High Converting Ecommerce Sites

The goal of every ecommerce design is (or should be) to maximise sales. Specifically, this usually comes down to optimal conversion rate. Obviously it’s impossible to get right first time – there’s no substitute for split testing to get the best conversions. However, starting off with the right structure is critical.

As a way of getting inspired, I chose 5 sites with high conversion rates and converted their homepage, category page and product page into wireframes. This is a great way to get inspired and, uh, “borrow” ideas to help you with your designs. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Note some of the data I based decisions on is a bit old as it’s the best I could get.

Here’s the 5 sites I chose and the rational:

Amazon.com: do I really need to say why? It’s the site everyone compares themselves to. Arguably it’s a bad idea to copy from Amazon, but there’s no denying they do a lot right. In January 08 Amazon had a 9.6% conversion rate.
Proflowers: I personally find this site inspiring, the attention to detail is amazing. With a 14.1% conversion rate, their attention pays off.
Schwans: ok, so they cheat, being an online grocery store attracts a lot of repeat ready to buy visitors. Still, a staggering 40.60% conversion rate is hard to argue with, no matter how they achieve it!
Vitacost: More of a “typical” ecommerce site (whatever that means) than the others, with an atypical 16.40% conversion rate.
WomanWithin: There’s no doubt that apparel is a huge and growing industry online. Woman Within’s staggering 25.30% conversion rate positions them very well to capitalise on this market.

No doubt all of them have some advantage â€“ ProFlowers email aggressively, Schwans have their repeat business, Amazon their brand, etc. The question is: what edge do you have that you can capitalise on?

Below are thumbnails, full size versions, and downloadable AI (Adobe Illustrator) files for you to take home and play with. If someone is kind enough to convert them to another format (OmniGraffe, Axure, any other format) please email me and I’ll add links.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the wireframes.