Writing

12 Essential Things to Consider When Designing an eCommerce Website (Now That AI Is Doing the Designing)

The Designer’s Guide to Reality, Updated for the Tools That Design for Us Now

Published on Medium - August 2026

Taking It Slow: Dally

Dally’s wordmark visibly stretches the longer you scroll its homepage, more loops, longer word, exactly like the verb it’s named after. That single detail sets the tone for everything else: a gift note, a discount code, even a hidden page, all built to reward lingering.

Published on Dee2See - August 2026

• delight
• easter egg
• senses
• demonstration

Your Comfort Zone: UnHide

UnHide checks every conversion box in the book, reviews, financing, trust badges, an actual Netflix collab, and somehow never stops feeling human. A look at the photography, sizing, and small details that make the checklist and the heart work together.

Published on Dee2See - August 2026

This Is Lit! Moody Incense

I reviewed 180 DTC websites in a single day, and they all blurred together. Then I found Moody Incense, a three-product incense brand that proves personality beats production budget on nearly every screen, right down to the 404 page.

Published on Dee2See - August 2026

Oh Deus Meus! – Teenage Engineering

Teenage Engineering doesn't reskin its product pages, it rewrites them. Every EP-series unit gets its own vocabulary down to the button labels, the explore and buy pages split into two separate journeys, and the firmware changelog ships as an illustrated comic strip.

Published on Dee2See - August 2026

• electronics
• brand
• trust
• storytelling
• visuals
• copy

Wrapper's Delight: Maeven Chocolate

A chocolate store with no product above the fold. How Maeve turns curiosity into a discovery engine, and why great branding alone never gets you there.

Published on Dee2See - August 2026

• delight
• food

Sleeping On It: Loftie

Sleep deprivation is the worst, and Loftie’s whole site seems to know it. Dark photography, toggles that let you confirm a claim yourself, and a return policy pun good enough to make you smile at the fine print.

Published on Dee2See - July 2026

• lifestyle
• trust
• microcopy

Why The Sour Face?: Final Boss Sour

Final Boss Sour didn’t add a game theme to a candy site. It built an actual game, levels as navigation, lore as flavor differentiation, a map with unfinished paths, and a leaderboard, then hung a sour candy brand off the structure.

Published on Dee2See - July 2026

• food
• gamification

Sound Expensive

How a comma and two decimal places change what your customer thinks your product costs

Published on Medium - July 2026

• ecommerce ux
• pricing psychology

Play It By The Nose: D.S & Durga

You cannot smell a website, and D.S. & Durga barely tries to solve that. The Brooklyn perfume house routes around the missing sense instead, with a notes rail that works like a spec sheet, liner notes written as autobiography, a Spotify playlist per fragrance, and a layering set that is essentially Clue with bottles.

Published on Dee2See - July 2026

• lifestyle
• perfume
• senses

I Love Hue: Lick

Buying paint online should be a commercial disaster. Color distortion, choice paralysis, spatial math anxiety, the fear of getting it completely wrong on your own walls. Lick.com looked at every one of those friction points and built a system to dismantle them, one screen at a time.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• home & living
• decor
• microcopy

Best Onboarding EVER: The Farmer's Dog

There's a moment somewhere in The Farmer's Dog onboarding where you realize you've completely stopped resisting (in a good way). This is a screen-by-screen breakdown of how they did it, and why making the wizard about your dog instead of about you is the smartest conversion move in the flow.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• pets
• onboarding

When Life Gives You Oranges: Ffern

Ffern makes one seasonal perfume four times a year. There is no product page, no add to cart, and no conventional funnel. Just a ledger, a waiting list, and a buying experience built entirely around the privilege of being let in.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• loyalty
• perfume
• senses

Bite-Size UX, Week #1

Four DTC brands that sweated the small stuff and got it right. A color-coded pepper store, a discount that stays in character, a honey disclaimer with a punchline, and a glass that fills as you scroll.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• ecommerce ux

For the Next Magic I'll Need SPF 30 and a Time Machine: Vacation.inc

Vacation® sells sunscreen. Their website sells a world. Every ecommerce best practice is there, structurally intact, dressed in a Miami Beach 1983 aesthetic so committed that the conventions become invisible. This is what it looks like when personality and conversion are the same thing.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• lifestyle
• storytelling
• wellness

Three Audiences Walked Into a Product Page

Open a DTC health or wellness product page in 2026 and you'll likely scroll for what feels like five minutes before hitting the footer. Who are your target audiences now that the AI engines are here, and how to cater to each one of them (including examples)

Published on Medium - June 2026

• agentic commerce
• PDP

It Makes Scents: Touchland

Touchland didn't dress up a hand sanitizer with nicer packaging. They applied the entire information architecture of fine fragrance to a $10 product whose only job used to be killing germs. This is what full category commitment looks like.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• sense
• visual

Bite Size UX - Week #2

The difference between a site that converts and one that almost does is rarely a missing feature. It is usually a small decision someone made, or didn't.

Published on Dee2See - June 2026

• ecommerce ux

The Pattern Recognition Trap: Why New Packaging Kills Conversion (and How to Fix It)

New packaging shouldn't ambush loyal customers. A look at why sudden rebrands trigger "is this a knockoff?" panic, and how brands like Magic Spoon and John Frieda use side-by-side transition UI to keep the pattern recognition intact.

Published on Dee2See - May 2026

• rebrand
• ux
• ecommerce ux

The Empathy Algorithm: Why Your AI is Creepy and Your UX is Boring

Walking into most eCommerce stores today feels like being followed around a physical shop by a robot that's trying too hard.

Published on Medium - May 2026

• AI
• personality

Better Than S*x: Last Crumb

$160 for a box of cookies. A three-day wait. A CTA button that says Sorry, Grandma. By every CRO rule in the book, Last Crumb should fail. Instead they sell out in drops. Here's the conversion system hiding behind the audacity.

Published on Dee2See - May 2026

• food
• photography
• luxury

Behind the Seams: Chubbies

Most menswear brands optimize their product pages for polite, frictionless transactions. Chubbies optimized theirs for a subculture. The Khakinators. The Disco Plums. 110% store credit on resale. A palm tree tattoo that explains fit better than any size chart.

Published on Dee2See - May 2026

• fashion
• humor
• size chart

How to Sell Badass Products Online

Toilet spray and bidets shouldn't be easy sells online, and Pourri and Tushy prove that's exactly backwards. A look at how "Best Smeller" tags and "Real Pooping Human" review badges turn a taboo category into the most fun you'll have shopping.

Published on Medium - June 2025

• humor
• PDP

Infinite Scroll vs. Pagination in eCommerce UX: Who Wins the Battle for Conversion?

Infinite scroll feels modern. Pagination converts. A look at why goal-driven shoppers need to backtrack and compare, how Houzz runs both patterns on the same site for different intents, and why ASOS's "Load More" splits the difference without losing SEO.

Published on Medium - June 2025

• mobile ux
• PLP

12 Essential Things to Consider When Designing an E-commerce Website

Designers love a name that fits in eight characters and a cart that shows one tidy digit. Reality doesn't. A practical checklist for the questions to ask before design starts, "Hi, Alexander" instead of "Hi, Dan," 88 items in the cart, and the empty states nobody thinks to show you.

Published on Medium - June 2024

• professional
• ecommerce design
• ecommerce ui