Five studios that design online stores people enjoy shopping in, and come back to.
For a direct-to-consumer brand, the website is the store, the showroom, and often the only place a customer meets the brand before buying. Every decision shows up in revenue: how fast product pages load, how easy it is to filter a catalog, how clearly the brand explains why its product is worth the price.
Most online stores solve half of that problem. They either look beautiful and sell poorly, or convert well and feel like every other template. The agencies below design stores that do both, carrying the brand’s personality into collection pages, product details, and checkout without getting in the way of the purchase.
Selected on merit alone, from first Shopify launches to multi-market retail platforms.
| # | Agency | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Clay San Francisco, USA | $$$ |
| 02 | Dept Agency Amsterdam + 30 Offices | $$$ |
| 03 | Red Antler New York, USA | $$$ |
| 04 | Better Off Studio Remote | $$ |
| 05 | Work & Co Brooklyn, New York, USA | $$$$ |
Premium home and lifestyle retailers, established brands replatforming, catalogs that need a custom design system
Serena & Lily
Ecommerce redesigns built on a full design system, so a large catalog stays consistent as it grows.
Premium retail brands sell a feeling as much as a product, and their websites have to carry that feeling across thousands of product pages. Clay’s ecommerce redesign for Serena & Lily, a leader in luxury home decor, paired a new web design with a design system built to keep a large, frequently changing catalog consistent. The studio’s background in product and interface design shows in the details that decide conversion: filtering, product detail layouts, and the path from inspiration to cart.
Global apparel and consumer brands, mission-driven retailers, large catalogs with heavy content
Patagonia
Commerce experiences that combine storytelling, content, and shopping in one brand-led platform.
Dept’s work for Patagonia shows what ecommerce looks like when the brand’s values matter as much as its products. The team designed a shopping experience that brings a huge product and content library together, with a new navigation system, a powerful product filtering tool, and a design system that tells Patagonia’s story at every step. It even took on the redesign of the brand’s supply chain transparency initiative. For large brands that need design, technology, and marketing from one partner, Dept offers rare scale.
New DTC brands launching a category, consumer startups, lifestyle and wellness brands
Casper
Brand-first launches where the name, packaging, and online store are designed together from day one.
Red Antler specializes in the moment before a new consumer brand goes live, when name, identity, packaging, and website all have to launch at once. Its work for Casper helped define how a DTC brand can make an unfamiliar way of buying something, like a mattress in a box, feel simple and even fun. The studio fits founders who need their store to explain a new product category, not just sell another version of an existing one.
Food and beverage brands, fast-growing Shopify stores, DTC brands adding wholesale
Olipop
Shopify redesigns that turn a plain storefront into a store with real brand personality.
When Olipop’s Shopify store no longer matched the energy of the brand, Better Off Studio rebuilt it into a much livelier shopping experience. The redesign carried the brand’s bold personality into every page while keeping navigation simple, and added tailored options for wholesale buyers alongside everyday shoppers. That combination of strong visual identity and practical ecommerce UX suits growing food, drink, and lifestyle brands whose stores have fallen behind their packaging.
Global retail and beauty brands, luxury and premium ecommerce, multi-market rollouts
Aesop, ALDO
Ecommerce redesigns that translate an in-store experience online and scale across dozens of countries.
Aesop built a devoted following without advertising, mostly through its carefully designed stores and expert staff. Work & Co’s job was to bring that experience online. The team designed a storefront inspired by the physical shops, with navigation that lets loyal customers restock quickly while newcomers explore, and product pages that work like a conversation with a skincare consultant. The site rolled out to more than 40 countries. For ALDO, the studio overhauled the global ecommerce site and grew the work into a wider omnichannel strategy, which suits large retailers whose online and physical stores need to feel like one brand.
Clear navigation, useful filters, and good search matter more than any hero image. If shoppers can’t find the right product in a few clicks, beautiful design won’t save the sale.
The product page does most of the work: photos that show real detail, clear sizing and delivery information, reviews, and a short explanation of why this product is worth it. Every extra question left unanswered is a reason to leave.
Brand personality belongs in photography, copy, and visual details, not in complicated layouts that slow shoppers down. The best stores feel distinctive and still work like the best-known retailers.
Most shopping sessions happen on phones. Product images, filters, cart, and checkout should be designed for a small screen and a thumb, then scaled up.
Stores are judged on revenue, not launch screenshots. These questions get at the pages that make the money.
Shopify, headless builds, and enterprise commerce platforms each suit different brands. A good agency recommends a platform based on your catalog, team, and growth plans, not just its own habits.
The answer shows whether the agency understands the pages that make money, not only the homepage.
Merchandising teams need to launch drops, update collections, and change promotions quickly. Ask to see how that works in stores the agency has built.
Look for an agency with a clear point of view and real examples, not one that treats brand and sales as competing goals.
Live stores and how they’ve evolved tell you more than launch-day screenshots.
Ecommerce sites have to sell directly, which means product discovery, product pages, cart, and checkout matter as much as brand expression. They also need to handle large catalogs, frequent promotions, and heavy traffic during launches and sales. Design decisions show up quickly in revenue.
Shopify suits most DTC and growing brands because it’s reliable, flexible, and easy for teams to manage. Headless or custom builds make sense for very large catalogs, complex international setups, or experiences that need unusual performance and flexibility. The right choice depends on your team as much as your technology.
A custom Shopify store from a boutique studio usually costs from the low to mid tens of thousands of dollars. Brand-led redesigns for established retailers commonly reach six figures, and enterprise commerce platforms with many markets and integrations can cost much more.
A focused Shopify redesign often takes two to four months. Larger replatforming projects with data migration, integrations, and international stores usually take six months or more. Launching outside peak sales periods reduces risk.
New brands often need both skills at once, which is why some studios offer brand strategy and store design together. Established brands with a strong identity usually get more from an ecommerce-focused team that knows how to translate that identity into a store that sells.
Look at conversion rate, average order value, returning customers, and revenue per visitor, compared over similar periods. A good agency agrees on these measures before the project starts and tracks them after launch.
Every studio on this page earned its place
on the strength of the work alone.
