Making eye-catching and enticing fashion-oriented websites involves a different mind-set than for those in other genres or market categories. It requires a more artistic eye for design than a social news aggregator or a plain old blog template. One thing to remember is that the main focus of a fashion site is, well, the fashion. Whatever is being showcased, photography and layout ought to draw attention to it, and navigational elements and other fancy “eye-candy” should be used sparingly so as not to detract from the main attraction. Invariably, this will be the fashion photography itself.

A timeless and always stylish manner in which to showcase the fashion aspects of a website is through the tasteful and well thought out use of black-and-white photography. The stark contrasts demand attention in a way that many color shots simply can’t. And as a practical note, using black-and-white shots can make up for substandard quality shots. Also, the front page of a fashion website should prominently feature large photographs with minimal content. Most people are there to check out the fashions and not read a lot of commentary, so keep the extraneous text to a bare minimum and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Another way to make a fashion site or any site for that matter stand out is through the understated, unobtrusive use of slick navigational elements like sliding galleries and menus using lightweight Javascript Frameworks. Libraries like Jquery or MooTools make it easy to add sharp animations that will make a site appear more polished and interesting. In addition, any Shopping Cart pages should be easy to understand and intuitive to use, as well as secure and stable. Above all else, any fashion website should be a work of art in and of itself to truly stand out from the crowd.