eCommerce Design: What can we learn from online food stores?

Here at Shopify we love to browse new stores created by our users. It lets us stay in touch with how people use Shopify, helps us get closer to the community and every once in a while you learn something new and very cool. Today, while looking at stores by category I just noticed something interesting about online stores that sell food: They are consistently incredibly well designed. I encourage you to click the links below to see the design up close.

Carman Ranch

Denver Burger Battle – Cool Burger Contest

Kona Brewing from Hawaii

Chef Tom Douglas’ beautiful store

Why is it that online food retailers have such well-designed stores? And what can we learn from them?

It turns out we can learn quite a lot. Maybe it’s because of profit margins in the food industry or because it’s been such a staple industry for so long that food retailers have put in a lot of research and have figured out what works. So here are a couple of points that we can learn from online food retailers about ecommerce design.

1. eCommerce design matters

It seems obvious but it is often overlooked as a primary driver of sales. As more and more people buy online, the standards that they have for brick-and-mortar stores make their way into their online shopping experience as well. Customers want to see effort put into the place where they shop. If you walk into a boutique and see that it’s just four white walls and an industrial carpet floor you may still buy what you came for, but the experience won’t be as memorable and that’s the important part: you’re much less likely to ever shop there again or refer any of your friends.

Today, buying online has as much to do with the overall experience as buying in-store and the only real way to convey the pleasant experience to your customers is through beautiful design. You can’t be there to smile and say hello, they won’t hear the wonderful creaking of hardwood under their feet, so your design must speak for you. Customers are no longer as forgiving as they used to be of poor customer experience, so do something to make them fall in love with your store. Even if getting a custom design doesn’t fit in your budget, you should still put some serious thought (and love) into your logo.

We love design and we know the importance that it plays in ecommerce, which is why we started the Shopify Theme Store, where you can get an ecommerce template for much less than getting a custom design for your store, and many of the designs are even free.

Check it out and get a new template for your store. You will see results right away and who knows? Maybe your customers will love it so much you may choose to delve even further into custom design.

Callie’s Biscuits – Bakery in Charleston

2. Stress the details

Big retailers and food companies have put a lot of work into figuring out the psychology of food. Ask a food psychologist about the effects of the color red on our appetite and they’ll tell you that it makes us hungry. This is why so many fast food and grocery store logos have red, orange and yellow as the dominant colors. Even two of the examples above use red as the primary colors in their store’s design.

Colour is immensely important in selling food (Think about it: how would you react to a dish that was predominantly blue and grey?), but more importantly it shows that details are important.

Jeremy Kossler of the Denver Burger Battle has this to say:

There’s no question that subtle customer experiences affect conversions. Placement of buttons, color schemes, logos, lines, etc, all contribute to purchasing decisions in slight ways. It’s like walking into an actual restaurant. The walls, the chairs, the lighting, all of it is designed to give you a certain experience. Every company knows this when they create their logo.

If you’re selling car parts, then it makes sense to have sharp lines, rather than curves, be the dominant theme of your store and logo. If you’re selling children’s toys, then you should have bright, lively colors and rounded shapes. Coffee store = brown motif, modernist restaurant = minimalist site design, and so on. Try and experiment with colors and themes, and look at others in your industry. What do you like most about the big guys? Usually it’s the smallest things that make the experience memorable.