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Design challenged, looking for inspiration

I have a design challenge and would πŸ’– any inspiration you can provide.

I run https://dayoftheshirt.com. We aggregate t-shirt sales. It's not necessary to sign up, but if you do sign up you get some superpowers. It's all free to use. It's sustained through affiliate advertising.

The design challenge I have is balancing these three things (especially on small screens)"

  • For people who are new to the site, helping them understand what it is and showing/telling the benefits.
  • For people who are regularly visiting the site, getting straight to the sales and content.
  • For people who want superpowers, showing them that they can create an account.

Does this make you think of any products you use or love? Can you share any inspiration you have for content sites like Day of the Shirt? πŸ™

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    Here are some of my thoughts:

    For people who are new to the site, helping them understand what it is and showing/telling the benefits.

    This is an important group. But, you should make the purpose be obvious from the page design (add a heading or two if needed) AND most of the new user description content that you have should likely go to a secondary 'About Us' page.

    For people who are regularly visiting the site, getting straight to the sales and content.

    This should be cleared when you do the above.

    For people who want superpowers, showing them that they can create an account.

    I would remove the bottom text with regards to "Reasons to create an account" and as you seem to have done - build a UI as if people were logged in, for example: a favorite button, a subscribe button, etc. When someone clicks on one of those buttons, then you should ideally send them to a login screen.

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      Thank you for this feedback! Are there any websites/products that you think exemplify your advice that I could scope out πŸ‘€ for inspiration?

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        @bensheldon - What about IndieHackers? Even HackerNews?

        Even Facebook and Pinterest do something similar - it is just that they have enough traffic that they now require a login to even see the homepage.

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      Just wanted to follow-up about this:

      build a UI as if people were logged in, for example: a favorite button, a subscribe button, etc. When someone clicks on one of those buttons, then you should ideally send them to a login screen.

      This was fantastic advice! Thank you πŸ™ I've been revisiting the UI with this in mind and it's unlocked a lot of inspiration. πŸ’«

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        @bensheldon - glad that it helped.

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    Hi!

    Only site with t-shirts i like is othertees.com, maybe you find something useful there...

    Anyway, i think the sections with searching input and "Reasons to create an account" are too low. Remember that users who already have account are logged in so you can hide it. I barely found it in your site, really...

    Good Luck πŸ‘

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      Thanks for the feedback! We do aggregate t-shirt sales from Othertees 😎

      I'll look at the page-depth of some of those CTAs πŸ™Œ

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    This comment was deleted 7 years ago

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      Hey Russ, thanks for your feedback! It's helpful in regards to letting me understand how you experience the site. Maybe not so helpful in regards to giving me design inspiration πŸ˜€

      Can you think of any sale aggregators that have a shopping cart or manage the actual sale itself? You identified the key friction, after discovery, of the sales process being effortful. Right now I don't do any selling/fulfillment, it's just a link aggregator. I assume you saw the reasons to create an account, and you don't find them valuable. It seems like though that there maybe is confusion around "buying" and "signing up" so that's helpful to identify.

      Thanks for taking the time πŸ‘