Create A Luxury Ecommerce Site

Rotate°’s Adam Robbins offers insight into luxury ecommerce design best practices

- Adam Robbins

Shopping online is commonly about finding the right product at the right price with minimal effort. However, when a product’s price point is higher than usual, the site you’re purchasing from needs to work a little harder.

Having designed many luxury ecommerce sites over the years, there are a few age-old practices I keep coming back to, that have proven to convert site visitors into customers.

VISUAL SOPHISTICATION

It sounds obvious but it’s important for a premium product or service to be displayed in a premium way. Think of a luxury band. Now imagine what the brand’s physical store feels like. Busy, brash, difficult to navigate? Probably not. Chances are the brand you’re designing for feels clean, considered and sophisticated. Replicating this in the UI design with tasteful typography, good use of white space and subtle yet delightful interactions can instil a desire in the visitor to purchase.

A luxury brand’s physical store is also likely to be immaculate and well organised. From an information architecture perspective, a luxury ecommerce store should be too. Avoid creating choice paralysis by keeping top-level product categorisation to a minimum (e.g. Shop Men / Shop Women) before allowing users to really drill down (Tops: Casual Shirts, Smart Shirts, Sweatshirts, T-Shirts, Long Sleeves).

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