The Best Shopify Stores:

Their Strengths, Weaknesses, and What You Can Learn from Them

Running an ecommerce store is a pretty tricky endeavor. If you have one, then you already know that well. In addition to requiring extensive focus on technical aspects, it also requires a lot of inspiration, perceptive insights, and keeping a sharp eye on your competitors – the best Shopify stores are great for motivating other ecommerce entrepreneurs to be even better.

However, the following questions arise – what factors make a Shopify store great and what stores are worthy of our interest? Let’s explore this together in the article below!

What Turns a Regular Shopify Store Into a True Star?

As a successful Shopify development company with a proven track record, at Whidegroup, we recommend that you draw your attention to the following aspects:

• Design – a book is often judged by its cover, and the same goes for a website. Taking care of your website’s design is well worth every effort.
• Performance optimization – don’t make visitors wait years for page loads – that’s a death knell for the business. Turn to Google PageSpeed Insights in order to check your performance score on their points system, as you’ll see we did with our site reviews below.
• Social networks – socials are an undeniable part of contemporary life, increasing your outreach far beyond the official website. Thus, it’s short-sighted to not include them in your strategy.
• Caring for the customer – providing the customer w/ a variety of payment options, like showcasing the products from all angles, writing attractive and inclusive product descriptions – these are all important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to providing for the customer!
• Combining all the above-mentioned wisely – at the end of the day, building a website is kind of like cooking – follow the instructions and recommendations written on the food-stained pages, but don’t be scared to be creative and try a few new ingredients. We’re pretty sure you’ll be thrilled with the result!

In order to show you the good stuff when it comes to existing Shopify stores, we’ve researched a vast amount of ecommerce websites. While it wasn’t an easy task to undertake, we have succeeded in delivering to you a complete list of the 10 best stores on Shopify.

The Best Existing Shopify Stores

Keeping in mind that a brand’s reputation and authority are not sufficient to be considered successful, we decided to concentrate on the success factors listed in the previous section. So, here’s our top Shopify stores:

• 1. Morphe Cosmetics

  • Design: This cosmetics store has a well-designed product page. It is perfectly supplemented with colorful product pictures depicting numerous swatches which allows the customer to estimate how the product looks on various skin tones. Some featured products are also accompanied by videos demonstrating how bloggers use that particular product.
  • Socials: As a cosmetic brand, Morphe knows about the power of image. Thus, the brand has an extremely vibrant Instagram community – it comprises 9.7 million followers, posting daily. As for Facebook – the local community is not quite as lively – it consists of 850k followers.
  • Performance: Morphe Cosmetics has 57 points for desktop and only 18 points for mobile performance results. That’s not much to brag about, but we’re sure that the brand will make improvements in this field.
  • What’s interesting here: Being engaged in the cosmetics business for years, the brands knows well the difficulty that can arise in choosing the right foundation for your skin tone. That’s why Morphe Cosmetics developed Foundation Finder – a tool that’s intended to help the client to find the perfect shade by answering simple questions.
  

• 2. The Cambridge Satchel

  • Design: The satchel-selling website’s design is bright, yet not overly flashy. The brand turns to bright colors to represent their products in an attractive manner, combining them with great taste, and great attention to every detail.
  • Socials: The brand comprises 68.1k followers on Instagram over 105k followers on Facebook
  • Performance: 36 points for desktop and only 6 for mobile devices. Such a result leaves a lot of room for improvement.
  • What’s interesting here: Knowing about the difficulty in choosing the perfect bag, The Cambridge Satchel presents a fit guide, which clearly shows what can fit inside each particular bag model. Shoppers no longer have to guess the size of the bag they need – the only thing they need to do is inventory the things they’re planning to carry in the bag.
  • The company also provides 9(!) payment options – in addition to the traditional PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and American Express, the store can also process Shopify, Google and Apple, as well as Klarna and Amazon payments.
  

• 3. Luxy Hair

  • • Design: Luxy Hair made it their goal to turn hair extensions and accessories into a real joy – one in which they succeeded, not least because of the design aspect. Stylish and dapper, it gives an impression of meaningfulness on every page of the website.
    • Socials: Luxy Hair attracts 534k followers on Instagram and 332k followers on Facebook.
    • Performance: 34 points for desktop and 20 points through mobile devices. Luxy Hair definitely has room for ideas about how to improve this!
    • What’s interesting here: A comprehensive impression is everything when it comes to ecommerce. With this in mind, Luxy Hair strives to showcase their products in every possible manner. In addition to numerous product images, they also attach video testimonials, which clearly show the products in daily life, without any post-processing and models. Customers appreciate this genuine approach quite a bit!
  

• 4. Millk

  • • Design: The design issue for baby apparel brands can be a tough nut to crack, but Millk did it so well we can’t resist. The discrete and well thought out design highlights the products’ tenderness and appeals to parental feelings by showcasing the products on tiny, adorable models.
    • Socials: Millk’s Instagram account comprises around 65k followers and around 10k followers through Facebook.
    • Performance: 95 points for desktop, 75 points for mobile devices. Millk can be rightly proud of themselves!
    • What’s interesting here: Shopping baby clothes can be a real headache. With this in mind, Millk categorized their products not by size, but by the age of the child. That’s very convenient because shoppers don’t have to measure their babies to choose the best item.
  

• 5. Moonbeam Baby

  • • Design: The brand created a perfectly-balanced mockup to represent the products in a delicate yet attractive manner which is appropriate for baby products. Visit the website and you’ll see what we mean!
    • Socials: Moonbeam Baby is a newbie in running social accounts, which is why there are only 80 followers on their Instagram account and 1.7k followers via Facebook.
    • Performance: 98 points for desktop and 68 for mobile. You rock, Moonbeam Baby!
    • What’s interesting here: In order to make the shopping experience smooth, Moonbeam Baby enables customers to pay with multiple payment options. There are PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. Every potential shopper will find an appropriate way to make a payment at this store!
  

• 6. Norwegian Rain

  • • Design: This apparel brand strives to create the most detailed impression possible of their products. We really appreciated the feature for color and fabric selection, which allows the customer to review the texture in detail with macro photos.
    • Socials: This Nordic brand has 20.3k followers on their Instagram account and approximately 8.5k on Facebook.
    • Performance: 99 points performance score for desktops vs 61 points for mobile devices. Bravo, Norwegian Rain!
    • What’s interesting here: The brand deprives its customers of the necessity of calculating extra costs, since they haven’t got any. Yes, Norwegian Rain provides free shipping and free returns. Because of this bonus, shoppers aren’t hesitant to make a purchase that may not fit them.
  

• 7. SIR the label

  • • Design: Luxury apparel brand, SIR the label (Separates, Intimates, Ready to Wear), follows the politics of not distracting shoppers with too much information. That’s why you can see product details, such as the name, price, and color options only while hovering over the product image. The product page itself is also brief – most of the page’s area is covered by the picture, which grabs all attention.
    • Socials: This brand has over 310k followers on its Instagram page and over 7k followers on Facebook.
    • Performance: The store scores 97 points for desktops and 56 points for mobile. Well done, SIR the label!
    • What’s interesting here: This brand uses After Pay – an integration that enables the shopper to split the payment on 4 equal parts. The customer has to pay the first installment while purchasing, and the remaining parts are to be paid every two weeks.
  

• 8. JANE CARR

  • • Design: This scarves and wraps luxury brand uses a megamenu to enable the customers to find their needed items fast and hassle-free. Hovering over the product image on the category page shows the item itself and on the model to help shape a comprehensive impression about the product.
    • Socials: JANE CARR’s Instagram account comprises around 3.8k followers, as for Facebook – the number of followers is more than 13k.
    • Performance: 96 points for desktop against 53 points for mobile devices. Excellent work, JANE CARR!
    • What’s interesting here: The store’s engagement with the customer is not finished at the checkout – JANE CARR is not about selling only, but about creating a comprehensive stylish image. The brand does that by creating numerous guides and tutorials that illustrate how to combine their products to look elegant and creative.
  

• 9. HG Walter

  • • Design: This meat specialist website can boast perfect navigation – all the products can be easily found, whatever you are looking for. The product images are the point of pride for the brand – juicy and expressive, they attract great attention.
    • Socials: It was a surprise, but HG Walter has SO many followers on social platforms! 8k followers around Instagram and 1.3k on Facebook. Well, it would seem that many people like watching meat!
    • Performance: Desktop performance score is 81 points, and performance across mobile devices is 44 points.
    • What’s interesting here: At HG Walter, customers can order fine meat in advance by specifying the date needed in the text area. That’s very convenient since it means that the shopper doesn’t have to remember to make a purchase on the eve of the needed date. One less headache! Isn’t it a dream?
  

• 10. Playa Beauty

  • • Design: In addition to attractive and truly elegant design, this organic cosmetics website also offers a quick-look option which enables customers to review the details and add to the cart without visiting the product page itself.
    • Socials: Playa Beauty has around 41k followers on Instagram and 1.6k followers through Facebook.
    • Performance: 86 points for desktop and 46 points for mobile. Not bad, but there’s room for improvement.
    • What’s interesting here: Inspired by the plastics pollution in our oceans, Playa Beauty has developed their own sustainability program. All the customer needs to do is to make an order online, get the labels printed, put them on the bottles, and leave them waiting for a carrier. Ready to go! Shopping at Playa Beauty not only saves the Earth by reducing plastic production, but also saves money – shoppers get a 15% discount for each following purchase! That’s a pretty strong motivation to buy.
  

So, What Should We Take Stock In?

Despite being so different, all the stores more or less have the same strengths and weaknesses. Let’s look closer at them with some conclusions:

• Virtually every one of the reviewed stores has a decent desktop performance score.
• At the same time many websites suffer from poor mobile performance. This means that the customers who shop through their mobile devices are more likely to abandon the website. Something for improvement for sure.
• Website navigation has often been sacrificed in the design, resulting in difficulties in finding products (You can see this particularly clearly on the site for SIR the label – try to find the Shop button on its homepage).
• As for the social platforms – we’ve reviewed over 300 various Shopify stores, and 282 of them have an Instagram and Facebook presence. For you, this means you definitely shouldn’t limit yourself to the website only – go ahead and show how great you are via social networks. We recommend that you concentrate on Instagram primarily, the runner-up should be Facebook, and the third place is equally distributed between Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Whidegroup Experience in Shopify Stores Development

We’ve recently finished working on a large Shopify ecommerce development project. It was the website for a flourishing brand of baby carriers, slings, and wraps.

The process to develop the website was challenging and even a bit overwhelming, albeit fascinating at the same time. Here are the steps we took to help the owner and eventually bring the brand to success:

• 1. Gathering requirements – we consider this stage to be the most crucial one since this is the foundation which defines the main direction of all further actions. Our priority is to determine the primary constraints: scope, time, and budget. The owner of the project already had examples he shared with us. We also asked the client to provide us with references to similar resources he liked.
• 2. Analysis stage – once the requirements are gathered, it’s time for analysis estimations. We turned the business requirements into technical language in order to formulate precise tasks. We then estimated them, and coordinated milestones and timeframes with the owner.
• 3. Design – during the mockup development, the owner expressed a desire to see the website in light and pastel shades. The ready design turned out highly appealing, and was appreciated not only by the owner, but by the customers as well.
• 4. Frontend & Backend – in order to speed up the development process and bring the launch closer, we decided to do frontend alongside the backend. This allowed us to save approximately 2 months. That saved time was critical for our client.
• 5. Performance optimization – we know how important page load speed is. That’s why we worked hard over speeding up the ready website. For this particular project we concentrated our efforts on lazy load implementation, content delivery network application, and reworking the numerous product images.

Building a successful Shopify store is not a quick sprint, but a marathon which can be exhausting and stressful at times. Nonetheless, this is an exciting adventure you should take on, and you can look forward to being rewarded by having your store included in the top Shopify stores list.

Need Help With Your Ecommerce Project?

Explore Our Shopify Development Services

Services

Final Thoughts

As you can see from reviewing the most successful Shopify stores above, creating a lucrative Shopify based store is not exactly a piece of cake. However, you can count on success with the right assistance. After years of developing prosperous Shopify stores, Whidegroup can be such an assistant for you. Start telling your own Shopify story now and let us be your editor!