|
View the web version
Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
Welcome to the 350th issue, quite a milestone.
PS: Our Community Survey is still open - it takes five minutes to tell us what to build next. We would really appreciate it if you filled it out.
If you're looking for inspiration for your next store redesign, this Magier roundup is worth bookmarking.
Rather than focusing on trends, it showcases 10 eCommerce websites, including Yepoda, Waterdrop, Allbirds, and Outdoor Voices - and explains the design decisions that make each one effective.
Common themes include clean layouts, strong branding, intuitive navigation, high-quality product photography, and fast, mobile-friendly experiences.
The article also finishes with a practical checklist of eCommerce design principles, such as embracing minimalism, using consistent branding, highlighting CTAs, creating visually rich product pages, and prioritising mobile usability.
Discover some of the Best eCommerce Designs in 2026
🎉 Introducing CommerceGurus Turbo!
One plugin. One click. CommerceGurus Turbo is the only performance plugin built purely for WooCommerce stores.
Includes page and edge caching, CSS and JS optimization, lazy loading, Cloudflare image optimization, and preloading — all with safe defaults that work immediately.
Discover CommerceGurus Turbo
|
Baymard's research confirms something we've believed for a long time: horizontal tabs on product pages make important information harder to find.
In testing, users regularly missed reviews, shipping information, specifications, and other key content because it was hidden behind tabs.
Instead, Baymard recommends using expanded sections on desktop and expanded or collapsed sections on mobile, allowing customers to simply scroll the page to discover everything naturally.
This is exactly the approach we took with CommerceKit.
Our Expand Product Tabs option converts traditional WooCommerce tabs into vertically stacked sections, while the Sticky Add to Cart bar can include anchor links that jump customers directly to Reviews, Description, Specifications, FAQs, or any other section.
You get the best of both worlds: product information remains easy to discover through scrolling, while shoppers can quickly navigate to the section they're interested in.
It's a small UX improvement that can make content-heavy product pages much easier to browse.
Avoid Using “Horizontal Tabs” for the Main Product Page
(The article can be read with a free Baymard account)
This article from Smashing Magazine argues that accessibility should no longer be treated as a one-off audit or compliance exercise, but as an ongoing engineering capability built into the way teams design, develop, and ship software.
With AI dramatically increasing development speed, Mikhail Prosmitskiy warns that accessibility issues can multiply just as quickly unless they're caught early through design systems, code reviews and automated testing.
One excellent point is the comparison with security and performance.
Most teams wouldn't run a security audit once a year and call it done, yet that's often how accessibility is approached.
Discover Why Accessibility Is An Operational Capability
OpenAlternative is a fantastic directory for discovering open source alternatives to popular commercial software.
Whether you're looking to replace ChatGPT, Notion, Zapier, GitHub, Slack, Shopify apps, or hundreds of other tools, the site curates actively maintained projects and ranks them.
Rather than listing abandoned repositories, OpenAlternative gives newer projects a fair chance while prioritising software that's actively maintained.
If you're looking to reduce SaaS costs, self-host more of your stack, or simply see what's happening in the open source world, it's an excellent resource to bookmark.
Take a look at OpenAlternative
TinyClub is a beautifully designed app for creating and managing real-world communities.
Think of it as a purpose-built home for book clubs, running groups, sports teams, supper clubs, neighbourhood groups, or any other community that meets regularly.
It combines chat, posts, events, RSVPs, shared resources, and even paid memberships into a single place, without the clutter of Facebook Groups or the complexity of Slack and Discord.
Check out TinyClub
Our WordPress Products:
Our Shopify Apps:
That's it for this edition. If you haven't filled out our Community Survey yet, we'd love if you did.
You can also take a look at our entire back catalog of newsletters.
Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Simon and Colm from CommerceGurus
|