Does driving sales on your eCommerce site feel like an uphill battle? It really doesn’t have to be this way.

eb design trends can work miracles on conversion rates and a store’s profitability.

Showcasing luxurious, beautiful photography has been one of the strongest recurring trends in the last few years. But 2018 has welcomed a host of fresh web design trends that can help your online store steal the spotlight by creating a memorable buying experience. From big, bold typography to saturated colour schemes, e-shops are getting a serious facelift this year.

Hardgraft

Hardgraft comes to life with a unique design concept and layout.

The brand’s bold statement at the top of the page is an excellent welcome to new visitors, giving them a quick but compelling overview of Handgraft’s values and eliciting a feeling of exclusiveness.

Why It’s Impressive?

It’s a wonderful design because it gives each product its own space and opportunity to shine. The choice to break away from traditional product display options also reflects on the brand’s commitment to produce limited edition collections and capitalize on each item’s originality. As they promise on their website, all designs are made in very small runs. Some products are even showcased as on-demand pieces, further highlighting the exclusiveness of the Hardgraft collection.

ETQ

This Dutch brand stands out in the sea of eCommerce shops with its stripped-down, minimalistic design.

Why It’s Impressive?

Focusing entirely on the quality and durability of their products, ETQ are successfully leveraging big, eye-grabbing product images and clean typography. This reinforces the brand’s commitment to providing high-quality, well-designed essentials, while avoiding the luxury trend of over-abundant branding. With simple, colour-based backgrounds and the gallery zoom-in feature, ETQ succeed in matching the customer’s expectations and delivering the ultimate shoe-shopping experience.

Simply Chocolate

Image credit: Simply Chocolate

What a delicious web design this is! Simply Chocolate is an urban gourmet chocolate boutique based in Copenhagen, and the brand’s Nordic vibe is certainly tangible in their shop design.

Why It’s Impressive?

The parallax effect ensures that each product gets its own page as well as creates a fun treasure trove experience. The colourful moving images are utilized to showcase product ingredients, playing to the brand’s nothing-to-hide philosophy. Once you click on each product and scroll down the page, a chocolate bar pops up to life, unwraps and breaks into chunks, giving you a close-up look into this new kind of chocolate.

Bliss

Bliss shop is an explosion of candy colours . It offers a refreshing, dynamic look and compliments the brand’s promise that inner happiness leads to outward beauty wonderfully.

Why It’s Impressive?

Targeting the millennial women, Bliss really wins with this unique colour palette and Instagram-worthy product imagery. The site encourages the visitor to explore and engage, giving them lots of options to categorize and filter products quickly and easily. An overall great shop design that’s aligned with the company’s branding and values.

Star Cadet

Star Cadet make great use of a simple , clean navigation, which helps them create a seamless shopping experience.

Why It’s Impressive?

With incredibly straightforward layout and clean design, the brand manages to put the spotlight on their products and cut out any unnecessary steps leading up to the checkout. A welcome change in a very cluttered eCommerce world!

Death Wish Coffee

Image credit: Death Wish Coffee

Death Wish Coffee have cooked up a provoking design that instantly grabs the user’s attention and piques their curiosity.

Why It’s Impressive?

With a lot of red featuring on the homepage, there’s a palpable sense of urgency and danger – exactly the kinds of feelings that the brand wants to evoke. An eye-grabbing main image paired with a bold font and the colour red is a punchy combination that makes the purpose of this shop crystal clear. Add the merchandise and content sections that echo these design principles and you have more than just a very strong eCommerce – you have a whole online community attached to this brand.

Rusty Surfboards

Aimed at the community of professional surfers, Rusty Surfboards face a tricky challenge of balancing beautiful, bold imagery with detailed product descriptions and additional information.

Why It’s Impressive?

The shop’s design is an excellent compromise: combining a powerful font with great product photography, Rusty Surfboards succeed in providing a very enjoyable user experience.

Mowellens

Scoring high on creativity, usability and design, this online shop has an overall strong design concept and delivers on all fronts. Mowellens offer high-quality products that use the beneficial properties of the cannabis plant to optimize our health and wellness.

Why It’s Impressive?

Their unconventional products demand unconventional design solutions, so there are quite a few playful, unexpected twists waiting to happen. For instance, once a visitor lands on the page and tries to scroll, the page moves to the side instead, in a carousel sort of fashion. A pleasant colour palette, great use of the parallax effect and tasteful animations help this shop stand out from the crowd.

Keus

This backpack brand takes an interesting approach to showcasing its products in great style and detail. Using carousels to create a linear navigation, Keus take their visitors on a journey of finding the best backpack for the task.

Why It’s Impressive?

With three prominent product categories, the filtering and search process is simple and convenient. Great product imagery, detailed product pages and clean navigation inspire trust and give the brand a lot of credibility .

Wanderlust & Co

Wanderlust use a combination of old and new eCommerce design trends to create a convenient but fun shopping experience.

Why It’s Impressive?

Its focus on consumer-generated content – and the Instagram feed specifically – highlights the importance of social proof and further propels the idea that brands need to focus on building communities. Wanderlust is also bringing back the graphic cursor trend that beautifully compliments the brand’s feminine vibe and adds a creative touch to the overall design.

Not Another Bill

Not Another Bill is a great example of an online store that truly taps into the visual trends by leveraging its products. As an online gift shop, Not Another Bill enjoy a wide range of beautiful, artistic products. Combining unique product imagery with a lot of white space and tasteful fonts, they succeed in creating a clean and truly eye-pleasing browsing experience. The shop also utilizes the Internet’s obsession with gifs, which helps to attract the user’s attention and encourage engagement.

Kvell

Kvell is a contemporary homeware brand that breathes some new, refreshing ideas into the eCommerce sphere. With its bold fonts and consistent art direction throughout the site, Kvell’s online shop has a stylish, almost magazine-like appeal. The visitor is greeted with an invitation to discover all collections that’s presented using a horizontal navigation scrollbar. The site boasts a very enjoyable, simple UX and lives up to its contemporary style.

The Practical Man

Making use of what’s become known as Brutalism in web design, The Practical Man leaves a truly memorable impression on its visitors. An unusual, stand-out colour palette and a blocky layout gives this shop a very distinctive look. The same defined grid style is used throughout the entire site, including individual product pages. It’s very satisfying to use, and the original aesthetic is definitely something that sticks in your mind long after you leave the shop.

Ryder

This Australian women’s brand has a rugged, almost amateurish look that has a strange appeal. Simple but effective product images, some of which feature a white drape or an urban landscape in the background, bring the items closer to reality. The uncomplicated navigation and a lot of white space create a pleasant flow and give this shop a slightly vintage aura.

Pipcorn

Pipcorn is a snack food company based in New York. Using a very traditional design and clean navigation, the Pipcorn e-shop gains the familiarity advantage – customers can easily find and buy the products they want. A limited number of products as well as a short buying journey ensures that customers have no time to change their mind and go through with their purchase.

Sense6

The shop’s decision to go almost entirely black and white gives it a mysterious, distinctive style. A few small pops of gold here and there are used to guide the visitor to call-to-action or navigation buttons. Large, close-up images create a sensual, feminine look and help the shop stick out in the sea of eCommerce brands.

ESQIDO

The beauty brand ESQIDO focuses on the packaging of its products as much as the products themselves. Making the most out of the rose gold trend, this online shop excels at employing bold, really stylish images and gifs to entice the visitors to click through. The shop also utilizes the endorsement from celebrities creating powerful social proof.

Redmart

Redmart is a great example of how clean navigation can make even a very complicated shop very easy to navigate. This online grocery story uses colourful , vibrant images to create the impression of freshness and awaken the visitor’s appetite. The prominent search bar and visually appealing vouchers encourage visitors to engage with the site right away.

Premium Teas

This eCommerce store boasts a bright, sophisticated design that compliments its brand. Focusing on the visuals rather than copy, the homepage of the shop gives off a summery, laid-back feel. The individual product pages, on the other hand, are rich with information, facts and instructions. By combining useful content with compelling imagery, Premium Teas aims to be bigger than just a tea brand.

Barx Sox

Image credit: Barx Sox

Mirroring the colourful palette of its products, Barx Sox’s online shop is bursting with colour and vibrant high-quality product images. It’s a youthful, fun store that easily strikes a positive chord with its target audience and taps into the people’s desire to be seen as creative and unique. The shop also maximizes the power of sharing by placing social media buttons right under the ‘Add to cart’ button.