What Top Ecommerce Sites Share: Insights from a Web Design Agency in Perth

If you run or manage an ecommerce business, you know how challenging it can be to keep up. Customer expectations evolve quickly, competitors are always adapting, and the digital landscape keeps shifting. One question tends to stay top of mind: what are the most successful brands doing differently?

Across the board, high-performing ecommerce sites tend to share a few key traits. They are built with intent, shaped by broader trends, and centred around the customer experience from the very beginning.

As a web design agency based in Perth, we’ve seen these principles in action through our work with a range of thriving ecommerce brands. In this article, we break down what sets standout platforms apart and share practical ideas you can apply to your own site.

The most successful ecommerce sites don’t try to say everything at once. They prioritise clarity, structure, and hierarchy—often expressed through minimalist, content-first layouts that allow the product to take centre stage. This isn’t just about aesthetics. Research from the Nielsen Norman Group shows that clean, spacious interfaces reduce cognitive load and help users navigate more intuitively. Similarly, studies from Human Factors International report that effective use of whitespace can improve user comprehension by up to 20 percent.

What does this look like in practice?

• Generous white space and restrained colour palettes that guide the eye

• Large, high-quality imagery with minimal overlays that keep the focus on the product

• Editorial-style typography that creates structure without feeling ornamental

• Navigation that feels seamless and unobtrusive

Sommer Swim is a strong example of this in action. Their site keeps things intentionally refined, using clean visuals, generous spacing, and a layout that feels more like a fashion publication than a conventional online store. The focus remains firmly on the product, supported by striking imagery and minimal distractions. This kind of restraint is powerful as it invites users to explore at their own pace, rather than overwhelming them from the outset.

If your site feels busy or difficult to scan, it may be unintentionally competing with itself. Simpler, well-structured layouts don’t just look elevated, they create smoother shopping experiences and tend to perform better, too.

Modern ecommerce customers expect relevance, not just surface-level recommendations. They want experiences that feel tailored, intuitive, and genuinely helpful. The most effective platforms go beyond static “recommended products” and invest in intelligent, guided journeys that mirror real-life interactions.

How leading brands make this happen:

• Interactive quizzes and diagnostic toolsSmart product pairings and curated bundles
• Dynamic content that responds to user preferences in real time

Take The Secret Skincare, for example. Their homepage features a skin quiz that feels less like a generic form and more like a concierge consultation. It mirrors the kind of questions you would expect from an in-clinic expert, helping users uncover the right routine with minimal effort. This seemingly small layer of interactivity has had a significant impact. Since relaunching their site, they have seen an 81 percent increase in organic traffic and a 17 percent lift in organic revenue.

The key is not to leave customers to figure things out on their own; whether they’re choosing a foundation shade, crafting a skincare plan, or selecting the right health cover, thoughtful digital guidance helps reduce decision fatigue, streamline the path to purchase, and ultimately improve conversion outcomes.

While clean design is essential, it doesn’t mean your site should feel flat or lifeless. The most effective ecommerce website design use motion with intention. These moments of movement, known as micro-interactions, are small visual cues that respond to user behaviour. They are a common feature across today’s most engaging platforms.

You’ll often see them in:

• Hover effects on product tiles
• Smooth transitions between content sections
• Visual confirmations when items are added to cart
• Subtle animations triggered by scrolling

Micro-interactions do more than enhance aesthetics. They help build trust. When an interface responds smoothly and predictably, it gives users a sense of control and confidence. It signals that your platform is modern, well considered and technically reliable. These moments may seem minor, but they often set your brand apart when customers are comparing you to other sites that feel clunky or outdated.

If you’re in the process of redesigning or refreshing your ecommerce site, it’s worth considering how these subtle interactions could support your overall user experience. And if you’d like a second opinion or some guidance, feel free to get in touch with the team at Clue. We’d be happy to advise.

Performance is no longer a nice to have. It is the baseline. The best ecommerce sites today prioritise fast load times, intuitive navigation, and a frictionless experience, especially on mobile, where over 65 percent of ecommerce traffic now takes place. If your site feels clunky, slow, or hard to use on a phone, it is not just an inconvenience, it is likely costing you sales.

Here is what strong performance looks like in practice:

• Pages that load in under three seconds, even on 4G

• Mobile layouts optimised for thumb friendly scrolling

• Buttons and inputs sized for quick, easy taps

• Menus and filters that are effortless to use with one hand

When we partnered with HIF on their site rebuild, the goal was to simplify a complex product like health insurance and make it easy to explore. We designed an interactive quote tool that allows users to enter a few basic details and instantly see plan options and pricing that update in real time. Crucially, the experience was engineered to be just as smooth on mobile as it is on desktop.

This kind of seamless user experience is no longer just appreciated. It is expected. If your users are still pinch zooming, struggling with dropdowns, or double tapping just to interact with your site, that is a clear sign it is time to re evaluate.

Want to see how your site stacks up? Test it using PageSpeed Insights. It will give you a snapshot of your Core Web Vitals, including mobile load speed, interactivity, and visual stability, key indicators of whether your site is meeting modern performance standards. If the results are not looking great, reach out. If your results fall short, feel free to reach out. We can help you uncover what’s holding your site back and explore practical solutions to improve speed, usability, and overall experience.

Search engines continue to drive the majority of ecommerce traffic, which means your website design should not only look good but work strategically with your SEO. The best-performing sites understand this and build for search from the ground up.

Here are a few critical considerations:

• Are your pages structured around clear search intent?

• Is your navigation crawlable and logically organised for both users and bots?

• Are you using semantic headings, descriptive metadata, and well-optimised images?

• Is slow site speed quietly hurting your rankings?

According to Google, page experience signals such as mobile usability, loading performance, and visual stability now influence how your site is ranked. And with over 90 percent of online experiences starting with a search engine, design and SEO are no longer separate disciplines. They need to work together.

When we redesigned the HIF website, we approached it through that lens. We didn’t just focus on visual appeal. We considered how people search for health insurance, how they explore coverage options, and the kinds of queries they use to make informed decisions. The result was a site architecture that served both users and search engines, helping HIF rank in the number one position on Google for some of the most competitive keywords in their category.

Good design makes your site beautiful. Great design makes it discoverable too.