16 Best Shopify Website Designs (2026) + Trends and Tips

The best Shopify website designs combine ecommerce functionality with aesthetics. Rembrant Van der Mijnsbrugge, lead software engineer at award-winning web design agency Mote, uses a framework for beautiful and effective websites. It includes the concepts of ease, nudge, and delight.

To begin designing a Shopify site, first consider cognitive ease. In other words, can visitors navigate your site without having to think too hard?

“Once you’ve established ease, you can take a shot at nudging your customer in the right direction,” says Rembrant. 

Nudges are site elements that encourage visitors to add to cart, read more, enter a discount code, or take another desired step. 

“Once you’ve achieved the ease and the nudge, then there’s the optional goal of aiming for delight,” says Rembrant. This is when you start to connect with your customers on a deeper level. 

Ahead, you’ll find 16 Shopify website designs to inspire your own beautiful and effective online home. These Shopify website examples are easy to use, compelling, and often delightful.

How to use this list as inspiration

It’s easy to get caught up in the polish of someone else’s Shopify website design and want to replicate it pixel for pixel. It’s important to remember that good design is about functionality as well as aesthetics. To make another company’s design work for you, you’ll need to adapt it to meet the needs of your target market and your business. 

To start, ask yourself what it is about the other site that appeals to you. Is it the bold use of typography? The punchy calls to action (CTAs)? 

Then, dig beneath the surface and identify the specific ecommerce user experience (UX) or conversion rate optimization (CRO) elements doing the heavy lifting. 

Maybe the site’s clever use of white space makes the content easier to digest, or the sticky navigation bar makes it easier to find what you’re looking for. Those are strategic choices, not just aesthetic ones. 

Basically, you should use these website designs from successful Shopify stores as a starting point to spark ideas to improve the digital customer journey on your own site. 

Once you have an idea of aesthetic and functional elements you want on your website, browse the Shopify Theme Store to pick a template that matches your specifications. All of the themes are adaptable, so you’ll be able to change details later.

16 of the best Shopify website designs 2026

1. De La Calle
2. Bite
3. Magic Spoon
4. Great Jones
5. Weston Table
6. Heyday Canning Co.
7. Ghia
8. FreshCap
9. Justin Reed
10. Quite Nice
11. 207ouest
12. Graza
13. Ouai
14. PerfectWhiteTee
15. Shock Surplus
16. Anyday

Here are some of the best examples of web design for Shopify stores:

1. De La Calle

Why it’s good: De La Calle is an excellent example of how to use design to emphasize your value proposition.

“I think we have reached a point, especially in certain categories within CPG [consumer packaged goods]—whether it’s food and beverage or even in categories like nutritional supplements—where there is attribute overload,” De La Calle founder Alex Matthews says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “It’s just like, how many things can we say on a tiny piece of real estate?”

That’s why De La Calle’s value prop (“modern Mexican soda”) appears above the fold on its homepage, in a unique display font (El Grosa Display by Fateh Lab). Below the fold, a continuous-scroll banner highlights health benefits.

This approach mirrors the design of De La Calle cans. 

“There are benefits in that it’s low in sugar, it’s low-calorie, it’s high in vitamin C, and it’s good for your gut,” Alex says. “But those are secondary attributes, and you have to look around the can to find those.”

Try it yourself:

• Choose an eye-catching display font. 
• Keep secondary information below the fold to avoid information overload.
• Incorporate product details and Add to Cart buttons into the homepage to facilitate the customer journey.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: BOLD, Okendo

2. Bite

Why it’s good: Sustainable personal care brand Bite uses product photography to show how they might fit into customers’ lives. Take the hero image on its homepage, which features Bite’s product lineup on a glass shelf with the tagline “Elevate your everyday.”

“If you go into a big box retailer’s toothpaste aisle … it is a sea of red and blue and the brightest colors ever, because it’s there to get your attention. And the thing is, that doesn’t look really great in my beautiful, earth-toned bathroom,” Bite founder Lindsay McCormick says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “What gets your attention in-store is not necessarily what you want in your home.”

Bite’s minimalist website complements its product packaging design. 

“We’re able to really lean into the understated design of it, and then also tell the story,” Lindsay says. “People haven’t really seen toothpaste in a tablet. So we’re able to explain: Why do you want a tablet? How do you use a tablet?” 

Try it yourself:

• Choose accent colors to draw attention to special offers. Bite uses a chartreuse and turquoise to highlight subscription savings.
• Incorporate your brand colors into your product photo backdrops. For Bite, this means neutral backdrops.
• Give images more than 50% of above-the-fold space on product pages. Bite’s product photos use the same background color as the product page text, creating the illusion that the product image fills the entire page.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Rebuy

3. Magic Spoon

Why it’s good: Whimsical graphics and bright colors evoke a sense of play and childlike wonder on the website of Magic Spoon, a brand that sells healthy versions of classic cereals. There are even animations of spinning pieces of cereal, details to create delight among site visitors.

Magic Spoon nudges its site visitors toward making a purchase by showcasing glowing customer feedback on its homepage. (A line reads “80,000+ 5-star reviews.”) This type of social proof shows potential buyers that people already love Magic Spoon products.

Magic Spoon uses a Shopify app called Okendo to collect reviews and display them on its site. Among other features, Okendo lets brands decide which reviews to publish, create sliding scales for customers to rate product attributes like “effectiveness” and “value,” and assemble user-generated content (UGC) image galleries for product pages.

The smart design of Magic Spoon’s website, however, goes beyond its homepage. For example, the company offers a “Build your own bundle” (BYOB) buying option that lets customers choose a product grouping for one-time or subscription purchases. 

As the company expanded its product line, however, customers began experiencing decision fatigue on the BYOB page. Magic Spoon partnered with web design agency Classic City Consulting to address the issue. 

After conducting A/B testing, the team added filtering options at the top of the page and tags like “best seller.” These make it easier for customers to decide what to buy. Now, BYOB is Magic Spoon’s highest-converting page, according to a Shopify case study on the brand.

Try it yourself:

• Experiment with floating elements to make your website feel more playful. Magic Spoon uses tiny graphics of spinning pieces of cereal.
• Use color gradients (instead of solids) to create a whimsical feel.
• Place customer ratings on your homepage. Magic Spoon calls out its more than 80,000 top reviews in a banner at the top of the site, then devotes space to individual reviews on its homepage below the fold.
• Experiment with a Build Your Own Bundle page to encourage higher average order value (AOV).

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Rebuy, Govalo, Okendo

4. Great Jones

Why it’s good: Great Jones makes high-quality kitchenware in vibrant colors. The company’s website emulates its product line through a colorful web design. 

“The exuberant, visually rich approach stands out from the muted style of most direct-to-consumer [DTC] brands targeting millennials,” writes design studio Pentagram in a case study.

Instead of going for a sleek, modern look, Great Jones and Pentagram chose a retro aesthetic with jewel tones for the cookware company’s website. Pentagram notes that this vintage vibe extends to the Great Jones logo design, “which looks fresh out of a classic cookbook.” (The logo is a custom version of the Bookmania typeface from Mark Simonson Studio.)

Great Jones worked with Spark to translate its brand identity into a custom Shopify Plus website. It’s incredibly easy to use. Navigation is simple: A sticky navigation bar with a mega menu lets customers find subcategories in just two clicks.

Spark also conducted a competitive analysis that led Great Jones to launch a referral program with Friendbuy. Users click the “Refer a Pal” link in the footer, which triggers a pop-up sign-up form. The footer includes a watercolor illustration of a cabbage leaf by artist Emma Dibben, which adds a touch of whimsy and a handmade feel.

Try it yourself:

• Add a mega menu to help customers find what they’re looking for in just a few clicks.
• Surprise users who make it to the bottom of the site with an illustration in the footer.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Rebuy, Okendo, Govalo

5. Weston Table

Why it’s good: Weston Table is a blog-turned-online store that sells unique home and lifestyle products, some of which are vintage and antique. Founder Dianne O’Connor and web design firm The Beauty Shop stayed true to the brand’s editorial roots when they developed Weston Table’s ecommerce site.

“I wanted to build an entertainment platform, not a transactional platform,” explains Dianne on Shopify Masters. One way Dianne upped the fun factor was through photography. 

The site rejects the ecommerce best practice of photographing products against a white backdrop. Dianne notes that a consistent white background makes it easy to find what you’re looking for, but “it’s not super entertaining.”

“We want to give up a little bit of that,” says Dianne. “Give people an imagination, and give them some inspiration on how they might think differently about how that product might be used or how it might function.”

There are also illustrations across the site, which you can see in the split navigation bar. This navigation setup physically separates the blog and ecommerce sections of the site while the illustrations give both a distinctly editorial feel.

The Beauty Shop worked with Weston Table to create 300 pen-and-ink illustrations inspired by 19th-century engravings. In addition to showing up on Weston Table’s website, they also appear on proprietary products and printed books. Now, this editorial-style flourish has become a core component of Weston Table’s visual branding.

While Weston Table infuses its site with an editorial vibe, the company doesn’t skimp on ecommerce features. There are easy-to-use wedding and gift registries. There’s also a reward program that incentivizes customer loyalty.

Try it yourself:

• Use lifestyle photography to help customers visualize how they can use and style your products.
• Use a split navigation bar to showcase distinct sections of your site.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: None

6. Heyday Canning Co.

Why it’s good:

Heyday Canning Co. is shaking up the canned goods industry with innovative products like Grilled Cheese Tomato Soup, Creamy Coconut Corn Chowder, and Fire Roasted Sweet Potato Chili.The company’s website features vibrant colors, unique fonts, and a distinctively retro feel. 

Founder Kat Kavner worked with branding and web design firm Outline to develop Heyday’s unique brand identity and website. Outline created a custom Shopify theme for the canned goods company.

Kat started the brand development process by identifying big-picture branding elements like brand mission and brand values. 

“From that emerged this consistent brand vibe of this new brand that was going to be very joyful and vibrant and fun, and kind of vintage-y and retro in a way, but very forward-looking,” Kat says on Shopify Masters. 

Bright vintage colors like ’70s avocado green and mustard yellow make up the site’s header text. 

“We looked at a lot of vintage inspiration,” says Ky Allport, Outline’s creative director. “We put together a color palette that felt a little bit nostalgic, really bright, and really vibrant.” 

Heyday’s main font looks retro, too. Outline designed it specifically for the brand. 

“[The letters] are kind of inspired by cans themselves,” Ky says. “The idea behind the font was that it would have this variation in width, so it can get a little bit wider, it can get a little bit more condensed, and then you can stack it in this playful way that nods to cans and the fact that they stack up.”

Try it yourself:

• Decide on large brand identity traits before you choose specific visual ones.
• Look at vintage imagery for inspiration if you’re going for a retro feel.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: None

7. Ghia

Why it’s good: Ghia is a non-alcoholic drink brand that makes aperitifs without additives like caffeine, sugar, and artificial flavors. Ghia’s rich color scheme gives the brand an air of sophistication, which is amplified by the hero image: two fancy-looking mocktails and two Ghia bottles on a white tablecloth.

Ghia’s branding makes the company look a lot like a high-end liquor brand, so the alcohol-free aperitif company has to be extra careful to communicate what its product really is. A clear header reading “All of the spirit, not of the booze” gets the point across quickly. 

On Shopify Masters, Ghia founder Melanie Masarin discusses how important it is to communicate clearly with customers. When you know the ins and outs of your brand, it’s easy to forget to explain simple things.

“Always think through the eyes of the customer when looking at a page,” Melanie says. She notes that customer listening can be important here. You need to know how customers will interpret text and images that might feel straightforward to you.

“That’s something that we always have to think about. We do it every time we design something,” says Melanie. “It’s colors, it’s graphics, it’s [brand] messaging, it’s everything all at once,” says Melanie.

Ghia uses Shopify’s free Dawn theme for its site. It’s a simple but effective theme with features like sticky headers, mega menus, and easy product filtering, all of which make it easy for customers to navigate a site. Dawn is also known for its speed.

Try it yourself:

• Use darker brand colors to convey sophistication.
• Tell customers exactly what you’re selling above the fold on your homepage.

Shopify theme: Dawn

Shopify apps: Rebuy, CartBot, EasyGift, Okendo, Covet

8. FreshCap 

Why it’s good: FreshCap sells mushroom coffee and supplements made without grain-based fillers. The brand uses Shopify’s Impact theme, which offers sticky Add to Cart buttons for product pages and quick-buy buttons for collection pages, both of which you can find on the FreshCap website.

These features allow FreshCap to meet users at any stage of the customer journey. Sticky Add to Cart buttons are especially useful if you have long product pages with sections for features, product reviews, and FAQs, like FreshCap does. 

When the customer is ready to buy, they can hit Add to Cart without having to scroll back up to the top of the page.

These aren’t the only sticky features you’ll find on FreshCap’s site. There’s a sticky Rewards button on the homepage that opens a pop-up sign-up form for FreshCap’s Smile-powered loyalty program, which encourages users to “forage” for ShroomCoins. In the bottom right corner of all pages, you’ll find a chatbot to assist with customer support.

Try it yourself: 

• Make sure customers can add to their cart from anywhere on the product page.
• Incorporate quick-add buttons into collection pages for customers who want to bypass product pages.

Shopify theme: Impact

Shopify apps: Mintt-Instafeed, Zipify, Skio, Rebuy, Smile, Bogos, CartBot

9. Justin Reed

Why it’s good:Justin Reed is a luxury resale website that excels in user-focused functional design. Because it sells one-of-a-kind products, the site needs special features to ensure customers can find what they want.

“There’s filtering on the collection and the search pages to ensure that at every single step, a customer can refine more easily and land on the product that’s right for them,” Sara Mote says. 

She founded web design agency Mote, which created the Justin Reed website with a custom Shopify theme. 

“Being able to really drill down and filter by a particular brand or a particular size is important for this client of ours because there may be an item that is only available in one size,” Sara says.

Justin Reed’s unique products are relatively expensive, so customers might spend longer in the consideration phase of the ecommerce funnel. The brand uses a wish list app (Swym), which allows shoppers to save items they aren’t ready to purchase.

“We love wish lists,” says Mote cofounder and software engineer Rembrant Van der Mijnsbrugge. “We really like encouraging people to buy a piece they’re really going to care for and keep.”

Try it yourself: 

• If you have a large product catalog, add advanced filtering options to help customers find exactly what they’re looking for.
• Keep it simple with a standalone hero image and no additional text.
• Add a wish list feature to encourage customers to return for big-ticket items.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Rebuy, Swym

10. Quite Nice

Why it’s good: Sometimes, a simple site is more effective than a complicated one. Quite Nice sells just one product—prebiotic instant oatmeal—and its straightforward website design makes it easy for customers to learn about and purchase that product. 

The navigation bar has just four options: Try Now (to access the oatmeal’s product page), Our Science (to learn more details about the product), Account (to log in and see your orders), and Cart. 

Quite Nice is only available via subscription, and the brand uses the Skio Shopify app to allow customers to create custom bundles.

Try it yourself: 

• Keep your navigation bar minimal. Think about what you want people to do on your website and push them toward that action.
• Combine photographs with illustrations (Quite Nice uses vines and flowers to echo its product packaging) for a lively feel.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Skio

11. 207ouest

Why it’s good: 207ouest describes itself as “a concept store with a fragmented catalog, where every object is its own distinctive feature.” The boutique offers a wide range of products, from bags to tea cups to fragrances. Some categories have only a few product options, whereas others (like fashion accessories) have several.

Using a full-screen hero image on the homepage allows 207ouest’s products to speak for themselves. As you scroll down the homepage, you’ll find product collections like “Valentine’s Day Selection.” This approach emphasizes the curated nature of the store.

Try it yourself: 

• Feature curated product collections on your homepage for an editorial feel. (This can also help with ecommerce category page SEO.)
• Add a close-up hero image to emphasize attention to detail.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: None

12. Graza

Why it’s good: Graza makes high-quality, affordable olive oil. Known for its convenient plastic squeeze bottles, the company has expanded its offering to include more formats for its olive oil (glass bottles, refill cans, a refill box, and cooking spray) as well as products made with olive oil, like potato chips and its latest venture: mayonnaise.

The first thing you’ll notice about Graza’s website is the hero video, something founder Andrew Benin calls an ecommerce web design “no-no” due to the increase in load time. 

“We had to be very confident in our perspective and not let best practices dictate how our site was going to be created, because that’s how we would just feel like everybody else,” Andrew says on Shopify Masters. 

For Andrew, the trade-off—prioritizing visual storytelling over site speed—was worth it.

“Every single page was designed separately based on what the storytelling goal was,” says Andrew. “It wasn’t reverse-engineered from conversion, it was engineered from the story.” 

If you scroll down the homepage, you’ll find shoppable product images and a section dedicated to brand storytelling, complete with clever copywriting like “Fresh is best” and “Happy olives, happy oil.”

Even product pages include elements of brand storytelling. This one for “The Trio”—a set of Graza’s three main categories of oil—includes information on the products’ sources and what makes its olive oil so high quality.

Graza’s site also features a “mini cart” on product pages. The mini cart has options for buying multiple products at once (which carries a discount), buying in plastic, glass, or metal containers, and options to either buy once or sign up for “subscribe and save.” Subscribe and save is designed as the default, which encourages shoppers to sign up for a subscription.

Alt: Graza product page for Sizzle showing mini cart.

Caption: Source: Graza

Try it yourself: 

• Don’t be afraid to ignore best practices if it supports your brand or your customer.
• Storytelling through video, photography, and copywriting deepens brand connections.

Encourage subscription orders by setting “subscribe and save” as the default purchase option.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Okendo

13. Ouai

Why it’s good: Most of the websites on this list place their navigation at the top of the page, but not hair-care brand Ouai. Ouai’s site features an unusual left-side navigation bar that accordions to the right as you hover over collections like “Hair,” “Body,” and “Shop by scent.” Hovering over subcategories like “Shampoo & Conditioner” reveals bestselling products.

Ouai leans into interactive features like a hair type quiz and “click and hold” button that allows users to toggle between before-and-after images.

Try it yourself: 

• Use quizzes to create personalized shopping experiences (and collect email addresses).
• Consider a left-side menu if you have a large number of products.

Shopify theme: Custom theme

Shopify apps: Accentuate, Rebuy, MinMaxify

14. PerfectWhiteTee

Jen Menchaca and Lisa Hickey had experience in the fashion industry when they launched their clothing brand PerfectWhiteTee, but they were new to the world of DTC ecommerce. 

On Shopify Masters, Lisa shares a few tips for setting up a consumer-facing site for the first time.

“The first thing I would say is to send a clear brand message with your landing homepage. Who are you as a brand? What is your aesthetic?” says Lisa. For PerfectWhiteTee, that means a minimalist font and black and white color scheme. 

“The second thing is making sure it’s extremely easy for your customers to navigate your website,” says Lisa. “Consumers get frustrated, and when they get frustrated, they bounce. Really make sure that your consumers can find the product they’re looking for.”

PerfectWhiteTee uses a sticky mega menu highlighting featured items. Click into any collection page and you’ll find advanced filtering options like price, color, and fabric.

At the bottom of each product page, you’ll see details on materials and manufacturing to help consumers understand why PerfectWhiteTee products cost more than basics from other brands. This is an example of a value-based selling strategy.

Try it yourself: 

• Add information on your values and manufacturing process to your homepage and product pages.
• If you have a minimalist site, use lifestyle photography to add visual interest.

Shopify theme: Motion

Shopify apps: Avada, Smile

15. Shock Surplus

Shock Surplus sells suspension and shock absorption parts for cars, but the exact products you need depend on the type of car. To create ease for the customer, Shock Surplus adds a personalization element above the fold on its landing page. Once you input your vehicle information, you’re directed to a page with parts that fit.

When you navigate away from the homepage, Shock Surplus turns this vehicle look-up feature into a sticky header. This ensures customers can always browse products that actually work for them, eliminating potential frustration.

Shock Surplus uses Shopify’s Pipeline theme, which makes it easy to add customer education content like embedded videos to pages across your site. This is particularly important for Shock Surplus, which aims to teach consumers about car parts.

“We have two sections of our site: shopping and learning, which is the education side of things,” founder Sean Reyes says in a Shopify case study. He notes that high-end retail brands already know the importance of educating consumers, but automotive companies have lagged behind.

“That’s where we have a big advantage, because educating your customer is the highest form of trust-building,” Sean says. “Because we’re not selling; We’re just like, ‘You can buy from us, you can buy from someone else, but this is our recommendation.’”

Try it yourself: 

• Add a custom filter on your homepage if you sell specialty products to help customers find what they need quickly.
• Educate your customers with blog posts and video embeds throughout your site.

Shopify theme: Pipeline

Shopify apps:CartBot

16. Anyday

Anyday sells microwave-safe glass food storage containers. While Anyday’s products are great for storing and reheating leftovers, they’re actually designed for cooking. Educating consumers about microwave cooking is a major goal for Anyday founder Stephanie Chen.

“When someone comes to our website, they see that you can make really perfect rice or crispy bacon or flaky fish or tender chicken—all of these different possibilities of what you can make in the microwave,” Stephanie says on Shopify Masters. “Seeing a food that resonates with them is very, very likely to impact conversion for us.”

Recipes for microwave cooking, however, can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach, because microwave wattage and portion size affect cooking time. Anyday addresses this with Shopify’s highly customizable Concept theme, adding custom drop-down menus to its recipe pages.

“Because we’re so focused on having a really optimal microwave user experience with our product, it was really important to us to invest the time and effort and money to build this custom functionality on our site,” says Stephanie. These drop-downs let you select your microwave wattage and serving size, then the recipe automatically updates with an accurate cook time for you.

Try it yourself: 

• Educate consumers about the possibilities of your products with recipes (for food and cooking products), styled outfits (for clothing), or decorated interiors (for home goods).
• Customize individual pages of your site with drop-down menus.

Shopify theme: Concept

Shopify apps:CartBot, Rebuy, Accentuate Custom Fields

Website design trends in 2026

• Food everywhere
• Return to nature
• Nostalgia
• AI-powered site building
• Immersive, full-screen visuals
• Web accessibility

The internet changes fast. Staying up to date with the most current website design trends helps ensure your site (and by extension your brand) looks and feels contemporary. 

Here are the big shifts shaping websites in 2026:

Food everywhere

“There’s this return to the culinary space in all these different pockets that have nothing to do with food,” says Ellen Bennett, founder of apron brand Hedley & Bennett. 

She points to beauty brands like Rhode, which features images of food on its product pages. Here, a photo of tiramisu accompanies the Espresso shade of Rhode’s Scented Peptide Lip Tint.

You can see this trend again on the homepage of jewelry brand Myel. Muffin cups cradle rings and earrings poke out of a dollop of frosting.

Pairing inedible items like jewelry or makeup with delicious looking photos of food is unexpected and can be a way to delight customers. By creating associations between foods visitors enjoy and your products, it encourages positive feelings toward your brand. 

Return to nature

As the internet—and AI—infiltrate more spaces in daily life, some brands are pivoting toward the natural world.

“I think it’s about going back to things that are real. With the world being flooded with AI and all this stuff that’s so digital, how do we get back to our roots?” Ellen says.

Some brands are embracing this return with their product offerings. Flamingo Estate, for example, found viral success with candles that smell like heirloom tomatoes. But you can tap into this trend with your website design, too.

Take a look at Flamingo Estate’s green-hued color palette and hero image featuring a forested section of earth. Using colors found in nature and photographs of the outdoors suggests the nature trend.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia marketing references the past in order to create an emotional connection with customers. 

On websites, you see it in retro fonts and color palettes, film photographs, and even lifestyle photos featuring dated clothing, interiors, or makeup and hair styles. They may use niche influencer marketing partners to support their nostalgic web aesthetic. 

“We’re living in a hyper-digital, overstimulated world, and nostalgia offers emotional relief—it reminds people of simpler times,” says Madison Stefanis, founder of film camera company 35mm Co. “It works because it’s grounding.”

33mm Co. sells an inherently nostalgic product (film cameras), but you can use nostalgia in your website design with modern products. 

Take the sunscreen brand Vacation as an example. The company’s Shopify website design summons a 1990s look with muted blues and yellows as well as grainy photography and videography. Models’ clothing, hair, and makeup styles also capture the past. 

As you incorporate nostalgia marketing into your own website, don’t worry about getting every detail right. 

“Nostalgia today isn’t about accuracy—it’s about creating an emotional composite,” Madison says. “You’ll see people mixing ’70s fonts, ’90s cameras, and Y2K outfits all in one image—the goal isn’t to replicate the past, it’s to evoke comfort and familiarity.”

AI-powered site building

More and more ecommerce platforms are rolling out AI site builders. These tools, like Shopify’s AI site builder, help you get a website up and running in minutes. 

Just input a prompt, then see options for potential website layouts customized to your business. You could enter “high-end home decor store,” for example, then choose between a number of layouts. Once you select one, customize it with Shopify’s user-friendly drag-and-drop editor. This lets you build a custom site without coding.

Immersive, full-screen visuals

Hero sections in 2026 are all about bold, immersive visuals. Think photos or videos that take up the full screen with just a few lines of accompanying text. 

Here’s an example from sunglasses brand Crap Eyewear featuring a video with the tagline “Don’t worry, be crappy,” a callback to the ’80s song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

While many brands opt for lifestyle photos as hero images, you can use product photos, too. Make them visually interesting and keep text minimal. 

Shoe brand Larroudé, for example, features a hero image of multiple pairs of sneakers alongside the simple line, “I’m George” (the name of one of its sneaker products).

Web accessibility

Web accessibility isn’t just a nice-to-have—it can also be a legal requirement. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outline how to make your site accessible to viewers with visual, auditory, or cognitive disabilities. 

To get started, follow website accessibility best practices like writing ALT text for all your images. These descriptive lines let screen readers interpret images for visually impaired users. 

Clear navigation is important, too, as are high-contrast color palettes. You’ll also want to make sure your font has high contrast with its background. You can check with a contrast checker like the one from WebAIM. 

“Accessibility is such an important consideration in design,” Sara of Mote says. Sara starts thinking about accessibility in the early mockup or wireframe phase of building a site. Many elements of accessibility, like intuitive navigation are important for both accessibility and the overall desktop and mobile user experience. “There’s a lot of crossover,” Sara says.

Principles of beautiful website design

Great web design balances aesthetics with usability. It loads fast, guides people where they need to go, and it looks good. It’s the ease, nudge, delight principle in action. In other words, beauty and function go hand in hand.

Here’s a simple checklist of essential principles of good web design:

• Be clear rather than clever. Make sure visitors instantly understand what your site is about. Use clear headlines, straightforward navigation, and concise copy. Beautiful web design doesn’t work if people can’t figure out what you do.
• Use consistent branding. Fonts, colors, and imagery should all feel like they belong together and reflect your brand personality. Brand consistency builds credibility and makes your site memorable.
• White space is your friend. Don’t cram too much onto a single page. White space (or more generally, negative space) makes pages easier to scan. It also helps make the most important elements of your page stand out.
• Accessibility matters. Follow the WCAG 2.2 guidelines to make your site usable for everyone. That means creating high color contrasts, providing alt text for images, making sure your site works with screen readers, and designing for keyboard navigation. 
• Performance is part of web design. A gorgeous site that takes forever to load hurts your conversion rate. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to check your load times and get practical tips for improving speed. Optimizing images, limiting heavy scripts, and using modern coding practices all help.
• Adopt a mobile-first mindset. Many people will browse your site on a phone. Good web design prioritizes responsive layouts, easy-to-tap buttons, and legible text even on smaller screens.
• Create intentional user journeys. Map how you want customers to click through your site. Use visual hierarchy (size, color, placement) to point users toward your calls-to-action.

A site builder like Shopify helps you take care of many of these essential components for effective web design. The templates in the Shopify Theme Store have built-in responsive web design to ensure your site looks good on smartphones. 

Shopify’s AI tools help you draft clever but straightforward text and even create behind-the-scenes site elements like discount codes.

While following these core best practices is key, don’t be afraid to take smaller risks. Graza, for example, diverged from other ecommerce companies by using large homepage visuals and small CTA buttons. They believed high-intent shoppers would still click the CTAs. “We took a more risky approach to ecommerce best practices, and it worked out for us,” Graza founder Andrew says. 

As you build your site, you can always test different designs and track which ones perform best. Shopify’s built-in analytics platform lets you track things like conversion rate and add-to-cart rate to better understand which designs work and which don’t.

Create your own beautiful website

A unique, well-designed website is one of the best ways to showcase your brand personality and highlight your unique value proposition (UVP). Shopify’s website builder makes it easy to build a website that looks professional and appealing and showcases what makes your company special. 

Choose between prebuilt themes and use Shopify’s drag-and-drop editor to arrange site elements, no coding required. 

If web design isn’t your thing (or you don’t have the time), hiring a professional web designer can be a smart move. Shopify Partners connects you with web design pros. Even if you work with an agency, consider these website design essentials:

Choose your brand colors and typography

Before you choose your brand colors and typography, peruse the Shopify websites above and visit additional website design inspiration platforms like Pinterest or Landbook. Head to the websites of your favorite brands or major players in your industry for more inspiration.

The next step is translating your ideas into a look and feel that’s uniquely yours and has aesthetic appeal. Colors and typography set the mood, shape first impressions, and make your brand instantly recognizable.

Colors

Start with a primary palette (two to three colors you’ll use most often) and an accent palette (one to two supporting shades). Your palette should reflect your brand personality (e.g., calm and natural, bold and playful, or sleek and modern). Always double-check contrast ratios to meet WCAG accessibility guidelines.

Typography

Sara Mote suggests choosing one or two core brand fonts and perhaps a third accent font. You can use different typefaces (bold or italic) to create different looks with just a single font.

Document your visual branding and tone

Strong website design starts with a solid brand identity. Outline creative director Ky Allport explains that many brands reach out to her agency looking for a website design but don’t yet have a brand toolkit. These are the brand guidelines and assets that constitute your brand identity. “That has the ingredients that we use to make a great website,” Ky says.

Once you’ve solidified your branding, you’ll find that making your website is easier. “A lot of times, once we actually get to the website, it feels like we’ve done so much work to figure out what the brand is and how it looks and feels and what it has to say that the website is almost an inevitability,” Ky says.

Here’s what to figure out before you start building your website:

• Your color palette: Include HEX or RGB codes.
• Typography and rules: Include images of your chosen fonts and instructions on where and when to use each variation.
• Image guidelines: Photography style (bright, moody, playful), use of illustrations, or preferred filters.
• Brand voice and brand tone: How your brand expresses its brand personality through writing. Is it friendly and conversational? Expert and authoritative? Warm and reassuring? Add dos and don’ts for consistent messaging.
• Logo: Correct sizing, spacing, and background rules, plus information on when to use any logo variants. Try a logo maker like the free one from Shopify to create one.

Pick a fast, flexible theme

If your site is clunky and slow, your beautiful web design choices won’t matter. Your theme is essentially the foundation of your website, because it dictates how your site looks and how easily you can customize it as your business grows.

Luckily, all of Shopify’s themes are optimized for speed and flexibility, so focus on choosing a theme that matches your aesthetic tastes and unique business needs. Shopify releases large-scale product updates every six months through Editions, so your business’s tech stays up to date.

• Speed first. Test a theme’s performance using Google PageSpeed Insights before committing. Shopify’s themes are already optimized for speed, but some can be slightly faster than others.
• Flexibility matters. Shopify’s themes support drag-and-drop editing, custom sections, and responsive web design. This makes it easy to edit your site without hiring a developer every time you want a small change.
• Check reviews and support. Look for a theme with strong documentation and active support. Strong community support helps you troubleshoot.
• Future-proof your web design. Choose a theme that receives regular updates, like those found in the Shopify Theme Store.