Miami Design Studio

Online retailers aren’t traditionally renowned for their beautiful web design, but as the market for such sites becomes more and more saturated we are starting to see an increased effort by these companies to design websites that not only functionally sell products, but also actively market themselves through beautiful and trendy design.

Smashing Magazine has compiled a showcase of 45 beautifully designed online stores.

Below our two of my personal favorites:

ShoeGuru:

ShoeGuru is beautifully minimalistic. The only thing displayed to visitors is shoes and nothing else. The way the shoes are displayed, horizontally with a scroll bar, is also pretty innovative, although it might present a usability issue to some users.

Yellowood:

This site sells fingerboards (think skateboards, but really small) and like Shoeguru is pretty minimalistic. The only thing displayed is the logo, a clean navigation, and the products — oh, and a background featuring yellow woods (pretty appropriate, right?). The result is a beautiful, intuitive shopping experience.

You can check out Smashing Magazine’s article to see the rest of their showcase. Cool stuff.