The design of a website plays an essential role in capturing the attention of your potential customers and creating a seamless shopping experience. I recently embarked on a journey to find the best designed websites powered by WooCommerce, a plugin for WordPress, which turned into many hours of scrolling.
As one of the most affordable, flexible ecommerce solutions it's not uncommon to see entry level, amateur-looking sites built with Woo. Fortunately, I did find some diamonds in the rubble.
These brands have mastered the sprawling, open-source world of WooCommerce themes and extensions to create stores that genuinely look good.
Let's find out what made them worthy of the shortlist...
Artist John McCaskill’s work explores the themes, visual motifs and graphic textures of the beloved traditions of indigenous art and tribal designs. His simple but effective website, built by Whiskey & Red, acts as a digital portfolio for his prints and made me want to own them all.
Best feature: full width studio images make you feel like you're in Florida with him.
HØLTE gives you the freedom to design a kitchen that suits your space, circumstances and budget. Their innovative kitchen system design is reflected in the user journey around their contemporary looking website, including a huge flyout navigation that takes over the screen.
Best feature: a table of total CO2-e climate emissions for each of their kitchen fronts.
Ruby Atelier is a Danish gallery that curates vintage objects and artworks from selected contemporary artists. All objects are unique – one of a kind – carefully selected from all over the world. The muted elegance of the gallery comes across well in their choice of brand colours, typography and overall aesthetic.
Best feature: thoughtful onward journeys from product detail pages for sold items.
GLACIAL Bottle's website strikes a great balance between aesthetics and functionality. Of course they aren't the OG in this space, but as a challenger brand they have created a slick, usable site with great content that probably cost a lot less than Chillys' headless build.
Best feature: visual collection drilldown on category pages. Bonus points for selling dog bowls.
One of the most recognisable companies in the music and professional audio industries, Hosa has created a welcoming, user friendly site to rummage through tiny, intimidating bits of kit. Plus it's not easy to pull off a red, black and white colour palette but they have done it.
Best feature: their cable finder helps you find exactly the right cable for the job at hand.
Asheville Bee Charmer's website has a design that lives up to its name. It is packed with informative content that celebrates the world of beekeeping while offering locally made, honey-based products.
Best feature: friendly, well structured dropdown navigation that makes you want to click.
This US based plant delivery service is giving serious Bloom & Wild vibes. Contemporary use of typography and well designed colour swatches are just a couple of features that make this site a delight to shop.
Best feature: one of the best designed product detail pages I've seen in a long time.
This is a very busy site, with a large collection of SKUs at around 1,500 pieces. The more time I spent onsite, the more I wanted to be part of their world, so they must be doing something right. Based on some LinkedIn snooping it looks like the founder's son may have built it himself which deserves extra credit to both him and Woo.
Best feature: lovely long article telling Olly, the founder's, story.
In conclusion, the world of ecommerce is not merely about transactions – it's about crafting immersive experiences that resonate with customers on a deeper level. The design effort showcased by these WooCommerce sites reminds us that online selling can look good... and work well too.
Do you know a brand that deserves to be featured?
Email me, or drop me a message on LinkedIn.