American Apparel is a very clean, alternative look at the clothing industry as a whole and it’s well-reflected on their highly simplistic but ultimately seductive website. The online store does a particularly good job expressing the style, feel and branding of the company, particularly by focusing on making the shopping experience as clean and clutter free as the clothes themselves.
Remarkably, their is no great focus on specials, promotions, discounts or other shopping paraphenalia. Instead, the site is utilitatarian in a very attractive way. Of note is the product detail pages, which manage to reamin uncluttered while providing a remarkable amount of information and links on the particular clothing piece you’re viewing. A sleek checkout system actually uses Yahoo!’s storefront as it’s online processing system, but the branded GUI makes it feel like little has changed.
American Apparel’s e-commerce site is doing nearly everything right in terms of design, usability and branding. I urge you to give it a look and compare your own site’s selling mechanisms and GUI to see what might be giving them the edge in online sales – and public relations. If low conversion rates have been getting you down, this could be a nice pick-me-up.
