The humble t-shirt has become perhaps the most outstanding icon of popular culture. It is more than garb, but rather a vehicle that communicates its wearer's faith, politics, hobbies, and lifestyle.
With so much of a potential customer's social status on the line, online t-shirt retailers have pushed the proverbial envelope in ecommerce website design. In this article, I am going to introduce you to some good examples of niche-specific ecommerce website design.
Dripping in Fat
If quality t-shirts make happy customers, as the folks at Dripping in Fat claim, perhaps it is also true that well designed ecommerce websites make customers feel safe—like they are dealing with a professional and trustworthy merchant. If that latter is in fact the case, as I believe it is, this U.K. based site conveys a lot of professionalism. The site runs on the Magento platform, makes use of both the Prototype and jQuery JavaScript libraries, and includes a nice Flash-based slider on the home page. We Love of Kent, England did the stellar design.
Flippin' Sweet Gear
The Flippin' Sweet Gear website uses flat colors, grunge, and great photography to communicate a unique site design that is consistent with the company's products. There was one odd bit. On the left-hand navigation, site visitors are invited to browse by gender and are given the choices: men, women, and kids.
Onetribe
With a social ecommerce message that is aimed at hope, Fort Collins, Colorado-based Onetribe has made its Magento ecommerce site a dark canvas to feature its organic cotton tees as if they were works of art. The heavy white letters on its product detail pages seem to leap from the canvas.
CNN Shirt
And you thought CNN was an international news agency. Well, for purposes of this article, it is a t-shirt shop that also does news. The CNN t-shirt shop puts recent headlines on t-shirts, and it is the site's witty and well-done gallery images that really sell these tees.
Tilteed
Running on Foxycart, the Tilteed, like many others in this showcase, makes good use of images and photographs. I especially liked how the winning t-shirts were featured.
Swishswosh
This design by Rippleffect uses a simple three-color palette on white that is crisp, clean, and pink. The Swishswosh site makes great use of the jQuery library,—even using the Fancybox plugin that I have wanted to try on some of my own websites—and includes a price countdown and a home page video to help merchandise its wares.
Nataliedee
This t-shirt site is vibrant, eclectic, and trendy, like the shirts it sells. The Nataliedee site changes widths, boosts a comic on the home page, and includes a variety of product shots.
Shirt Fight
The Shirt Fight store site puts fun photography right up front on the home page and uses design details to propel the store brand. Specifically, check out the stone-like background, boxing glove wearing models, and grunge style features. The site runs on Foxycart and makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Randr
The Randr online shop, which runs on Magento, is following several of the hottest trends in site design, including its large, text-only logo, massive photos, and very high-quality product representations.
Seibei
The Seibei t-shirt store reuses most of its tee graphics in the actual site design, creating a one-to-one brand relationship between the products sold and the site selling them. Even the site's models seem to exude the company brand. I was also surprised to learn that the site was running on Yahoo!'s ecommerce platform.
Chop Shop
Integrating audio, Flash, and a background switcher, the Chop Shop is a fun site to shop.
Regal Clothing Co.
At the Regal Clothing Co. website, a large and interesting background graphic and huge logo transform what might have been your basic grid product layout into a t-shirt shop that is visually interesting and well branded. Without these two design elements the site would be blazé. With them it makes my list of well-designed t-shirt sites.
No Star
No Star's no frills site design conveys a lot with just black and white. I especially like how the site's designers treated the photography, wrapping it in a dotted border and setting it slightly askew.
Amorphia Apparel
It is hard to decide which of Jeremy Kalgreen's attractive apparel sites I liked best, but I decided to focus on his flagship, Amorphia Apparel, which makes great use of head space, a slider, tabs, and vertical alignment. You will also want to check out Hirsute History and Wear Science. The Amorphia Apparel site uses Spread Shirt for it cart functions.
Clear Cut Case
The Clear Cut Case website makes a clear case for its clean and professional design. I really like the site's header photography and generally good quality product images.
NerdyShirts
With the background image similar to Twitter's, NerdyShirts, which runs on Magento, consistently presents its wares in an interesting way in spite of the product grid layout that so dominates t-shirt sites.
Tolky Monkys
The Tolky Monkys website uses tall and relatively narrow photography to make its site look unique. The photography has a grainy, live action feel that is almost as hip as the site's t-shirts.
Split Reason
Focused on t-shirts and gear for geeks and gamers, the Split Reason website integrates a cool logo, an outline of a llama, and the biohazard symbol into a well laid out design.
PalmerCash
If random is a design aesthetic, PalmerCash's website is a quintessential example.
The Affair
With a unique user interface, the Flash-based The Affair has long been one of my favorite t-shirt sites.
Custom Tshirts
The Custom Tshirts site carries the t-shirt theme pretty far, which in this case is very cool. The site design comes from Elpats Design and may be the single most unique t-shirt site design I've seen.
Kindred Market
The Kindred Market is another excellent example of how background images can influence a site's mood. In this case, both the header background and page background play a part. The site runs on Shopify.
Retro Rags Collection
A modular design which emphasizes images of people, the Retro Rags Collection is a good example of an ecommerce site using Volusion's platform. Other things to notice include the background and grunge style.
Jinx
I can't write a showcase article about t-shirt website without including Jinx, which is the shop for web and gaming fanatics. The site, like many in this showcase, features large photographs of people actually wearing the products.
