-shirt- and children’s cloth-stores seem to have a different opinion on that matter for some reason. Disclaimer: we are not related to any of the stores presented below.
Please notice: we don’t know if creative design approaches result in better sales. This post is supposed to provide you with some interesting ideas and approaches which you can use in your future projects, not with recommendations for the most effective online-store-designs.
Showcase Of Creative Online-Shops
ShopComposition
ShopComposition uses a sliding navigation at the top of the site. Users can choose the content they would like to read. This store has an integrated blog and some further projects (such as picture-a-day) to attract customer’s attention. JavaScript in use.
Feel the Power
Actually, Feel the Power sells t-shirts and underwear — just like thousands of other online-stores out there. However, the site is completely Flash-based and offers its visitors a beautiful and attractive navigation via an animated wheel. One click opens a large preview of the selected product. Although Flash is used, the navigation is extremely easy and simple. Apparently, music in the background is supposed to create a good mood.
Yellowood
If a company produces Yellowood wood decks, then it probably should have a yellow design with wood in the background, right?
uShops
uShops welcomes its visitors with a price tag which is supposed to communicate the idea of the site — the online marketplace to buy and sell stuff.
Free People
This store aims at female teenagers. In such stores handwriting and vivid imagery are common.
Nerve
Nerve is an Ajax-based music store with vibrant colors, nifty JavaScript-effects and beuatiful hover effects. Nice and memorable design.
Bisley Perfect Order
This store is partly Flash-based and is designed in a retro-look. The main page is right-aligned for some reason. On the left there is a wood background with a coin.
Habitat Shoes
Habitat Shoes sells shoes. However, it first sets up the perfect atmosphere for the store and offers its visitors to select one of the illustrations which stand for the different accessoires in the store.
ShoeGuru
ShoeGuru places its products in the middle of the page and uses horizontal scrolling for navigation. Notice that only the product is presented to the visitors — and nothing else.
Cosmicsoda
Cosmic Soda sells t-shirts and uses distinctive design decisions to attract its target group. The search box and newsletter box are somehow crooked, there are dozens of dashed lines, blue illustrations and a paper sheet background.
Etsy
Among dozes of distinctive features Etsy has an appealing navigation menu with icons and vibrant illustrations. The creative approach of the design is hidden in its functionality. For instance, it is possible to sort and filter products by colors. It is not done via a text-based search engine, but using the integrated interactive Flash-interface.
LadyBugs Picnic
LadyBugs Picnic with feminine touch, handwritten elements and, of course, bugs!
Mozilla Store
A distinctive fan-shop for geeks and nerds.
Akachanwear
In this store the choice of illustrations directly indicates what the store is about.
Baby Wit
The design seems to be hand-drawn and incomplete which somehow fits to the items the store sells – baby clothes and accessoires. The design perfectly fits to the atmosphere it needs to create.
Related articles
You may want to take a look at the following related posts:
Praveen Sewak
August 6th, 2008 3:54 pmVery very nice…. I am about to start my own online shop. Very pleased that i stopped by here.
Cameron Smith
August 6th, 2008 4:21 pmHey it’s Roy
Waiting to launch my Magento shop, just as soon as the inventory issues are resolved.
It’s a goal to be featured in Smashing one day :)
liam
August 6th, 2008 4:39 pmBrilliant stuff, it certainly does make a boring task more interesting. Like what I’ve seen so far, looking forward to exploring the rest in the morning. Thanks!
emil
August 6th, 2008 4:41 pmvery nice !!
currently working on an online shops site, glad you wrote this article… keep up the GREAT works !!
Ali Salem
August 6th, 2008 5:56 pmApple Store anyone?
Adam
January 4th, 2011 12:11 pmJust because Apple made it doesn’t inherently mean it’s awesome.
atom
August 6th, 2008 6:20 pmI attempted to visit http://www.splittheatom.com/ but it is showing up in FF3 as an attack site. I imagine someone should look into that and remove it from this list if that turns out to be the case.
K.K.Shankar
August 6th, 2008 7:37 pmGreat Collections.
Now we working on the online shops. This article gives a new dimension for our developments.
Keep this great work………….
gaurav chandra
August 6th, 2008 8:41 pmYou are doing a great job. I really like all these designs. Thanks for the info.
j. noronha
August 6th, 2008 8:59 pmMy favorite is definitely “Free People”, very pleasant design.
Thumbs down to “Simple Treasure”. Pink, green and white on a black background almost made me blind.
j. noronha
August 6th, 2008 9:01 pmSorry for the duplicate link, just figured out how it works out.
Fadi
August 6th, 2008 9:51 pmThank God Someone did this article…Has got to be the most valuble post (for me) i’ve seen in a good while..
speedcu
August 6th, 2008 11:00 pmAMAZING! Awesome showcase!
thanks for inspiration!
:)
Andrei Gonzales
August 6th, 2008 11:13 pmGreat list, these are definitely some of the best.
Although you guys forgot to include TopShop. :)
mariusz
August 6th, 2008 11:48 pmVEry good stuff
Ash
August 6th, 2008 11:52 pmVery inspiring article ! Thanx a lot.
Robin
August 7th, 2008 1:09 amWhat’s up with LekMer?
Ed
August 7th, 2008 1:18 amI agree with Danny – the Howies site is clean and nice!
Fodcj
August 7th, 2008 3:09 amLove the Shoe Guru design
MiSc
August 7th, 2008 4:04 amThis one from Austria is a neat example as well: Merchzilla.com
Marleen
August 7th, 2008 5:34 amDude, you forgot to mention meyestyle http://www.meyestyle.nl
Steve D
August 7th, 2008 5:44 amI’ve got to question the inclusion of the FTP site on this list. An all-Flash-based store?
While it’s fun to play with, it was a pain in the butt to actually find anything. The navigation gives you NO clues as to what the products are, unless you spend the time to mouse over each…individual…item. I guess this store owners are more interested in appealing to people who like clicking on buttons, as opposed to actually buying something.
This is the type of design that wins awards, but causes e-commerce to fail.
hawko04
August 7th, 2008 6:12 amFeel the power is easily one of the most annoying websites I have ever visited. Nice design maybe, but functional definitely not
Ty (tzmedia)
August 7th, 2008 6:17 amThanks for tracking these down!
How many times have you tried to come up with an interesting web store for a client proposal.
Can’t wait to explore all these, dissecting the technologies and design bits.
Barend
August 7th, 2008 6:53 amGreat selection! Searched for inspiration but found it! Thanks guys!
Barend
August 7th, 2008 6:55 amow by the way, when you take a look at the usability a lot of them are horrible!
Gordon
August 7th, 2008 7:19 amI like this one too Pong A Long
JoeK
August 7th, 2008 8:03 amNo beatport?! Sacrilege.
Chad
August 7th, 2008 8:05 amGreat post… i just posted about Shopping Carts on my blog 2 days ago… you guys have dug up some great carts that I haven’t seen great job.
You can view the Shopping Cart Bonanza here
Tiago
August 7th, 2008 9:05 amhttp://www.camiseteria.com.br from Brasil!
tmk
August 7th, 2008 10:16 amnice selection and interesting that they are almost all clothing related. how about some fine art photos?
Blair C.
August 7th, 2008 12:28 pmGreat list. I had a great time going through a couple of these (and found some new places to shop). I’d like to add http://www.adagio.com for loose leaf teas. I think as an online store, Adagio is pretty top notch and really pushes the community and participation aspects.
P-Dog
August 7th, 2008 1:26 pmVery cool sites – but none so good as dyson. It really is a masterpiece.
STPo
August 7th, 2008 1:40 pmVery nice selection!
I was going to mention La Fraise which is a pretty popular online tshirt store in France… Their design used to be very fresh, but it’s not as good as before now (the summer skin is… ugly).
Here’s the link anyway : http://www.lafraise.com/
hamak
August 7th, 2008 1:46 pmalso very nice is polish czerwonamaszyna.pl check it out
Jaime V
August 7th, 2008 2:35 pmFTP is so hard to use
Mr B
August 7th, 2008 2:37 pmGreat showcase and right in time for the design of my own online store… hehehe :-)
chip
August 7th, 2008 7:26 pmJaime V: agreed! You’d expect to bring your mouse from the side onto one of the clothing icons to have it expand..but not, it spins a heap of tiles making you lose your spot. It looks nice…and is fun when you swirl your mouse around the circle, but does it achieve its goal? Who knows…?
Very nice showcase though smashing magazine!
BenRulz
August 7th, 2008 8:16 pmvery nice collection… i really liked the Nerve Music Store, Yellowwood, SimpleTreasures…
just saw a spelling error for the word ‘beautiful’ in the NERVE description..!
FTP is kinda hard to use…but very creative..!!
erdem
August 8th, 2008 12:51 amVitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
August 8th, 2008 1:03 am@atom (#6): thank you, the link was removed.
Gordon
August 8th, 2008 3:32 amI’m sorry, but the Feel The Power site is pretty much a lesson in what not to do if you want to sell things. It’s got an entrance page that does nothing other than make you click through to the main site, it relies on a third party plugin (flash) and is unnavigable without it, not to mention useless to disabled users and uncrawlable by search engines, it plays music which is annoying at home when it blots out your MP3s and could potentially get you into trouble at work, and it uses Mystery Meat navigation, as you have no idea what you’re going to look at until you actually click the link. As slick as the presentation is, this particular site should be used as a lesson in what not to do.
Jonathan
August 8th, 2008 7:24 amGreat article. Many Magento-sites are starting to arrive. I like http://www.duffywear.com (www.duffywear.com/en for english version) quite alot. Clean and easy to navigate through. Many of the sites above are very hard to navigate through.
Matt Dempsey
August 8th, 2008 2:22 pmHow about https://www.panic.com/goods/ ? It’s always impressed me, you literally drag what you want into your cart, the JS effects are tasty :). Cheers.
HelenLee
August 8th, 2008 11:51 pmInteresting as usual!
One thing I would like to see Smashings take on is bannerads.. yeah we all hate them but a girls gotalive :)
Where and what are the good ones? (and maybe the really bad ones like those that play loud sounds on a newspapersite)
mooty web design
August 10th, 2008 9:32 pmHey Smashing, thanks for featuring our site Simple Treasures. What an unexpected honour. Thanks for the comments both good and bad guys.
ashok
August 11th, 2008 12:50 amThanks for featuring Ushops.com site which was I designed when I was in Magnet Technologies.
Endji Hesham
August 11th, 2008 1:42 amthanks alot i’m working on 2 projects for online shopping :D:D:D luv yaaaaaa smashing magazine :)
ashok
August 11th, 2008 6:16 amThanks for featuring ushops.com site which I created when I was in Magnet technologies.
halley trazo
August 12th, 2008 11:30 amhey praveen…good to hear from you…heheh…hows things?
nice article
Dimitris a CosmicSoda boy...
August 13th, 2008 9:18 amthanks for featuring CosmicSoda.com
Amazing article, great work!!!
WOW DUDES! COSMIC!!!
lninja
August 13th, 2008 2:14 pmthese shops are amazing…you certainly can’t find stuff like this on ebay. there’s one shop on ebay that i find particularly amusing and it is for land surveying equipment, of all things. maybe it could be of interest to you http://stores.ebay.com/epalmetto its pretty original to say the least! do you have any tips for modifying ebay stores with stylesheets?
Tiera
August 16th, 2008 12:44 amWhat a great post. Although an online store is rather far into the future for me, I’m glad to see that there are creative options for this part of the website. I was very afraid of getting to graphic with an online store, that it might lose functionality. But these examples have shown amazing ways to achieve both.
Karl
August 22nd, 2008 3:24 amI’m a big fan of these online shops..thanks. The trouble seems to be finding truly original stuff that isn’t crazy expensive. One of my favorites is spunique it’s a little limited in choice, but the selection changes and I haven’t seen any of the stuff anyware else.
Jim
September 3rd, 2008 1:45 pmThis site has a nice layout I think. http://www.mybusinessgifts.co.uk . Also a cafepress like custom logo tool for there promotional products.
Firman
September 9th, 2008 9:50 pmOwesome, these are definitely some of the great list.
I wonder why my shop not included. :)
ivan
October 9th, 2008 3:07 amA piece of advice to those starting their own online shop…stop believing you can do everything! and leave development and design to the professionals….once you learn to delegate and focus on whatever else you think you do best…you’ll learn it’s worth it.
charlotte
November 18th, 2008 8:46 amGreat designs! Love them great inspiration!
Manon
January 19th, 2009 10:43 amThe focus on e-commerce sites is great, but what I’d love to see is a showcase of not-for-profit sites, because there are a number of designers who do make an effort to “give back” to their community through pro bono projects. As a graphic designer, I’ve tried to devote a portion of my time to this, and am constantly inspired by sites that focus on environmental and philanthropic concerns with great design like Carbonica and Here’s Life Mission Africa. Any chance of this happening?
Creamy CSS
March 2nd, 2009 12:48 pmI love the simplicity and pretty clean style of ShopComposition ,.. thanks for a great showcase!
joyoge designers' bookmark
April 4th, 2009 5:51 amnice showcases thanks for the list..
my design shop is joyologo http://www.joyologo.com/
all the best
囧囧有神的小盆U ^v^
June 5th, 2009 1:24 amlet me look look~~O(∩_∩)O
Jean Carte
June 20th, 2009 5:40 pmI feel as if I swam through a swamp to find the pages of “smashing”!!
Nice…inovative…creative…exciting! Can’t wait to get to work now after viewing your pages. You are now my favorite place to spend time!
J.C.
Honlapkészítés - Pécs
July 20th, 2009 1:16 pmWow! Very useful & nice collection! Thanks!
Honlapkészítés – Pécs
Dildo
August 5th, 2009 9:24 amsuper list i think this layout is also very nice Link[www.dildo-love.de]
Ed
August 12th, 2009 9:30 pmThere’s some pretty nice sites on here. Thank you for posting. I keep up a blog at http://www.kliky.net [www.kliky.net] which covers a number of topics for the ecommerce platform Magento.
Nadja
November 14th, 2009 5:59 amThanks for all these great examples in one place, so inspiring!
Leksaker på nätet
December 22nd, 2009 11:34 amLekmer? http://www.rarabarn.se
Fallup
January 14th, 2010 12:15 pmNecro comment… but first link shop is closed.
Stamp Malhas
June 23rd, 2010 6:23 amhttp://www.stampmalhas.com.br from brazil
abaadi
September 5th, 2010 8:17 amnice very nice
Jacob
September 30th, 2010 1:36 pmShoeGuru.ca has to be one of the nicest sites. Great looking store.
Rachel
October 12th, 2010 10:35 pmThis site is pretty nice; viebeauty.com.au
It’s a beauty store based in Australia.
Hugh Downs
January 18th, 2011 7:51 pmAm I the only one that agreed with Ali Salem (“Apple store anyone?”) …. Apple has one of the most visited stores on the web, but still looks good. I came here not to see “cute” store pages, but to see good design for the purpose of good user experience, which hopefully drives sales. Some here have that, but other are just cute to glance at before you go to ugly Amazon and make the purchase.
Jeff
April 30th, 2011 9:49 pmI agree with Hugh. Apple has reinvented the clean/sleak look with not only their products, but their website too. I always recommend using as few colors as possible and choose colors with a strong contrast (black & white is my favorite). There are some websites that do this very well (http://www.fightright.ie/ and http://www.beerpongstadium.com) and others that get a little too crazy on their color scheme.
Keep it simple and you are sure to have a higher conversion rate.
Thiago
May 11th, 2011 9:19 pmAnother great Brazilian on line t-Shirt store! http://www.sambaclub.com.br =D
Alat Alat Pancing
June 24th, 2011 4:57 amWooow i wont have design website like that