E-commerce logos – how to get distinguished online?

The year is 2021 and God have we seen some crowding up online! It is like “get in line pal, none of us can wait to hop aboard the online express”. It’s not as if online shopping was a novel concept during the crucial years of 2020-21. The haze just cleared up on how beneficial online shopping can be – for sellers and buyers – when we got through the lockdown phase! 

Shopaholics (and even non-shopaholics who purchase only when needed), realized they don’t have to step out to shop! Why go outside when you can sip a cup of coffee, go online, simply click and have everything delivered to your doorstep?

I sound like an advertising campaign for all of you.

So, what am I trying to really tell you here? You want to join the bandwagon? No problem. It’s great that people can finally have more than Amazon and eBay to shop from. However, herein lies the real challenge.

Do you have a distinguishable brand identity to actually grow in the e-market?

I am all support especially for start-ups who believe they can rise high being primarily an e-commerce brand.

But, have your really put some thought into the matter or are you one of the many who just want to follow the “yellow brick road” without a plan?

What I’m trying to say is, that an e-commerce logo aka your brand identity is just as important as the logo of any conventional brand. Oh yeah, we’re back to logo designs – there’s no escaping them even when you go completely digital.

So, you could either be the next Amazon or you could be just like every other brand, struggling to make an impactful online presence with a clichéd e-commerce logo design.

I advise strongly against the latter. And to make sure you know the right direction for your e-commerce logo design, here are some tips and of course doses of inspiration along the way. 

Ready to surf with me?

The basics of your e-commerce logo design

Be unique – don’t join the clutter!

I know you’ll get several e-commerce logo designing softwares with ready-to-upload logos. All you need to do is add your name and you’re good to go. At times there’ll be icons or images available as temptation. You just need to connect the “right” piece together. How convenient.

Now imagine your customer comes to your website, looks at your logo – thinks, “oh where have I seen this before?” and starts doubting whether or not your website is authentic!

Complete nightmare, right? You got off to a rough start, you’ll probably have a bumpy ride ahead.

So push those carts away, dump those online shopping bag icons and start investing in an e-commerce logo that can get you noticed amidst the plethora of e-commerce brands. It’s alright to pay for success (with money I mean).

You’ve got to invest to get the best.

“Logo designing tools” is where I put my foot down guys and gals. Don’t go down that road, it won’t be a happy ending. Hire professionals to get the job done well.

Simple works better

Yes, yes I know why you’re so perplexed all of a sudden…..I just said “be unique”. So? Does that mean the two can’t co-exist? In fact they work better together!

You can be simple and unique and I think this deserves another example:

You’ve all seen the logo of Amazon (of course). Royalty of e-commerce, that’s what I call it. Your highness, Amazon.com doesn’t just have exceptional services and a platform where you can literally get anything.

The logo design is something every e-commerce brand (ready to begin or already begun) can learn from. Oh you’ll get to see the logo from the same eyes with an entirely different perspective today.

When you look at this masterpiece, it’s just a simple lowercase word mark with an orange arrow. Okay nothing so special. Now let’s go deeper. What is Amazon’s claim? It sells everything.

Now take a look at the logo again. The orange arrow starts from “a” and ends at “z”. Why not some other letter? The e-commerce giant clearly wants to depict through its logo “you’ll find everything here, from a to z” – Unless there are some other letters in your vocab.

The lowercase fonts show a friendly disposition of the brand itself since it aims to provide customers with the best deals from around the globe.

See how simple that was, albeit unique? You too can give your e-commerce logo a look that’s simply outstanding. Just contact me and I’ll help you build a brand identity that blogs will be talking about pretty soon!

Get creative with your images

As I mentioned earlier, we really need to cut off those price tags and push away some shopping carts to make room for images that actually mean something! Down there are a few logos with common icons/images that free logo makers would offer and that I have clearly seen too much of:

I mean no offense but ughh!! Talk about diving into the clichés! If you aren’t thinking “big” you might as well go ahead and replicate these logos with some minor adjustments.

However, if you’re thinking about entering the market dominated by eBay and Amazon, you need to be wise with images.

Let’s have another example please:

Okay I know what I said earlier about dumping the shopping bags but allow me to explain. Yes, Flipkart uses the image of a shopping bag in its logo – true, but have you noticed how they used it?  

The f in the shopping bag with lines that create the illusion of fast movement, indicates speed of services – something that flipkart is famous for. They are renowned for offering both, convenience to shop and quick delivery.

Their logo proudly flaunts this in the simplest of ways with a not-so-unique image manipulated to look completely novel! This could be my personal POV but doesn’t the shopping bag look as if it is smiling? If so, that’s another great tactic to help customers feel comfortable when they shop.

Versatility is essential

I’m not just talking about devices here.

Needless to say, your e-commerce logo design should be highly responsive since you will cater to the techno-shoppers with all sizes of online shopping tools – mobiles, tablets, laptops etc.

Before getting all worked up about a unique e-commerce logo design always think miles ahead. Can the logo be tweaked without distorting the entire design? It needs to be compatible with devices that now come in numerous sizes – and technological advancements just don’t seem to take a break!

But versatility isn’t restricted to Apps and websites. What about the packaging? Yes, you need packaging.

So what if you’re 100% e-commerce? Not every online brand is a retail store.

An online skin-care brand for instance requires a logo with a design and color palette that can look captivating when the product reaches its customers. In fact your logo will guide your color palette.

Need I explain more? The logo for Follain isn’t much – it’s a simple logo with serif font and a pastel green color portraying the brand’s organic identity – the love for nature-based products.

Even online retail stores need to consider how their e-commerce logo design will adjust onto a delivery box packaging. Using random cardboard just won’t do! It’ll show customers that you were simply too lazy to create a custom packaging and that you weren’t really interested in developing your brand’s reputation.

Furthermore these boxes are a proof of authenticity. They mean your customers haven’t been conned. I’ll show you how:

Cleared the fog much?

So, if you don’t see Amazon’s logo or arrow on your packaging you should know that’s not the parcel you ordered. It’s probably some fraudulent company trying to con you.

Personally, I am in awe of Flipkart’s detailing on the package. That’s a classic example of impactful, interesting branding with your e-commerce logo design.

Leaving already? But you’ll miss out on so much! I hope I’ve kept it quite interesting so far. Stick around I’ve got a lot more to tell you. Trust me, I’m here to make sure you end up with an e-commerce logo with almost zero chances of regrets or redesigns later.

Now your logo can be a 10/10 if it can be this versatile! There’s a reason I suppose why these e-commerce stores are on top of the e-commerce food chain – they’ve got brand identities that are absolutely original with immense adaptability and complementing brand strategies of course – but we’ll save that for another blog.

I’ll give you a tip though: the key to an adaptable e-commerce logo design is to be as minimal as possible. In a nutshell just follow the basics.

Typography – VVIP!

Do those golden stars look a bit too much? I just can’t help but emphasize in every possible way on the importance of your logo and ultimately the entire brand’s typography. Remember, your e-commerce logo is like the trunk of a tree – every other aspect of your brand identity will sprout from here.

When picking out the typography for your logo, you can’t go astray. Ask yourself “what are you selling?”

What persona do you want to convey?

You cannot ignore the word mark in an e-commerce logo so I’m not even considering talking about that option. When visitors come to your website, it is the word mark that reinforces your brand name, sticks to their mind and that’s the memory they need when they type your name on the search bar next time.

Whatever font you use as your brand identity will convey a certain message to your customers. What do you want that message to be?

So for instance, an elegant Script font might portray luxury while a funky, bubbly font will convey enthusiasm and cheerfulness. Similarly a Sans serif font will have a more sophisticated appeal.

The gist of it all? The typeface you select will become your brand’s message and you don’t want to mislead your customers.

It’s not just what you write then, it’s also how you write it?

Do you want customers to identify your brand as friendly, easily approachable and a bit on the fun side? Keep your fonts light and low – lowercase. Want to convey a more luxurious, dominating and serious look, elevate your fonts, keep your caps lock on – if you know what I mean?

Color – the mood of your brand

Your color palette stands almost shoulder-to-shoulder with typography in terms of its significance in e-commerce logo design. However, the reason I haven’t assigned the stars or VVIP status is because you can be clever with colors. Can’t think of a balanced composition, use black and white – it seldom goes wrong.

However, if you’ve studied the color wheel well enough and are well-versed in the psychology of colors, you’ll know how people connect the dots from typography to color to your brand’s identity.

So, for instance someone decides to really add sweetness to our lives and open up an online candy shop. Yumm! A black and white logo would seem all too boring and customers just wouldn’t link the logo to anything fun and sweet. On the other hand a blue or black logo can work fairly well for an online electronics store as it’ll convey sophistication, modernity and trust.

Colors are a natural emotional stimulant too. They arouse emotions in customers. It all comes back to what message you want to communicate? Do you want your brand to “open happiness”? or would you rather have your brand say “all natural”?

You got where “open happiness” came from, right? So red or a bright yellow would typically complement a brand like Coca-Cola or any other that uses happiness, joy and love of life as its marketing tools (saying it as it is – we’re all grownups here).

Generally speaking, you won’t apply the same paint brush to an organic brand.

I’ve got a classic example here that sums up both, typography and color scheme in one:

Now there’s a name I can bet you’ve all heard of. A million dollar business isn’t hard to know after all. Other than the attractive colors, ebay uses typography quite smartly. Well, the idea itself was genius to begin with and the very first of its kind – hard to believe but it was a single man’s baby – Pierre Omidyar.

E-bay which is an abbreviation of electronic bay has seen a couple of logo transitions throughout its long life, but this generation is just lucky – in some ways. Their current e-commerce logo is amongst the best examples of how creative a simple word mark can be.

When you look at it from common sight, you don’t see much, right?

Just a colorful word mark. Now let’s gain some perspective, shall we?

Typography: The font is Universe Extended while the letters are all in lower-case. Why do you think that is? Ebay wanted a casual look- to let people know that it was a friendly site where buyers and sellers from diverse cultures and communities could meet, place a bid and crack a deal.

 There were no major strings attached and everyone can feel comfortable.

Color: well, the color wheel could not have been more proud. See how perfectly the colors sync with one another. Your eyes won’t wander here and there – you’ll see the logo as a whole, as if the colors were meant-to-be together depicting enthusiasm, optimism and energy.

Style: now here comes the creativity that probably escaped your notice. See how the letters are connected with one another? Each letter subtly touches the other, representing how ebay connects diverse sellers and buyers from across the world.

It brings them to a single platform where they can meet and greet for business.

Inspired much? Really looking forward to stand in the race, eh? Don’t run after make-you-own-logo sites. Hire professional logo designers to get your brand miles ahead.

Closing speech:

No, I won’t ruin your day with any fluff content. I’m talking strictly e-commerce logo design here and I just couldn’t leave this example out. Why didn’t I mention it earlier? Was saving the best for last. Come-on you’ve heard of that!

A very popular Indian e-commerce store, snapdeal rebranded its logo, using red as their e-commerce logo’s base color. With unlimited online stores emerging every day, they felt the need to connect with customers on an emotional level.

Hence their slogan “unbox zindagi (life)”.

My hands are just itching to tell you the whole story but I’ve got entire blog planned ahead for that so I’ll just get a grip on myself.

The deal with this brand’s new and improved identity is that their e-commerce logo design checks all the right boxes.

• It’s simple yet creative. It serves the dual purpose of being synonymous with the brand’s slogan of “unboxing life” when you see it as an open box while at the same time it also takes the shape of two arrows that according to the brand itself “represent our role as a partner and enabler in your journey ahead”.
• Friendly with the font: using a lower case, slightly sleek typeface, snapdeal establishes a friendly disposition, inviting customers to feel comfortable while they get the best deals – snapdeal is your companion in every journey.
• Energetic color: let’s go back to the tagline “unboxing life”. What does it remind you of a bit? “open happiness”. Snapdeal takes the same approach in color as Coca-Cola with red symbolizing life, energy and enthusiasm.
• Packaging: just a little trivia: the brand spent 20 million Indian rupees on their rebranding so there wasn’t any room for error. Take a look at their boxes. They are all giant versions of the snapdeal logo!