eCommerce Website Design: What to Consider + Expert Tips & Examples

With rising competition and savvier shoppers, a strong eCommerce website design is crucial for capturing attention and driving sales. However, your design is not just a look; it demands much more: usability, speed, performance, and trust, which are challenging to deliver simultaneously. 

This blog will clarify what defines a winning website design for eCommerce, provide tips to optimize your online store, and display inspiring examples that are setting industry benchmarks. Whether you’re launching or redesigning your site, keep scrolling to find better insights to start.       

What Makes a Great eCommerce Website Design

A well-structured eCommerce website design is often evaluated based on different aspects. Here are the key elements that you should prioritize to build a high-converting eCommerce site:

Building trust with customers

When customers shop online, you should reassure them that your site is safe and professional. 

First, you should have a detailed About Us page with your business address, phone number, email, and team introductions. This will make your contact information accessible to everyone. Next, let’s find a room to highlight customer reviews with names and photos from platforms like Google or Trustpilot, often on key pages like the homepage or product pages, to add credibility. 

Other aspects, such as transparent shipping, return, refund, privacy policies, SSL certificates, secure checkout icons, and accepted payment methods, are all important to display on the site. 

Focusing on web visuality

According to the Interaction Design Foundation, users can assess your website's appeal within 50 milliseconds. This means your design should be instantly attractive, unique, and aligned with your brand identity to inspire a strong recall. Here are visual elements that you should prioritize:

• Color palette: For touchpoints like navigation bars or banners, you should use your brand’s core colors. Often, let’s stick to 2 to 3 primary colors to maintain visual harmony.

• Typography: It is essential to choose fonts that are readable but match your brand tone. For example, if you start with a minimalist brand, a modern Sans-Serif font will be fine. Also, keep font usage consistent across the parts of your website to reduce confusion. 

• Images and videos: To effectively engage customers, prioritize high-resolution visuals. When possible, avoid generic stock photos; opt for custom photos and branded content. 

Ensuring clean site navigation

A simple, intuitive navigation helps users find what they are looking for quickly and effortlessly. This directly affects how long they stay on your website and whether they finish their purchase. 

You need to have a clear menu structure: 5-7 primary categories on your main navigation bar, drop-down menus for subcategories, and logical grouping of items based on browsing patterns. Also, navigation buttons should be placed where users expect so that they can easily click to direct them to their desired pages. Don’t forget to add a search bar at the top of the page with autocomplete and include a breadcrumb navigation to help users clarify their shopping journey. 

Bringing personalized feelings

More shoppers expect shopping experiences that feel relevant to them. This could mean seeing personalized product recommendations, browsing items they recently viewed, interacting with dynamic homepage banners, or even trying product configurators that allow self-customization.  Impressively, digitally native companies like eCommerce brands often outperform traditional company archetypes in this area, driving up to 81% repurchase rates and 53% customer loyalty.

Companies embrace personalization to improve revenues and customer loyalty

Having responsiveness across devices

As of June 2025, over 64% of website traffic is from mobile devices. This highlights how crucial mobile optimization is for online success and sales. A responsive site should adapt seamlessly to all screen sizes, like smartphones, tablets, and desktops, to ensure a consistent experience. Google even penalizes non-mobile-friendly sites by lowering their visibility or not indexing them at all. 

15+ Best eCommerce Website Design Examples to Inspire You

1. Wild Earth

• Category: Animals and pet supplies

• Sales revenues: $703K+/year

Wild Earth features a nature-inspired eCommerce website design with a strong visual hierarchy. The dynamic homepage hero section showcases a high-quality video of pets in natural settings, effectively establishing a warm and relatable connection with first-time visitors on this website.

Wild Earth displays a video of pets to emotionally connect with potential customers

Moreover, intuitive menu navigation seamlessly guides customers through relevant categories. And soft pastel color palettes align with the product packaging, reinforcing its brand consistency.

2. Peloton

• Category: Apparel and Accessories

• Sales revenues: $3.2M+/year

Peloton focuses on fostering a community feel by featuring user success stories, live class schedules, and lifestyle imagery on its product pages. The first homepage section clearly divides fitness goals into 6 interactive blocks, allowing users to choose a proper routine easily. This both enhances usability and reinforces Peloton’s personalized and goal-oriented approach. 

Peloton displays a lot of live classes to enhance user engagement and trust

Learn more: 15+ Best Shopify Themes for Clothing Stores

3. Choose Muse

• Category: Arts and Entertainment

• Sales revenues: $777K+/year

Choose Muse is the next best eCommerce website design, highly evaluated for balancing minimalist aesthetics with explicit educational content. The brand uses engaging graphics, concise explanations, and solid numbers to simplify complex technology, making it accessible. Visitors can also find user reviews in texts and videos for deeper evaluation before purchasing.

Choose Muse stands out with a clean, minimal-styled eCommerce website design

4. Nurture&

• Category: Baby and Toddler

• Sales revenues: $412K+/year

When you first visit Nurture&, you’re immediately greeted with a modern, blue-colored layout. The homepage highlights key USPs, including best-selling bundles, award-winning designs, and the option for free trials, which offers immediate value and reduces friction for new customers. Their product pages are thoughtfully designed with detailed and zoomable lifestyle photographs.

Nurture& grabs visitors’ attention by displaying key USPs directly on its homepage

As the brand targets children’s care & health, it’s essential to display trust-building social proof. That’s why shoppers can see lots of Instagram-style review videos at the end of product pages. This enhances credibility and helps shoppers clarify whether Nurture&’s products fit their babies. 

5. WYZE

• Category: Camera and Optics

• Sales revenues: $714K+/year

The next eCommerce website design is for WYZE, a renowned brand that sells smart devices. It features a horizontal layout that smartly categorizes its product offerings. Each section includes high-resolution visuals and CTA buttons like See it all, guiding shopping with minimal friction. The site also boosts customer trust through social proof, such as the #1 Viral Camera on TikTok.

WYZE features a horizontal layout with clear product categories

6. Panera Bread

• Category: Food, Beverages, and Tobacco

• Sales revenues: $363K+/year

Panera Bread is a notable eCommerce website design for F&B services. The site layout is divided into two sections: “Panera” for individual orders and “Panera Catering” for bulk meals. This ensures that both everyday customers and large-group planners can find what they need.

The site uses colorful and appetizing images of fresh food, immediately capturing attention and stirring cravings. The color palettes are green, yellow, and pink, aligning with the brand identity.

Panera Bread offers a colorful, compelling website design for eCommerce in F&B

7. Steelcase

• Category: Furniture

• Sales revenues: $1.9M+/year

This brand showcases its furniture with a strong emphasis on professional and elegant imagery that reflects its premium brand. The clean navigation that separates “Products” from “Spaces” and “Research” allows users to find relevant content. Steelcase also includes a comprehensive “Resources” library offering whitepapers and insights, helping establish strong industry authority.

Steelcase displays professional, high-quality images for all products and descriptions

8. MOEN

• Category: Hardware products

• Sales revenues: $996K+/year

MOEN is one of the first eCommerce website designs to clarify its target audiences right from the homepage: B2C (MOEN), B2B (Commercial), and Professionals. Each segment features a consistent layout that emphasizes MOEN’s USPs while ensuring a cohesive brand experience. 

MOEN differentiates its homepage design tailored to 3 target audiences

MOEN also includes a “Sign Up” form with clear input fields for Name, Zip Code, and Email Address, as well as transparent terms and conditions to grow the customer email list effectively. 

9. AROMA 360

• Category: Health and Beauty

• Sales revenues: $1.2M+/year

AROMA 360’s website is designed to capture visitor interest through an engaging and conversion-focused homepage immediately. The first section prominently invites users to demo their VIP scenting program or book a free consultation, boosting buyer trust before purchasing. The site also features bestsellers and popular product categories directly on the homepage, allowing users to explore top items without needing to navigate through multiple product pages.

Aroma360 features the best unique service with a free demo right on the homepage

Learn more: Top 100 Inspiring Shopify Beauty Stores We Love

10. Philips

• Category: Home and Garden

• Sales revenues: $4.0M+/year

Philips showcases excellent usability for an established brand. Its robust, predictive search bar offers instant results and category suggestions as users type. The company's overall eCommerce website design employs a consistent modular layout across categories, making it easy for users to navigate a diverse range of products, from personal care to home appliances.

Philips impresses visitors with its smart product search bar

11. Timbuk2

• Category: Luggage and Bags

• Sales revenues: $418K+/year

Timbuk 2 features its “Go custom for your one-of-one” with a “Shop” button as a primary CTA on the homepage, inviting users into a highly personalized shopping journey. On the product page, customers can easily search and discover their desired items using the “Filters” and “Sort By.” Moreover, every product feature, description, and dimension is explained and displayed clearly.

Timbuk2 enables a CTA with personalized experiences on their products

12. Herman Miller

• Category: Office Supplies

• Sales revenues: $1.6M+/year

Herman Miller, a globally recognized office furniture brand, offers an eCommerce website design that reflects its international presence and professional credibility. From the homepage, users are greeted with a “Change Location” feature displayed in the top headlines. This allows visitors to switch between regions, ensuring localized content, pricing, and shipping information.

Herman Miller enables the “Change Location” to make global visitors feel more helpful

The site is thoughtfully segmented into “Shop for Home” and “Workplace”, catering to both individual consumers and business clients. In addition, Herman Miller provides a dedicated resources section for experts like designers and architects, reinforcing its status as an authority. 

13. Nike

• Category: Sporting Goods

• Sales revenues: $100M+/year

Upon landing on the homepage, visitors are met with high-resolution banners featuring iconic athletes paired with motivational messaging and a “Shop” CTA. These banners can help sell products and evoke aspiration and the spirit of performance, aligning with Nike’s brand identity. 

Nike engages customers with banners featuring iconic athletes in the world

With a vast product catalog, Nike ensures effortless navigation through its intuitive filtering system by category. Users can refine their search based on sport type, technology, fit, and color. This allows for finding the right items quickly, reducing friction and enhancing the user journey.   

14. Hasbro Pulse

• Category: Toys and Games

• Sales revenues: $675K+/year

This eCommerce website design stands out due to its use of 3D game models and high-quality visuals, which bring action figures, collectibles, and merchandise to life. The site also features high-contrast color schemes, using a black background to emphasize bold product imagery. This both successfully adds a premium, collector-focused aesthetic and enhances visual clarity.

Hasbro Pulse brings a true-to-life experience with 3D game models

15. Type Sauto

• Category: Vehicles and Parts

• Sales revenues: $392K+/year

The Type Sauto website is sleek and performance-oriented, appealing directly to automotive enthusiasts. The clear product categories, detailed specifications, and high-quality imagery of parts in action build confidence and authority, which are essential for selling vehicle accessories.

Type Saute offers a clean product menu for easy navigation

7 Pro Tips to Succeed in Designing Your eCommerce Website

Here are the best strategies for launching websites successfully without eCommerce website design services or eCommerce website design agencies. Whether you’re a solo seller or a small business owner, all of these insights can help you build a high-converting eCommerce website: 

1. Use a no-code page builder

Let’s skip the complexity of coding! Instead, opt for intuitive no-code platforms like GemPages. These innovative solutions empower you to design custom layouts, product pages, and landing pages effortlessly. For the best results when using these page builders, look for key features such as drag-and-drop editors, mobile previews, ready-to-use themes, and AI-assisted tools.  

2. Match brand tone and color palette

It’s crucial to ensure your eCommerce website design’s color palette, typography, and overall tone align perfectly with your brand identity. This brings a cohesive, professional appearance that resonates with your target audience, making your brand memorable in your visitors’ minds. 

3. Use high-quality visuals and content

Visuals are paramount in eCommerce. High-resolution product images, engaging videos, and lifestyle shots allow customers to visualize products. Complement these with compelling, concise product descriptions that highlight benefits and address your customer's pain points. 

4. Optimize for loading speed

Time is money, especially in the online retailing market. A slow-loading website can significantly increase bounce rates and reduce conversions. Thus, to ensure the site design loads quickly, you need to optimize images, minimize plugins, and leverage content delivery networks (CDNs). 

5. Prioritize mobile-first design

As mentioned above, mobile optimization is non-negotiable due to the growth of mobile shopping these days. You should focus on a fully responsive website design for eCommerce, with touch-friendly elements, simplified navigation, and optimized payment for smaller screens. 

6. Build trust with reviews

The website examples listed show the role of social proof in enhancing trust. You can integrate customer feedback, testimonials, and user-generated content videos into your website. However, consider everything carefully to ensure the quality and reliability of content published. 

7. Streamline the checkout 

A complicated checkout process is a leading cause of cart abandonment. Therefore, sellers need to simplify the steps, offer guest checkout options, and provide multiple payment methods. Consequently, converting interested shoppers into paying customers has become much easier. 

GemPages in Action: Build a High-Converting eCommerce Store

GemPages stands out as the premier landing page builder on Shopify. Merchants can utilize it to unlock powerful design features and create high-converting stores to drive sales effectively. That’s why GemPages has been a top-of-mind choice for Shopify eCommerce website design. 

GemPages is #1 no-code landing page builder for Shopify stores 

If you’re a beginner in design, don’t worry! GemPages offers a library of 200+ CRO templates tailored for various eCommerce niches. These pre-designed themes are built with conversion in mind, making it easy to launch stunning and practical pages. Its drag-and-drop editor also lets you freely customize layouts, product pages, site sections, and visuals within just a few clicks. 

Moreover, GemPages includes an AI-powered Image-to-Layout feature, which helps save time in layout creation by learning from the samples and converting them into desired sections. GemPages also enables A/B testing by integrating with Gem X, where you can test different design versions and select the best-performing one to maximize your eCommerce conversions. 

Conclusion

A thoughtfully crafted eCommerce website design is the cornerstone of online retail success. You need to prioritize user experience (UX), build their trust, and implement conversion-focused strategies to engage potential visitors and convert them into loyal customers. Learning how the leading brands optimize their store is essential; however, keep everything unique for your brand. 

Don’t forget to read GemPages blogs to get updated on insights for Shopify and eCommerce. 

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