At Gibe Digital, we think we are pretty good at ecommerce websites. We can really challenge the norm and build a great user experience while still creating and increasing conversions. So when an ecommerce site caught my eye, and it is a responsive design to boot, my head exploded with pure excitement and technical pleasure.
United Pixelworkers website
This month, I would like to share United Pixelworkers, a newly redesigned ecommerce store.
The United Pixelworkers is a stunning ecommerce website that has been creating t-shirts by designers and developers, based on their US State/region for a couple of years.
This website also has an unusual mechanism for selling featured products. Some featured products have a limited shelf-life and have to be ordered in a given timescale. And with designers contributing new t-shirt designs regularly, there is no shortage of products to feature.
Products
The products are clearly listed in a simplistic layout on the homepage. Priority is given to time-sensitive products, Twitter and the newsletter sign up process.
The layout resizes and reorders using CSS, made nicer with JavaScript animations, and rearranges the layout to work responsively on smaller devices, like tablets and mobiles.
The size of the collection is quite large, but the experience just seems to "work". The mobile experience is pleasant to just scroll through the products. And with very little else to distract the user, it makes the whole browsing and purchasing process much cleaner.
Design
I am very impressed with the clean-cut, simplistic design that the United Pixelworkers website displays. It is almost reminiscent of the Metro design style adopted by Microsoft (see my previous post about MSN UK's Olympic Website for more information about the Metro design style).
The colour scheme seems to work well too. Darker headers and secondary actions really ensure the action and focus areas that use a vibrant orange stand out to the user.
Humour
The most amusing aspect of this site, however, is the use of humour in its copy and messages to the user.
Mail Chimp has long been credited with providing a quirky and fun user experience when developing email templates, which is supposed to make its process more enjoyable, in what is considered a dry aspect of development.
United Pixelworkers has adopted a similar approach. Not many websites have the user-base to call you a "sucker" for signing up to their newsletter, which they say will "spam you" monthly! Entertaining indeed.
It is little touches like this, along with a brilliant design and experience, that make this my favourite website of the month.
Visit United Pixelworkers website: www.unitedpixelworkers.com
