There are websites that are memorable due to the impact they make on their visitors and the only way to produce such a reaction in your audience is through design. Great design is welcoming, friendly, and persuasive. Definitely an invitation to explore.
Design is beautiful in that it works like storytelling, through it you communicate information about your brand, it’s all coded in the different choices you’ve made. The user receives a message and, in 0.05 seconds, they form an opinion and decide to stay and buy, or leave.
Online revenue continues to grow each year and ecommerce penetration has been rising, in 2019, exceeded a 16% share of retail spend. Despite the ever-growing market, the competition is fierce and shop owners must pull out all the stops if they want a chance at success.
Since there are no physical stores, virtual ones are the ones that have to make an impact. The Annual Awwwards nominate many websites each year, and in the eCommerce category, the nominees featured incredible work and they all look like winners.
Let’s take a look at 4 of the candidates.
Jorik
The Jorik website perfectly echoes the brand’s ethos with it’s simple design contrasted with bold animation and reliance on typography.
The website is very responsive of the visitors’ behaviour, the banner’s subtle movement is linked to the cursor and text boxes appear when you hover over a product.
This is a designer website selling designer apparel showcased beautifully with large and dynamic photos.
The website is a seamless extension of the brand, they both coincide in flow, feel and color palette, mostly monochrome, occasionally a well-placed striking color.
Déplacé Maison
Déplacé Maison is so vibrant and energetic, from the offset you notice a custom animated cursor that leaves trail that fades behind you as you move, it’s essentially a representation of urban clothes and lifestyle and going from one place to the next.
There is a lot of energy exuding and the imperative to go outside and walk around the city and engage with the urban life.
The photos have been edited to look like illustrations and it gives their lookbook a comicbook feel. It definitely knows their audience, their style and interests.
White Tail Gin
In this case we have an entire website dedicated to a single product, White Tail Gin. The design is sophisticated, all the different elements are connected through the tread of the full page scroll, you almost feel disappointed when you reach the end of the store, you could swim in there forever.
There is no need to use different tabs, so the designer used this opportunity to create the “discover mode” where by scrolling, you enter the story of White Tail Gin. And, at the end of the story, there is the shop. This website feels heavily inspired by a museum and amusement parks, where they charge you up with thrills and then they leave a gift shop in your path.
It’s stylish work, very soothing and mature, feels like a portal into a holiday trip.
Uruoi Skincare
The Japanese brand of skincare Uroi has a very different audience, they combine an authentically Japanese minimalist philosophy and powerful ingredients backed by science. There is a lot of information and many options, since skincare gets more and more complex everyday and experts and consumers get very involved and curious about each ingredient used and their effects.
Therefore, the designer found a way, through the use of negative space and animation, to display all the options and information without making the website look intimidating or overwhelming.
It is evident that the designer, the photographer, and the brand discussed this project and its challenges at length, and the end result is a very refined and polished experience.
Are you an ecommerce owner breaking into the international market?
The nominees mentioned have great designers giving it their all and bringing all the best ideas that will reflect all of the brand’s ideals into a stunning virtual store that will turn visitors into customers.
However there is another way to make a store grow and reach new audiences all over the world, and that is by having a multilingual website, it’s not enough to offer international shipping if your customers can’t browse in their own language.
It’s understandable why many people won’t buy in a language different than their own, they are spending money and are scared that they might misunderstand the product description or the payment process. This means that your business has a huge group of visitors who want to make a purchase, but don’t dare.
Another benefit of having a multilingual website is that search engines will improve your ranking because your website is only relevant to those that speak the language. More language options=More visibility.
Have your very own language button
It’s very easy to create a multilanguage version of your website and start selling internationally. To make your company grow the process is simple, no need to change your layout.
With ConveyThis you can have all your content start displaying in a different language immediately and switch between the different language options with a visible button that you can customize. You can offer two languages or many more! Then the search engines will help potential customers find you.
As you can see, the process is really simple and requires no coding skills, the results will be visible right away since the first translation will be automatic. All the information that a hesitant customer wanted will now be available.
After this first translation, you may hire translators and editors through ConveyThis that will help you polish those pages that you consider the most important, like your homepage.ConveyThis offers an extensive service for website translation that takes into account all the technical and linguistic aspects of building an international ecommerce, and the support team will assist you with this process.