Let's do a quiz. What are the ads (magazine ads, television ads, banners, whatever) that impressed you most of all? We bet many of them are funny, crazy, or silly commercials which you laughed at. Is that right? That’s because the people who created the ads know one important rule – humor sells. It really does! And that is why many companies use humor to maximize advertising effectiveness. But humor is not only crucial for creating successful ads, but other types of promotion as well.
The point is fun content is memorable. And if you use humor properly it can be a great way to make your ad, website, or online store more entertaining, more interesting, and catchy. However, sometimes it’s better not to use humor when building web pages, because if you use humor poorly or use it when it’s not appropriate, you can even do damage to your site. But if you have a sense of humor, that’s great, you should use it to your advantage.
We were curious to see if many online retailers follow the rule, and if so, how exactly they do this. In a few minutes you will see the results of our research. These are 20+ online shops which are designed with humor in mind. By the way, some of them are featured here at awwwards.com and we hope this article will encourage more cute websites to be added to the Awwwards database.
As you will see from the examples below there are plenty of options to keep your web shop cute and therefore more appealing and recognizable: it can be a funny logo (rufflebutts.com), a banner (teddyneedsabath.com), a mascot (coucoushop.ch), a social media icon (halvegaren.nl), product images (lapatate.be), etc. And of course, each cute web shop is unique, meaning customers will be unlikely to confuse your store with another online store.
We believe that a cute online shop gets attention quicker than just a typical online shop. So the customers will be pleased to come back. Some of them will come back for another laugh, while some of them will come back for another product. It’s a win-win situation as customers get positive emotions and good products, and in turn, they give their loyalty to the online retailers whose stores look cute and funny.
We do not know for sure if adding humor to an online store will increase sales, but it will definitely increase customer interest because customers will more likely remember an online store that made them laugh, rather than just another online store.
We hope the online stores shown below will make your day more positive and will possibly inspire you to use humor in your future projects; and if you know of any other web shops that should be on our list, please comment on this post.