Your ecommerce store has one main job: Help the right people feel confident enough to buy from you.

Every color choice, photo, layout decision, and button placement on your site serves a purpose. Strong ecommerce web design not only builds trust but also removes friction and makes shopping feel easy. Your website needs to guide people to find what they’re looking for, understand what you’re selling, and move them through the checkout process.

And here’s the good news: you don’t need to be a professional designer to get this right. You just need to understand what matters to your ideal buyers.

This guide walks you through practical ecommerce design best practices you can use, whether you’re launching your first shop or refining an existing one.

Start with your brand's visual identity

Your brand's visual identity (color palette, typography, imagery style, overall mood) controls how your online store design looks and feels, so every page instantly communicates who you are and builds a connection with your target customers. 

When someone lands on your homepage, clicks through to a product page, and reads your about section, they should feel like they're experiencing a single, unified brand, not three different stores. This familiarity and consistency throughout your site is how you build trust with shoppers.

Your visual identity becomes a set of rules that guides your decisions as you build out your brand. Curious what that might look like? Here's how different brand personalities might approach their online store design:

• Clean, minimal, premium brands: Lots of white space, clean grids of content, and muted colors throughout with a pop of accent color for main buttons and prices to draw the eye in.
• Bold, fun, expressive brands: Playful typography layered with color-blocked sections and overlapping elements, creating movement and energy throughout the design.
• Adventure or outdoors brands: Rugged, expansive feel throughout the site with full-width lifestyle images showing the products in action.

The real secret to making everything feel cohesive? It’s less about the theme itself and more about staying consistent when applying your own visuals and content rules. Your chosen theme is merely a foundation. You tie it all together by sticking to the same colors, fonts, image styles, and tone of voice.

Build a clear and intuitive layout

Shoppers scan, not study, so your ecommerce web design has some heavy lifting to do to turn browsers into buyers. Simple navigation, scannable content sections, and a clean layout reduce friction, help people find what they want quickly, and make your store feel trustworthy and professional.

Here's why clean layouts matter:

• Clear, simple navigation helps people find what they're looking for without getting lost
• Easy-to-skim sections with headings and short blocks of text reduce cognitive load and overwhelm
• Clean, uncluttered layouts signal professionalism and attention to detail, building credibility with shoppers
• Keeping attention focused on products and key actions instead of distractions leads to better conversions
• A smooth, effortless experience makes people want to come back and shop again

Think about the difference between walking into a yard sale versus a curated secondhand store. Both sell second-hand items, but the organized, well-lit store with clear sections makes you want to browse longer and feel more confident when purchasing.

Use high-quality product photos and visuals

When people can't touch or try something, they rely entirely on images to judge quality, fit, color accuracy, and whether a brand feels credible. Your product photos are often the first thing people notice, before reading the price or description, and influence whether they stay, click, or bounce. Great product photos are one of the most impactful ecommerce web design decisions you can make. 

Product photography tips:

• Consistent lighting across all images for a cohesive look
• Clean backgrounds that don't compete for attention
• Thoughtful composition - decide between model shots versus flat lays based on what best showcases your product
• Proper sizing to ensure photos load quickly without sacrificing quality
• Multiple angles so shoppers can see details and dimensions

If you need guidance on shooting your own product photos, check out our post on how to take great product photos.

If you want to go beyond basic product shots, think about adding lifestyle imagery to show not just what you sell but the life your customer is buying into. Showing products being used or enjoyed helps shoppers imagine what owning them would feel, tapping into aspiration rather than simply listing product features.

You might also consider filming short videos to show your products in motion, demonstrate how they work, or capture the texture and details that photos can’t easily convey.

Prioritize mobile-friendly design

More than three-quarters of ecommerce traffic now comes from smartphones. If your store doesn’t work well on mobile, your product pages are turning customers away.

Here are some product page design tips to get you started:

Start with a responsive foundation
Choose a theme that automatically adjusts layouts, spacing, and grids across devices. All Big Cartel themes are responsive, so you’re covered out of the gate.

Optimize images for speed and clarity
Large, uncompressed images slow everything down. Resize files to web-friendly dimensions and compress them (TinyPNG, WebP, etc.). Aim for under 100 KB where possible without sacrificing quality.

Make sure images are tappable so shoppers can zoom in and see details.

Make buttons easy to tap (and hard to miss)
Your “Add to Cart” button should be obvious, well-spaced, and thumb-friendly. If someone has to zoom in or keeps hitting the wrong link, you’ve already lost them.

Keep text readable and scannable
Use short paragraphs (4-5 lines), clear spacing, and font sizes that don’t require pinching and zooming. Mobile shoppers skim. Your copy should support that.

Simplify navigation and checkout
Menus should open easily. Categories should be clear. The cart should be visible without hunting.

At checkout, remove anything that isn’t essential. The fewer fields you have, the fewer abandoned carts you’ll experience.

Offer fast payment options
Digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay reduce friction and speed up purchases—especially on phones.

Elevate the shopping experience with small design details

The best ecommerce web design layouts follow familiar patterns that are intuitive, reduce effort, and build trust. Shoppers expect to see navigation in the upper corner of the screen and Add To Cart buttons in a contrasting color that helps them stand out. 

The more unique your layout tries to be, the harder visitors will have to work to find what they're looking for. Most people—they'll leave rather than try to figure it out.

When deciding how to design an ecommerce website for your brand, pay attention to the little details such as:

• White space: Keeps pages from feeling cramped and draws attention to what matters most.
• Iconography: Simple, consistent icons for shipping, returns, or features communicate quickly without visual noise.
• Microinteractions: Button hover effects or subtle animations when adding items to the cart create moments of delight.
• Typography pairings: A bold display font for headings paired with a clean, readable font for body text adds personality.
• Button styling: Uses brand colors with enough contrast to make calls to action stand out.

From guiding attention to reinforcing your brand or making the shopping experience smoother, lean into your brand’s visual identity so each design detail you add serves a purpose. If it's there to look cool but doesn't help the shopper—ditch it.

Draw inspiration from successful ecommerce homepage designs

One of the best ways to improve your online store design is to study other online shops. Graphic designers are constantly building swipe files full of screenshots from bits and pieces of websites that catch their eye as they’re browsing. These swipe files become inspiration as they design layout elements. 

When you find stores you love, dig into why they work and start building out your own swipe file of inspiration. 

When reviewing the online store designs, ask yourself:

• What makes the homepage compelling? 
• How do they organize their navigation? 
• What product page elements build trust? 
• How do they use photography and copy together?

The important thing is to borrow inspiration ethically. Adapt ideas to fit your brand rather than copying someone else's work directly. If you love how a store uses color blocking, think about how you can apply that technique with your own palette and products. If their product photography style resonates, consider what elements you can incorporate into your own shoots while maintaining your unique point of view.

Common ecommerce web design mistakes to avoid

Even with the best intentions, it's easy to fall into ecommerce design traps that work against you rather than helping.

When designing your online store, try to avoid these common design mistakes:

• Overly busy layouts with too many competing visuals that confuse shoppers
• Mismatched fonts, colors, or inconsistent imagery that breaks the cohesion needed to build trust
• Poor Call-To-Action placement that makes it hard for shoppers to find the buy button
• Hard-to-read text or accessibility issues like low contrast between text and background
• Neglecting mobile design, which means ignoring two-thirds of your audience
• Relying on theme defaults without personalizing to match your brand’s visual identity

The fix for most of these issues is to step back and look at your store through fresh eyes. Better yet, ask a friend who's never seen your shop before to browse and tell you what's confusing or what stands out in a bad way. We often miss obvious problems in our own work because we're so close to it.

Your shop’s design is never really done

Great ecommerce website design is a gentle balance between creativity and clarity. You want to express your unique brand while making shopping online feel effortless for your customers. 

Don’t worry about getting everything 100% perfect right away. Start with a clear brand identity that guides your decisions, then refine your layout, visuals, and user experience as you learn what resonates with your audience.

Set up advanced analytics to understand where people spend time on your site, where they drop off, and what questions they ask. Use that information to make your store better over time. The most successful online stores treat design as an ongoing process, not a one-time task.

Ready to put these ecommerce design best practices into action?
Audit your current store design and pick one area to improve this week, whether that's upgrading your product photos, simplifying your navigation, or tightening up your homepage layout. 

Small, consistent improvements add up to a store that not only looks great but converts browsers into loyal customers.