Find your unique angle, have Design support it

You want to sell online. Immediately you see the layout like a frame: products listed with reviews, buy buttons and well, everything that comes around that: specifications, related products, related links and whatever you may think of to keep your visitors informed. And a nice looking design to package it. that’s how online stores are done.

But why will they buy *from you*? Users are already trained to navigate the web. If they have a particular product in mind, they are likely to go buy it from the cheapest online store, whether you have a lot of info on your website or not. Or they will buy it from their usual provider: dear old Amazon and some other giants of that kind. If you are newcomer it’s going to be very hard to beat Amazon & co in a price war. But you can be creative and think for a minute. What do you really want from your potential customers?
Yes, you want them to buy, that we know. Let’s go deeper than that. How are you going to make them buy *from you*?

A couple of months ago I was sent an exclusive invitation from one of my friends to get access to some fabulous designer items. Very much discounted. And very few of them. Only once in a while. How do they manage to do that? How can they heavily discount to 70% off on Prada? Well, there’s a little trick: they make money somewhere else, in subscriptions. The model is based on the human nature. We want things we can’t have. The scarcity makes them sooo appealing. You can get to buy them very quick if you pay a monthly fee. If you don’t pay, you can still buy them but only if they are still available. And most of the times they aren’t.

One of the things that ideeli does best at serving this model is the user interface. Very little text, grayed out, very few links and buttons. Specifications are hidden. No reviews. The only thing that’s emphasized it’s what matters: THE PRODUCT. Nice looking picture, you zoom, you see inside. You can almost feel it and the craving starts. It’s there, colorful, playful and nothing else matters. Next to it a clock ticking, the sell starts in one hour. But not for you, for users who pay a monthly fee for that privilege. You, you get to buy it in two hours but the stocks may run out cause they have very few items at that price. And they are discounted and fabulous. You can click on the “I WANT IT” button (notice, it’s not the “buy” traditional button) and you get notified if you can have it or not. Most of the times they tell you that they are sold out.
Beside the design that’s completely focused on the product, some other elements make the message very clear:

The newsletters: they send you messages once every two days or so that they have a new item. The title is very clear. The “D&G Sale starts at 11AM ET” you go inside to read the email and you get it right on. You see three things: the item, the discount and the button that makes you buy it “I WANT IT NOW”

The colors. As everything is gray, the only colors that are used are for the products itself and the “action button” . The products capture your eyes on this negligible frame and the action buttons are orange so they completely stick out

Sizes. All the pictures are large. On most of the websites that sell products, the real estate is very precious. They have a lot of products, they want to show them so they end up being very small. You can click to make it bigger but on idelli, you get the full view. And that’s to be appreciated. Not to mention that your neighbors notice the items from far and they become curious

I never paid for the membership as I thought I would not buy anything and the total costs of the months I have to pay will make up for the discount. But I did buy something recently. They were not sold out so I bought a fabulous pair of shoes. I didn’t even care that I have the same pair but in a different color in the closet already. I didn’t care that the discount was almost insignificant. I felt so lucky just to be able to finally buy something!