16 inspirational ecommerce website designs
These 16 ecommerce websites have been strategically designed to intrigue consumers and allow each brand to adapt their website as purchasing behaviors and trends evolve over time.
Food and beverage
No matter what type of food or beverage you sell, a great ecommerce website design can help you target more customers and increase revenue.
Neverfail Spring Water
Neverfail Spring Water, which sells natural spring bottled water and other non-alcoholic beverages, is known as “Australia’s #1 Spring Water Cooler Brand.” Neverfail’s updated website launched in 2018 with the goal of meeting the needs of both residential and commercial customers.
Its self-service platform offers a fast and convenient way for individuals to place water orders by simply selecting their product type and setting the delivery frequency. Neverfail also incorporated a water calculator, which provides users an easy way to calculate the amount of product they need for their business.
Over half of Neverfail’s customers began to use the self-service platform after it was implemented. And in the three months following the site launch, Neverfail achieved twice as many website sales.
Beer Hawk
Beer Hawk was created in 2012 by two British entrepreneurs with a passion for craft beers and now stocks over 1,000 specialty brews online. The company upgraded its website to increase stability, reduce technical debt, and enable agile marketing.
The company incorporated additional store views and categories which made it possible for customers to search by beer type, country of origin, and brewery so they could easily find their ideal beverage. There’s also a Beer Hawk subscription service, which allows a beer buyer to curate 12 beers for a customer based on what they enjoy most.
The results of Beer Hawk’s clever ecommerce design were incredible:
- A 57.8% increase in year-on-year revenue
- A 29.4% boost to its online conversion rate
- A 9.11% jump in average order value
Gertrude Hawk Chocolates
Gertrude Hawk Chocolates has been crafting specialty chocolates since 1936. In 2019, the chocolatier realized it needed a way to drive online sales while still catering to its retail, fundraising, and wholesale audiences. In addition to refreshing the look and feel of the website's front end, Gertrude Hawk engaged with partners like ShipperHQ to streamline payment, tax, and shipping options.
The ecommerce update led to:
- 33.56% more visitors overall
- 45% more mobile visitors
- A 97% decrease in bounce rate
Automotive
Other than a house, a car is the biggest purchase most people are likely to make, and so they take time to get it right. You should approach the design of your ecommerce site with equal care if you’re serious about closing the deal.
Unipart
Based in England, Unipart is a multinational logistics, supply chain, and manufacturing company. They constructed an ecommerce platform that lets car owners plug in their license plate and location to schedule automotive services while providing garages with a separate back end to view bookings and accept jobs. The website also allows car owners to use their mobile phones to schedule roadside assistance any time they are in need.
Unipart’s ecommerce enhancement efforts led to:
- 40% more website traffic
- A 75% increase in online orders
- 50% fewer phone calls and faxes
Fashion, apparel, and accessories
If your ecommerce site focuses on fashion, apparel, and accessories, you need an exceptionally designed website to give customers the comfort and confidence they need to make such a personal purchase online. Here are some examples of companies that focused on design and how that focus improved results.
Shoebacca
Ever since its debut in 2002, Shoebacca has become a major player in the online footwear market. In late 2017, it revamped its eCommerce site to ensure website scalability could pace ongoing growth. The repurposed site also gave customers the option to purchase footwear on Amazon, Rakuten, and Walmart websites, respectively. The enhanced product visibility played a major role in the company's sustained growth, with total sales increasing by 1,400% over three years.
Additional signs of positive growth included:
- A 50% increase in average order value
- A 25% increase in online sales and traffic
Catbird
Catbird sells unique and customized jewelry on demand. While the company’s website performed well on desktop devices, it performed poorly for mobile-oriented customers. Catbird updated its site to ensure customers could have full inventory visibility and make frictionless purchases on their mobile devices. Catbird also implemented a wish list feature and added tools like instant purchase and PayPal Express Checkout to make ordering more convenient.
The jewelry brand’s new website was a hit with its customer base:
- Raised mobile conversion rates by 52%
- Grew mobile revenue by 39%
- Added a 45% boost in mobile transactions
Wholesale, industrial, and commercial
In order to succeed, businesses in the wholesale, industrial, and commercial industries must look for new ways to attract their customers.
Material Bank
Architects and designers use Material Bank to quickly locate the right building materials from hundreds of manufacturers. The company implemented Searchspring to streamline site search functionality as well as customize display elements that appealed to their B2B audience. The front end also integrated a customized Angular app which saves its customers hours upon hours of time.
Material Bank’s reimagined mobile platform allowed the company to meet its ambitious launch goals, including:
- 200%+ client onboarding target in the first month
- 350%+ vendor sourcing target in the first month
- Over 10 million data points collected to analyze for key transaction insights
GoDirect Trade
GoDirect Trade by Honeywell is a B2B marketplace for aerospace parts. Its developers built a site with B2B features to create a robust marketplace that supports individual storefronts for its sellers. To supplement this marketplace, GoDirect Trade also implemented Trust Trace, a service that provides reviews and ratings, helping to increase conversion rates.
After only 10 weeks, Honeywell was ready for takeoff:
- $1 million in website sales
- Over $300 million in merchandise uploaded online
- 2,000 registered site users
Rousseau Metal
Rousseau Metal serves B2B customers through innovative, high-quality storage solutions. Thanks to their new website, the company gives clients the chance to request quotes via an online order form. Each request is automatically sent to Rousseau’s ERP system so follow-up can take place. The site also includes the Bay Design configurator, providing clients with an easy way to customize their technicians’ bays.
Using these site upgrades, Rousseau Metal boosted a range of performance metrics:
- Quote requests increased by 227%
- A 23% boost in page views
- A 27% increase in mobile visitors
Transcat
Since 1964, Transcat has provided testing and measurement tools to customers in various industries, including pharmaceutical, industrial manufacturing, energy, and chemical processing. After initial UX testing, the company redesigned its website navigation to showcase four foundational pillars including calibration services, test equipment, rentals, and brands offered. Transcat’s website was also modified to include easy checkout solutions like PayPal, a store locator tool, and Product Configurator.
The website overhaul led to increases in several key areas, including:
- Mobile visits increased by 17%
- 2.5x more account registrations
- A 13.7% increase in site traffic
Home and garden
Brands in the home and garden sector have a great opportunity to use an ecommerce website to display their beautiful products.
Llardo
Founded in Spain by three brothers, Lladro is one of the most prominent porcelain companies in the world. To increase conversion on desktop and mobile devices, they redesigned their website. The company’s new site included an enhanced gallery and product pages as well as integrations with ERP and warehouse systems. Customers were pleased with the new experience while employees were able to eliminate much of the manual work associated with order fulfillment.
Lladro’s ecommerce update led to business gains including:
- Increased onsite conversion by 44%
- Mobile conversions boosted by 28%
- Online revenue increased by 72%
Graham & Green
Graham & Green opened its doors in 1974, selling hip furniture, sleek home furnishings, stylish lighting, and more. Once the brand decided to offer made-to-order pieces, it realized the importance of a well-designed ecommerce website. Graham & Green created an impressive product configurator that lets customers purchase their own made-to-order sofas online. The company streamlined checkout by integrating Braintree for easy payments, created a guest checkout process, added a waiting list for out of stock products, and implemented marketing capture to collect emails.
Graham & Green’s ecommerce initiatives led to big wins, including:
- Decreased average page load times by 43.5% year-over-year
- Boosted website conversion rates by 96.46%
Cabinets.com
Originally known as Kitchen Resource Direct, Cabinets.com is the largest retailer of manufactured and assembled cabinets in America. As part of its website update, it built the Create-a-Kitchen app to give customers the opportunity to draw their ideal floor plan, select their kitchen palette, choose the appliances, and auto-design their kitchen in 3D. Once they use the app, customers can send their plan to Cabinets.com designers to finalize it.
Cabinets.com is now able to offer its customers:
- 363,000 SKUs and custom options
- A reduction in average checkout time by eight seconds
Choosing an ecommerce platform
There are countless ecommerce platforms on the market. Choosing the right one for your situation means taking a variety of factors into consideration.
Platform type
While a self-hosted platform is housed on your own infrastructure, a cloud-based platform can be accessed from anywhere. If you go the self-hosted route, you’ll have more control of your data and save money in the long run.
Another decision is to go with an open-source or commercial platform. You can download and run an open-source platform for free. However, this will usually require extensive coding knowledge to customize a commerce platform with the necessary features and functionality.
A commercial ecommerce platform requires you to pay for a license, which may vary in price. Some options ask you to make a one-time payment in exchange for unlimited use. Others come with subscription-based pricing models, requiring ongoing payments.
Business goals
Think about the unique objectives of your business. Maybe you want to transition from brick-and-mortar sales to online sales. Or perhaps you’re already online but wish to improve your customer experience and reach new audiences. It’s also essential to keep your particular products and services in mind.
Scalability
Don’t overlook the importance of scalability when you shop around for an ecommerce platform. Your business can evolve to become something very different in one, five, or 10 years from now. If you’d like to eventually be able to handle hundreds or thousands of transactions per day, you’ll need a solution that can help you do so.
Budget
In a perfect world, you’d have unlimited funds to spend on an ecommerce platform. Since this is rarely the case, you’ll need to crunch the numbers and see what fits your budget. Consider whether you prefer pay-as-you-go pricing as perhaps a one-time fee is more suitable. Remember, the least expensive option isn’t necessarily the best one.
Features, tools, and integrations
When you research ecommerce platforms, you’ll find some are more robust than others. Make sure you opt for one which includes all of the features, tools, and integrations you need to meet your business goals. The last thing you want to do is end up with a platform that doesn’t accept Venmo and PayPal payments when a seamless checkout is your top priority.
Discover how to define key requirements for your next ecommerce platform
Realize your ecommerce vision today
If you want to build a new ecommerce site from scratch or take your current one to the next level, look no further than Adobe Commerce. This next-generation ecommerce solution provides a robust page builder, ERP integration, mobile and B2B commerce features, inventory and order management, and more.
Learn about the world’s most flexible ecommerce platform