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Design Showcase Of Creative Online-Shops

By Smashing Editorial, August 6th, 2008 in Design Showcase | 106 Comments | Forum

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.

Klassiker in Acryl

Simple Treasures

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.

Accentuate Clothing

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.

Threadless

TasteBook

Loworks

LadyBugs Picnic
LadyBugs Picnic with feminine touch, handwritten elements and, of course, bugs!

Martique

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.

Axid

A better tomorrow

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.

Service is good for you

You may want to take a look at the following related posts:

Published in Design Showcase, August 6th, 2008
Tags: carts, designs, inspiration, shops

1.

Praveen Sewak (August 6th, 2008, 3:54 pm)

Very very nice…. I am about to start my own online shop. Very pleased that i stopped by here.
2.

Cameron Smith (August 6th, 2008, 4:21 pm)

Hey 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 :)
3.

liam (August 6th, 2008, 4:39 pm)

Brilliant 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!
4.

emil (August 6th, 2008, 4:41 pm)

very nice !!

currently working on an online shops site, glad you wrote this article… keep up the GREAT works !!
5.

Ali Salem (August 6th, 2008, 5:56 pm)

Apple Store anyone?
6.

atom (August 6th, 2008, 6:20 pm)

I attempted to visit Link [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.
7.

K.K.Shankar (August 6th, 2008, 7:37 pm)

Great Collections.

Now we working on the online shops. This article gives a new dimension for our developments.

Keep this great work………….
8.

gaurav chandra (August 6th, 2008, 8:41 pm)

You are doing a great job. I really like all these designs. Thanks for the info.
9.

j. noronha (August 6th, 2008, 8:59 pm)

My 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.
10.

j. noronha (August 6th, 2008, 9:01 pm)

Sorry for the duplicate link, just figured out how it works out.
11.

Fadi (August 6th, 2008, 9:51 pm)

Thank God Someone did this article…Has got to be the most valuble post (for me) i’ve seen in a good while..
12.

speedcu (August 6th, 2008, 11:00 pm)

AMAZING! Awesome showcase!

thanks for inspiration!
:)
13.

Andrei Gonzales (August 6th, 2008, 11:13 pm)

Great list, these are definitely some of the best.

Although you guys forgot to include TopShop. :)
14.

mariusz (August 6th, 2008, 11:48 pm)

VEry good stuff
15.

Ash (August 6th, 2008, 11:52 pm)

Very inspiring article ! Thanx a lot.
16.

Robin (August 7th, 2008, 1:09 am)

What’s up with LekMer?
17.

Ed (August 7th, 2008, 1:18 am)

I agree with Danny - the Howies site is clean and nice!
18.

Fodcj (August 7th, 2008, 3:09 am)

Love the Shoe Guru design
19.

MiSc (August 7th, 2008, 4:04 am)

This one from Austria is a neat example as well: Link [www.merchzilla.com]
20.

Marleen (August 7th, 2008, 5:34 am)

Dude, you forgot to mention meyestyle Link [www.meyestyle.nl]
21.

Steve D (August 7th, 2008, 5:44 am)

I’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.
22.

hawko04 (August 7th, 2008, 6:12 am)

Feel the power is easily one of the most annoying websites I have ever visited. Nice design maybe, but functional definitely not
23.

Ty (tzmedia) (August 7th, 2008, 6:17 am)

Thanks 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.
24.

Barend (August 7th, 2008, 6:53 am)

Great selection! Searched for inspiration but found it! Thanks guys!
25.

Barend (August 7th, 2008, 6:55 am)

ow by the way, when you take a look at the usability a lot of them are horrible!
26.

Gordon (August 7th, 2008, 7:19 am)

I like this one too Link [www.pongalong.com]
27.

JoeK (August 7th, 2008, 8:03 am)

No beatport?! Sacrilege.
28.

Chad (August 7th, 2008, 8:05 am)

Great 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
29.

Tiago (August 7th, 2008, 9:05 am)

Link [www.camiseteria.com.br] from Brasil!
30.

tmk (August 7th, 2008, 10:16 am)

nice selection and interesting that they are almost all clothing related. how about some Link [www.viewville.com]?
31.

Blair C. (August 7th, 2008, 12:28 pm)

Great list. I had a great time going through a couple of these (and found some new places to shop). I’d like to add Link [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.
32.

P-Dog (August 7th, 2008, 1:26 pm)

Very cool sites - but none so good as dyson. It really is a masterpiece.
33.

STPo (August 7th, 2008, 1:40 pm)

Very 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 : Link [www.lafraise.com]
34.

hamak (August 7th, 2008, 1:46 pm)

also very nice is polish czerwonamaszyna.pl check it out
35.

Jaime V (August 7th, 2008, 2:35 pm)

FTP is so hard to use
36.

Mr B (August 7th, 2008, 2:37 pm)

Great showcase and right in time for the design of my own online store… hehehe :-)
37.

chip (August 7th, 2008, 7:26 pm)

Jaime 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!
38.

BenRulz (August 7th, 2008, 8:16 pm)

very 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..!!
39.

erdem (August 8th, 2008, 12:51 am)

Link [www.deppo.com]
40.

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (August 8th, 2008, 1:03 am)

@atom (#6): thank you, the link was removed.
41.

Gordon (August 8th, 2008, 3:32 am)

I’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.
42.

Jonathan (August 8th, 2008, 7:24 am)

Great article. Many Magento-sites are starting to arrive. I like Link [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.
43.

Matt Dempsey (August 8th, 2008, 2:22 pm)

How about Link [www.panic.com] ? It’s always impressed me, you literally drag what you want into your cart, the JS effects are tasty :). Cheers.
44.

HelenLee (August 8th, 2008, 11:51 pm)

Interesting 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)
45.

mooty web design (August 10th, 2008, 9:32 pm)

Hey Smashing, thanks for featuring our site Simple Treasures. What an unexpected honour. Thanks for the comments both good and bad guys.
46.

ashok (August 11th, 2008, 12:50 am)

Thanks for featuring Ushops.com site which was I designed when I was in Magnet Technologies.
47.

Endji Hesham (August 11th, 2008, 1:42 am)

thanks alot i’m working on 2 projects for online shopping :D:D:D luv yaaaaaa smashing magazine :)
48.

ashok (August 11th, 2008, 6:16 am)

Thanks for featuring ushops.com site which I created when I was in Magnet technologies.
49.

halley trazo (August 12th, 2008, 11:30 am)

hey praveen…good to hear from you…heheh…hows things?

nice article
50.

Dimitris a CosmicSoda boy… (August 13th, 2008, 9:18 am)

thanks for featuring CosmicSoda.com
Amazing article, great work!!!

WOW DUDES! COSMIC!!!
51.

lninja (August 13th, 2008, 2:14 pm)

these 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 Link [stores.ebay.com] its pretty original to say the least! do you have any tips for modifying ebay stores with stylesheets?
52.

Tiera (August 16th, 2008, 12:44 am)

What 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.
53.

Karl (August 22nd, 2008, 3:24 am)

I’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 Link [] it’s a little limited in choice, but the selection changes and I haven’t seen any of the stuff anyware else.
54.

Jim (September 3rd, 2008, 1:45 pm)

This site has a nice layout I think. Link [www.mybusinessgifts.co.uk] . Also a cafepress like custom logo tool for there promotional products.
55.

Firman (September 9th, 2008, 9:50 pm)

Owesome, these are definitely some of the great list.
I wonder why my shop not included. :)
56.

ivan (October 9th, 2008, 3:07 am)

A 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.
57.

charlotte (November 18th, 2008, 8:46 am)

Great designs! Love them great inspiration!
58.

Manon (January 19th, 2009, 10:43 am)

The 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 Link [www.carbonica.org] and Link [www.hereslifeafrica.com]. Any chance of this happening?
59.

Mustafa Turgutalp (January 31st, 2009, 2:16 pm)

You can put Evde Link [] here too, a very good design.
60.

Creamy CSS (March 2nd, 2009, 12:48 pm)

I love the simplicity and pretty clean style of ShopComposition ,.. thanks for a great showcase!
61.

joyoge designers’ bookmark (April 4th, 2009, 5:51 am)

nice showcases thanks for the list..
my design shop is joyologo Link [www.joyologo.com]
all the best
62.

囧囧有神的小盆U ^v^ (June 5th, 2009, 1:24 am)

let me look look~~O(∩_∩)O
63.

Jean Carte (June 20th, 2009, 5:40 pm)

I 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.