Web Design Critique #59: Custom Bags HQ

Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well in addition to those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is Custom Bags HQ.

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About Custom Bags HQ

Custom Bags HQ is a full service custom bag printer. Each year their team prints more than 100 million custom bags with orders ranging in size from 250 to 1,000,000 bags. More than 3 decades of experience manufacturing allows them to deliver the lowest possible costs, quick deliveries & a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Here is a section of the homepage:

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Initial Impression

I’m not going to beat around the bush here, Custom Bags HQ has a beautiful site. Everything about this site suggests that it was created by real designers who are quite familiar with current design practices.

In fact, there’s an interesting dynamic here, because the site almost doesn’t even look like a physical product store. Instead, the design style is really reminiscent of popular web services. The model seems to work great though and I applaud the rethinking of your average, boring e-commerce site.

Typography

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Right off the bat, you have to notice the typography on the site. It’s live, custom web type implemented the way it’s supposed to be: via @font-face with CSS. This means the text is fully-selectable and can be copy, pasted, etc.

To keep the type consistent and attractive, the designer largely stayed within the Museo family. The fairly rounded, slab-serif makes for a gorgeous headline font, perfectly complemented by Museo Sans in the navigation.

Color Scheme

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The color scheme is a nice mix of neutral and bright colors. This makes for a very friendly sort of personality to the site. To be honest, I’m not sure that I’m crazy about how the “Shop Now” color competes with the “Browse our custom bags” banner under it. I think one bright, warm color is plenty for this palette. That banner successfully gets your attention because it stands out, but it feels slightly out of place.

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Product Showcase

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One of the things that I really like about this site is how well they showcase their products. “Plastic bags” doesn’t really sound like an exciting product on its own merit, but as I browse this site, I definitely want to get some of my own!

One key feature is that the site takes care to show both the finished product and the blank slate. The emphasis here is on custom bag printing and applying your own design and the page communicates this very nicely.

It’s always a good idea to try to imagine how well your site reads without actually looking at a single word. From a purely visual perspective, can a customer tell what’s going on? Here we see a layout of beautifully printed bags followed by a series of plain white bags, I think the message reads remarkably well.

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Icons

One indicator of a solid designer is the attention to detail. We see that here in the icon design on the Custom Bags page. I’m not sure if this is a stock set of icons or if it’s custom-designed but I think they’re really great. I especially love the little UPS truck.

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Shopping Experience

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The overall “shopping experience” for the site has been kept super basic, which is perfect for this type of site. Buying a custom-printed bag isn’t exactly a familiar or predictable experience so there’s a fair amount of uncertainty when you approach the site as a customer. Your job as a designer is to try to identify these areas of uncertainty and make them as friendly and easy-to-use as possible, and I think that’s exactly what has been done here. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing, you pretty quickly get that “I can do this” feeling from using the site.

Huge Buttons

One final thing that I really like about the site is the design of the buttons. Just look at them, they’re huge. I would almost never think to make the default button shape on a design so large, but it works extremely well here and furthers this whole idea of a friendly interface.

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Your Turn!

Now that you’ve read my comments, pitch in and help out by giving the designer some further advice. Let us know what you think is great about the design and what you think could be stronger. As always, we ask that you also be respectful of the site’s designer and offer clear constructive advice void of any harsh insults.