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12 real and inspiring ecommerce website examples
Ecommerce web design has become an integral part of an online store’s success.
From aesthetics to navigation and accessibility, web design aspects are crucial for making a lasting impression and providing a seamless shopping experience. Great ecommerce website examples can serve as inspiration for web design best practices to help your online store stand out and convert.
This chapter gives you 12 great ecommerce website examples to learn from. For each example, we discuss which ecommerce website best practices have made it worthy of being on our list, and what you can do to replicate their core principles and success.
Build an outstanding online store with Hotjar
Hotjar's product experience insights help you design your own ecommerce website with a strong foundation.
Delivering a smooth shopping experience starts by addressing the design elements that are most useful to—and most used by—your customers. To do this, we’ve segmented our ecommerce website examples into four categories.
Click on each to read through the ecommerce website best practices that stand out at each point, and learn how to recreate them on your own site:
Ecommerce website homepage examples
For ecommerce websites, the homepage acts as the face of the company, providing users with an entry point to all other pages, products, and services on the platform.
It takes users about 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your website. At that moment, they’ll determine whether to stay or leave. Nailing your ecommerce website homepage makes a striking first impression, establishes credibility, appeals to users, and makes them come back for more.
Here are a few ecommerce website examples you can take inspiration from for your homepage design:
1. Mahabis
With an intuitive homepage design, footwear brand Mahabis provides visitors with fun and interactive ways for users to engage with and learn about their products.
The layout is straightforward and directly presents the product’s unique selling points. Its web design is also clean, with strategic call-to-action (CTA) buttons and vivid imagery accompanying the copy.
What stands out: the Mahabis homepage is an eye-catching site that engages users while guiding them down the marketing funnel.
The page mainly shows products, categories, and second-level page links. However, it’s their interactive breakdown of Mahabis shoes and how they’re made that attracts attention, giving visitors added context and engaging them on the page. This functionality is key to boosting site metrics like time-on-page and decreasing metrics like bounce rate.
Pro tip: ensure every customer's experience with your homepage is a good one.
Use Hotjar's Observe tools to visualize the customer journey and get actionable product experience (PX) insights. For example, Recordings and Heatmaps show you where users of different devices are getting stuck or dropping off.
This helps you examine what your users did on the homepage and fix any flaws with the user experience.
An example of a Hotjar Heatmap
2. Dawn by Shopify
Today, nearly 45% of ecommerce shopping comes from mobile commerce. With Google also prioritizing mobile-friendly sites on its search engine results pages (SERPs), having a mobile-first website has become crucial to improve your store’s UX and boost the site’s search engine optimization (SEO).
The best way to design a homepage—or any landing page that caters to mobile devices and users—is to use mobile-friendly ecommerce website templates. These will adjust to any device, so you won’t have to worry about creating a separate version for mobile users.
A great ecommerce website example with a mobile-first perspective is Shopify’s new website theme, Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0), with Dawn as its flagship design template.
What stands out: as an ecommerce website template, Dawn is primarily mobile-first. That means that it:
Provides users with a consistent shopping experience across different browsers and devices
Loads fast, as mobile shoppers are more likely to purchase from sites or apps that help them make purchases quickly
Ensures that the homepage sections’ padding and margins do not disappear on smaller screens
Uses font sizes and line spacing that adjust automatically to the amount of white space on the screen
Makes sure website elements—like CTA buttons, forms, and navigation menus—are touchscreen-friendly by adjusting the sizing, spacing, and shapes
3. Burrow
A good ecommerce web design should enable your customers to find what they need fast and easily—and that starts with user-friendly and effective navigation.
Navigation refers to all the website elements that help users get to specific information on your website. This includes the header navigation menu, product category pages, on-site search, product filters, and website footers.
Your website should make visitors’ lives easier, not more complicated. Users will lose interest if they can’t navigate intuitively when they land on your homepage.
Furniture manufacturer and seller Burrow understands the secret to user-friendly navigation—making the website accessible and ensuring a smooth user interface (UI) to accommodate their audience.
What stands out: the Burrow homepage streamlines navigation using both the top bar and a drop-down menu, allowing visitors to find specific types of products or compare them amongst themselves.
This type of homepage design makes the user journey clear and easy to follow: customers can easily find what they want, make customizations, and order, with as few clicks as possible.
Design straightforward, streamlined navigation menus to enhance the user experience, which will help you decrease your bounce rate and boost your click-through rate.
Pro tip: to create a fantastic user experience on your website, start by deeply understanding who you’re selling to and their goals.
Your user should be at the center of all your web design decisions. Think of it this way: if you don’t know your user, you won’t know which homepage and UI elements to prioritize.
User research techniques like envisioning your ideal customer persona and asking for real-time feedback will ensure you create products and a website that serve your users’ needs.
If you already have an existing site or prototype, use Hotjar’s Feedback and Survey tools to ask your website visitors questions to understand what they need, like, and dislike. Then, use these insights to improve your homepage layout and usability.
Hotjar’s Survey setup dashboard
Ecommerce website product page examples
Product pages are what make an ecommerce website different from any other site, keeping your products front and center, showcasing their best attributes, and letting visitors know why they should choose your product.
An optimized product page is designed to be found using search engines, and, more importantly, to convert browsers into buyers. It usually includes a complete description of each product, product images, and CTA buttons such as ‘Add to Cart,’ ‘Buy Now,’ ’Add to Favorites,’ and ‘Share Product’.
If you need inspiration for your product page design, check out these three ecommerce website examples:
4. Allbirds
The product page itself needs to include all relevant information a visitor might want to know about the product—such as the price, seller information, delivery period, and customer reviews and ratings.
Apparel brand Allbirds uses a combination of elements to make product pages as informative and appealing as possible to help ecommerce site visitors convert into customers.
What stands out: Allbirds provides thorough product information, describing core features and materials, and includes close-up photos and videos to help customers visualize each product. Using descriptive language and targeted keywords can also improve your ecommerce SEO.
Feedback is a crucial aspect of ecommerce design, and this brand has it figured out down to the science by making customer feedback a part of the design. That’s why, below the product descriptions, Allbirds also includes an advanced testimonials and review system to help visitors make purchasing decisions and enhance customer trust. Customer feedback, ratings, and reviews have a more significant influence on whether or not shoppers consider a product.
Pro tip: collecting feedback about your website is just as important as getting feedback on your products.
Like your product catalog, your ecommerce website benefits from collecting customer feedback—and using it to improve their shopping experience.
Place unobtrusive feedback widgets and forms throughout crucial customer interactions—like onboarding, sign-up, or checkout—to get your users’ opinions on potential product and website improvements. Also, see where customers encounter problems as they highlight snippets of your web page or product experience (PX) and navigate your website in the wild.
Hotjar’s Feedback widget gives instant visual feedback from real users that gives you a detailed picture of how they feel about your website
5. Adidas
A good product page provides users with options. Customers will find it easier to select a suitable product if a page includes a variety of similar goods with all the necessary information.
Sporting goods retailer Adidas provides a user-friendly product page experience and makes it easy for visitors to shop on their site.
What stands out: before you even enter the product page, Adidas makes it easy for users to see the available options and decide if that product fits their needs. Instead of clicking on the listing to see the color options, visitors just hover over a product of interest to preview the available color choices for that shoe or piece of clothing.
To replicate this experience, ensure visitors have easy access to your product variety. This makes browsing faster and more effective, increasing your conversion chances.
6. Pure Cycles
One of the shortcomings of ecommerce stores is their inability to allow shoppers to touch, smell, feel, and really see products before purchasing them. While there is currently no solution to this problem, you can compensate for it in other parts of your business, like your product page.
Pure Cycles’ bicycle product page strives to give visitors as close to an in-person shopping experience as possible.
What stands out: Pure Cycles gives you every piece of information you need to make an informed buying decision, all in one place. The product pages are incredibly detailed, well-designed, and easy to navigate, making online shopping an enjoyable experience.
As a user, you can see close-up pictures of specific parts, learn their specs, and watch videos right from the product page. You can also view photos of actual people using the product. To emulate Pure Cycle, write well-crafted product descriptions that align with your brand and appeal to your target audience’s language. You can even follow their lead and use elements like banners and boxes to highlight all the benefits products offer.
Ecommerce shopping cart examples
For ecommerce websites, your shopping cart page design can make or break a conversion.
A shopping cart page has many roles—from showing users the cart’s total cost, shipping details, and payment options that you support, to suggesting more products that match what the customer already has in their cart.
A crucial aspect of conversion rate optimization is designing a seamless transition from browsing, to adding items to the shopping cart, to checkout.
Here’s how three of the best ecommerce website design examples implement shopping cart ideas to get store visitors to complete their purchases:
7. Columbia
Sportswear brand Columbia’s shopping cart is designed to optimize performance with a price breakdown, efficient layout, contrasting checkout button, and editable cart.
What stands out: the Columbia shopping cart page design provides users with subtle but effectivewishlist nudges. The brand knows that visitors like to sometimes ‘save’ their products in the cart instead of the wishlist. To help them finalize the purchasing process, the shopping cart page design helps users bring products from wishlists to the cart with easy buttons that go a long way in improving their checkout experience.
8. Grainne Morton
Sometimes, having a simple, barebones shopping cart page design can help you stand out from the crowd. Jewelry retailer Grainne Morton is a great example of this.
What stands out: Grainne Morton’s ecommerce website design uses linework and a neutral color scheme to create a grid layout that highlights the product photos, breaks up sections, and makes the page content scannable without feeling cluttered. This simplicity also translates to their shopping cart.
Grainne Morton has integrated a pop-up shopping cart for a seamless shopping experience. When customers add a product to the bag, their virtual shopping cart appears as a sidebar. This helps users quickly review their items without having to visit another page.
Pro tip: assess exit-intent to improve your customers’ shopping cart user experience.
Collect feedback from customers that abandon checkout to get an idea of why they leave, and to develop strategies for improvement.
Exit-intent surveys and follow-up emails are great methods to get feedback from customers on why they abandoned checkout. Ask questions targeted specifically toward the shopping cart experience to get the best results—and learn where to add customer support, what design changes to make, and how to adjust form fields to optimize checkout.
Hotjar’s exit-intent survey helps you understand why shoppers are abandoning their carts
9. Smyths
As a popular children's toys and entertainment products retailer, Smyths Toys Superstores offers visitors a large catalog of products. To make the checkout experience smoother, the Smyths shopping cart page has an aesthetically pleasing layout that offers customers important information—like shipping logistics and delivery options—without diverting from the point of a checkout page: to complete the purchase.
What stands out: Smyths provides customers with alternate delivery options on their cart page. However, the details are not crowded in one place. Visitors can read more details about the shipping and delivery before the footer, or check the summarized delivery information in the three points right under the header.
When visitors click these subheadings, a pop-up opens, and customers can read relevant information without leaving the cart page to make an informed decision, like choosing home delivery or in-store pick-up.
Customers appreciate businesses offering a clear breakdown of delivery options, no matter the industry. By enabling this, you help ease some of the anxiety that shoppers face with ecommerce purchases.
Ecommerce website checkout page examples
The checkout page is linked to your ecommerce shopping cart and allows visitors to purchase products or services. Customers can also view your product details, enter coupon codes, and select their payment options.
A complex checkout procedure is one of the primary reasons for cart abandonment. Here are some of the tricks that ecommerce companies employ to simplify the process, boost sales, and improve the checkout page's UX design.
10. Peloton
Fitness brand Peloton offers users a full spectrum of equipment, accessories, classes, and membership programs. With such a variety of products and services, the Peloton checkout page is designed to include capabilities to support both one-time payments as well as subscription models.
What stands out: Peloton’s subscription-based services offer visitors a 100-day free trial on the checkout page. The page’s format also breaks down one-time costs into monthly estimates and shows users how much value they’re bringing. Along with other security elements—like the SSL certificate and a secure payment gateway system—this instills trust, reassuring and encouraging users to complete their order.
11. Nike
One of the biggest motivators in ecommerce is the need for speed. In fact, around 24% of customers will abandon their purchase if they have to create an account.
Fitness apparel brand Nike’s ecommerce platform revolves around this idea—when customers can quickly complete their purchase, they’re more likely to check out and even make repeated purchases.
What stands out: to counter a rising abandonment rate, Nike offers a guest checkout option, enabling shoppers to purchase without logging in. Their comprehensive help desk also streamlines the information flow, so potential customers can find relevant information without waiting for customer support.
Pro tip: run A/B tests and identify opportunities to increase your checkout rate.
Do your customers get to the very last stage of checkout on your ecommerce store before seemingly changing their minds? This might be a sign you need to make changes that have a positive impact on your ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO).
One way to do this is A/B testing—where some visitors to your online store will see and interact with version A of your checkout page (your previous design) while others will interact with version B (your updated design), so you can make a direct comparison between your two pages, and get more customer insights along the way.
Hotjar’s Recordings tool shows you exactly how your customers work their way through each version of your checkout process. See the user flow, identify any new pain points, and check if you’ve successfully reduced rage clicks, all through the eyes of your customers.
Hotjar Recordings lets you see users scrolling, moving, u-turning, and rage clicking on your site
12. Frans Hals Museum
The Netherlands’ Frans Hals Museum’s website is a mix of classic and contemporary, showcasing a collection of 17th-century art alongside modern pieces and a colorful but clean design. The museum creates a dynamic user interface, using subtle transitions for pages, fonts, and images.
What stands out: to sell tickets, the Frans Hals Museum’s checkout page includes a progress indicator or bar. This identifies the stage of the checkout process users are on, while also outlining the entire process. It’s a little detail that helps keep users up to date with an estimate of how much longer the payment process will take and ease their anxiety. It also lets them know when they’re about to finish and when they need to get their details out.
Next steps in ecommerce web design
A well-designed ecommerce website is a great place to start selling products and services. But from the examples above, it becomes clear that designing a website for ecommerce isn’t only about aesthetics—it’s also about the user experience.
Your online business’ website should provide customers with a simple, straightforward, and user-friendly shopping experience based on what benefits them, not on your own preferences. Design everything with the user experience in mind—from the initial homepage and product pages, to the shopping cart and checkout pages.
Build an outstanding online store with Hotjar
Hotjar's product experience insights help you design your own ecommerce website with a strong foundation.
