Web Design, Ecommerce
—1 September 2026
Best Ecommerce Websites: Examples and What Makes Them Work
A look at some of the best ecommerce websites and what they get right, from product discovery and navigation to trust, mobile UX and checkout.
The best ecommerce websites are rarely the ones with the most going on.
They are usually the ones that make buying feel unusually straightforward.
That sounds obvious, but ecommerce design often gets distracted by everything around the transaction: oversized campaign videos, complex animations, popups, loyalty prompts, recommendations, bundles, quizzes and endless homepage sections. All of those things can have a place, but only if the basic journey still works.
A good ecommerce website has to help somebody understand what is being sold, find the right product, feel confident enough to buy it and complete the purchase without unnecessary friction. Current ecommerce design guidance tends to come back to the same fundamentals: clear navigation, responsive design, trust, useful product information and an obvious path toward purchase.
I looked at a selection of ecommerce websites that approach those problems differently. I wouldn't copy any of them directly, but each has something useful to learn from.
1. Allbirds — make the product proposition immediately understandable
Allbirds is a good example of a store where the brand and the product proposition are closely connected.
The current homepage opens with a simple promise around comfort and natural materials, immediately followed by routes into men's and women's products. Further down, the site reinforces the same themes around everyday wear, comfort and materials such as wool, tree fibre and sugarcane. Allbirds
What I like about it is that you don't have to work particularly hard to understand why the product exists.
A new visitor can quickly establish that these are casual shoes and apparel, comfort is a major selling point, and the materials are part of the differentiation. The ecommerce functionality then sits underneath that positioning rather than competing with it.
That is worth remembering because a lot of stores rush straight into a grid of products.
If your customer doesn't already know your brand, a product image and price may not be enough. The homepage still needs to answer the more basic question: why should I buy this particular version of this product?
For a smaller ecommerce brand, that could be durability, where something is made, an unusual material, specialist expertise, a better fit, a particular audience or simply a much clearer point of view than the alternatives.
The useful lesson from Allbirds isn't "use large lifestyle photographs." It's make the reason to care obvious before asking someone to browse everything you sell.
2. Bellroy — organise products around what people are trying to do
Bellroy sells wallets, bags, travel products, tech accessories and other carry goods. That creates a navigation problem: there are enough products that simply listing categories could become cumbersome.
One of the more interesting things on its current homepage is the way products are also framed around situations such as smoother travel, organised workdays, protecting technology, easier errands and preparing for adventures. Bellroy
That is a small but useful distinction.
Businesses naturally organise products around their own catalogue because that is how inventory is structured internally. Customers don't always think like that.
Someone might arrive thinking:
I need a better setup for travelling with a laptop.
rather than:
I would like to browse the "Pouches & Caddies" product taxonomy.
Where it makes sense, ecommerce navigation can therefore have two layers: what the product is and what the customer is trying to achieve.
You see the same principle in good service websites. Internal organisational structure is rarely the best information architecture for the customer.
For ecommerce, that might mean browsing by use case, recipient, room, activity, problem, size, material or occasion alongside the conventional product categories.
The right approach depends entirely on what you sell, but the question is useful:
Does the navigation reflect the way the business classifies products, or the way customers actually look for them?
3. Glossier — let merchandising be part of the design
Glossier's current homepage is heavily product-led, but it doesn't feel like a raw catalogue.
It currently promotes mix-and-match fragrance and makeup sets, bundles, classics and limited offers directly through the homepage. The products aren't merely listed; they are packaged into reasons to buy, such as routines, sets, combinations and promotional groupings. Glossier
That is something ecommerce design discussions can miss.
The website is not only there to display inventory. It can actively merchandise it.
A good physical shop doesn't simply place every item on identical shelves and leave customers to work it out. Products are grouped, demonstrated, paired and highlighted depending on the season or the customer.
An ecommerce homepage can do the same thing.
For example:
A clothing store can show complete outfits rather than isolated products.
A skincare brand can organise products into routines.
A food company can build starter bundles.
A furniture retailer can show products in complete rooms.
A specialist retailer can build collections for beginners and another for experienced buyers.
This is also where custom ecommerce design starts to become more valuable than simply installing a theme. The design should reflect how the business actually sells, not just the fields available in the ecommerce platform.
4. Aesop — a store doesn't have to look like every other store
Aesop takes a noticeably more editorial approach.
Its current site combines conventional ecommerce navigation — skin care, fragrance, body, hair, gifts and so on — with much more considered product storytelling and editorial language. Individual ranges are introduced almost like chapters rather than purely promotional cards. Aesop
That approach won't work for every business, and it doesn't need to.
But it proves an important point: good ecommerce UX does not require every store to look identical.
There has been a tendency in conversion-focused web design to assume that anything distinctive is automatically friction. Taken too far, that leaves every shop with the same white background, announcement bar, three-column product grid and black "Add to cart" button.
Familiarity is useful. Customers shouldn't need to learn how a shopping basket works.
But the space around those familiar interactions can still carry a strong identity.
Aesop can be more editorial because that suits the brand, the products and the way they are positioned. Another shop might need to be colourful and energetic. Another might be extremely technical. Another might work best by being almost brutally functional.
The question shouldn't be:
What does a modern ecommerce website look like?
It should be:
What should this particular store feel like while still making it very easy to buy?
5. LEGO — make a huge catalogue easier to enter
LEGO has a completely different ecommerce problem.
Its online shop serves children, parents, adult collectors and gift buyers while covering an enormous range of sets, themes, interests and price points.
The current store doesn't rely on one pathway through that catalogue. Products are surfaced through seasonal moments, interests, new releases, adult-focused collections, gifts and the loyalty programme as well as conventional product browsing. LEGO Official Shop
That matters when a store has a lot of inventory.
The larger the catalogue becomes, the less useful a simple "Shop All" experience becomes.
Filters help, but filters are primarily useful once somebody understands roughly what they want.
Discovery needs a different approach.
A parent buying a birthday present might know the child's age but not the product name. An adult collector might browse by theme. Someone else might be looking specifically for a new release.
Those are different entrances to the same catalogue.
For smaller retailers, this can be applied without building anything particularly complicated. Thoughtful collections such as Gifts under £50, For beginners, Best for small spaces, Most popular, or Made for travelling can reduce the cognitive load of choosing.
The important thing is that the categories are genuinely useful rather than being created simply because somebody thought the homepage needed another section.
What do these ecommerce websites actually have in common?
Visually, not much.
Allbirds and Aesop don't feel alike. Glossier isn't trying to be LEGO. Bellroy solves a different problem again.
That's precisely why I think they're useful examples.
The commonality is beneath the visual design.
Each gives visitors relatively clear ways to understand the product range, narrow their choices and move toward a purchase. The better ecommerce examples also use branding as part of that process rather than treating "brand" and "conversion" as opposing ideas. Current ecommerce design research similarly points toward clear navigation, mobile responsiveness, trust and product information as recurring foundations of effective stores. Shopify
There are a few principles I'd take from them.
Product pages need to answer the doubts that stop somebody buying
A beautiful product page is not necessarily a useful product page.
The useful one answers whatever someone needs to know before spending money.
Depending on the product, that might include dimensions, sizing, materials, compatibility, delivery times, ingredients, care instructions, what is included, returns, warranty information or photographs from several useful angles.
The important information changes with the product.
Someone buying a £15 candle has different concerns from someone buying a £2,000 piece of furniture.
Good ecommerce design therefore isn't simply a reusable product template. The product template needs to understand what is actually being sold.
Trust works better close to the decision
A lot of stores have a huge testimonials section somewhere on the homepage and assume the trust problem has been solved.
It hasn't necessarily.
If I'm about to spend money and I'm worried about whether something will fit, a size guide beside the size selector is more useful than a testimonial halfway down the homepage.
If I'm concerned about delivery, showing the expected dispatch time near the buy button helps.
If returns are straightforward, tell me when I'm making the decision rather than hiding the policy in the footer.
Shopify's current ecommerce design guidance similarly highlights trust-building, customer support information, shipping and returns as important parts of ecommerce design. Shopify
Trust is contextual.
Put the reassurance near the point where the doubt occurs.
Don't make customers fight the navigation
Navigation tends to become more difficult as an ecommerce site grows.
A shop with twelve products can get away with almost anything.
A shop with twelve hundred cannot.
Good ecommerce navigation generally needs to answer a few different behaviours: someone who knows the exact product, someone who knows the type of product, someone shopping around a use case, and someone who is simply browsing.
Search, categories, collections and filters can all help, but more navigation isn't automatically better navigation.
The goal is not to expose the entire catalogue at once.
The goal is to help somebody reduce it quickly.
Mobile ecommerce deserves more than responsive shrinking
A store can technically be responsive and still be horrible to use on a phone.
Product imagery may consume the whole screen. Variant selectors can become awkward. Sticky elements can cover content. Filters can be difficult to open and close. Popups that are mildly irritating on desktop can become almost impossible to escape on mobile.
Current ecommerce guidance consistently treats responsive/mobile design as one of the foundations of a good store. Shopify
I would go further than simply checking whether the layout fits.
Try actually buying something on the phone.
Search for it. Compare products. Choose a variant. Add it to the basket. Change your mind. Return to the product. Check shipping. Complete checkout.
That's a much more useful test than dragging a browser window narrower.
A faster checkout doesn't fix a weak buying journey
Checkout matters, obviously.
But conversion work often becomes overly focused on the final few screens.
If somebody didn't understand the product, couldn't find their size, didn't trust the company or wasn't convinced the item suited them, shaving one form field from checkout isn't going to rescue the sale.
The journey starts much earlier.
Homepage → category → product → reassurance → basket → checkout.
Each step should remove uncertainty rather than add to it.
Sometimes the biggest ecommerce improvement isn't a different checkout at all. It's better product photography, more useful categorisation, clearer copy or removing several unnecessary choices.
You probably need less on the homepage than you think
Ecommerce homepages have a habit of becoming storage areas for everything the business wants to promote.
New collection.
Summer sale.
Newsletter popup.
Best sellers.
Brand story.
Instagram feed.
Loyalty programme.
Three promotional banners.
Four testimonials.
Another collection.
A scrolling announcement.
Then twelve products before the footer.
Every individual piece can be justified, but the result can become exhausting.
The homepage's main job is usually much simpler: orient somebody, establish enough confidence and help them start shopping.
If a section doesn't help with one of those things, I'd question why it's there.
The same applies to animation. Motion can make a store feel polished and distinctive, but if it delays product discovery or constantly moves the interface while somebody is trying to shop, it has stopped helping.
Good ecommerce design is mostly good decision-making
Looking through strong ecommerce sites, the most transferable lesson isn't a particular layout.
It's judgement.
Knowing when customers need more information and when they need less.
Knowing which products deserve emphasis.
Knowing when a collection is genuinely useful.
Knowing how much personality the interface can carry without making familiar ecommerce interactions confusing.
Knowing whether a feature solves a real problem or simply gives the development team something interesting to build.
That is why two stores built on exactly the same ecommerce platform can feel completely different.
The platform provides the machinery.
The design determines how well somebody can use it.
A quick ecommerce website checklist
If I were reviewing an ecommerce website, these are the questions I'd start with:
Can I tell what the store sells within a few seconds?
Is there a compelling reason to buy from this business rather than another one?
Can I find the product or type of product I want without understanding the company's internal catalogue?
Do product pages answer the important questions before purchase?
Are shipping, returns and other trust information available where they matter?
Does search work well if the catalogue is large?
Are filters genuinely useful?
Is product photography helping someone evaluate the item rather than simply making the page look attractive?
Can I complete the whole journey comfortably on a phone?
Are there unnecessary popups, banners or promotions interrupting the shopping process?
Does the store still feel like the brand rather than an untouched ecommerce theme?
Is checkout the natural end of the journey rather than the first place the experience becomes straightforward?
If several of those answers are no, I'd work on those before adding more homepage sections.
The best ecommerce website is not necessarily the most impressive one
An ecommerce website ultimately exists to help somebody make a buying decision.
That doesn't mean design should disappear. Quite the opposite.
Good design makes the decision easier while making the business more distinctive.
Allbirds uses its materials and comfort proposition to make the products understandable. Bellroy provides different ways into its catalogue. Glossier actively merchandises products rather than simply listing them. Aesop preserves a distinctive editorial identity. LEGO helps very different customers navigate an enormous product range.
None of those approaches should simply be copied.
The useful question is what problem each design decision is solving.
That is what I'd want to understand before designing an ecommerce store of my own.