Websites for candle businesses are mostly used for online purchases, so these sites highlight the products with high-quality images, ingredient lists, and a secure online shopping system. A great way to encourage visitors to your site is to integrate your site with Google and Facebook ads, so potential customers see your site and are encouraged to visit it.
Use Zarla's candle AI website builder to create a site with AI-generated content in less than a minute. You can customize the content to suit your business needs.
Zarla checks that sites meet basic web standards for mobile and desktop. We also use Google's PageSpeed Insights, and WAVE, a service that evaluates accessibility for individuals with disabilities. PageSpeed scores and accessibility are important factors for search engine rankings. PageSpeed scores may not match user experience and can vary substantially.
Boise, Idaho, U.S.
Lit & Co. produces soy candles and home fragrances in small batches for sale online and in their two retail stores in Boise. The site opens immediately with a list of products for sale, with the introduction to the business only available further down the home page.
Clear location, store hours, and contact details are prominently displayed, and the site features an accessibility toolbar. The online shopping section clearly lists pricing, with strong CTAs and an in-depth description of the product. I found that related products encourage the customer to keep shopping.
The accessibility toolbar helps visitors using assistive technologies and WAVE reported only one missing language error. The online shopping feature is secure with a variety of payment options and the descriptions include fragrance and use information.
The site shows poor contrast, which is highlighted in the WAVE report. I thought that the social media links could be more prominent and the site may benefit from fragrance allergy information.
The desktop site has an interesting design with the menu on the left side of the page, prominently displaying the company’s logo. The shopping cart shifts the site to the left to make room, offering customers the option to pay online or pick up in-store.
However, the contrast of the text to the background needs to be improved for easier legibility. While Google’s PageSpeed Insights scored the accessibility of the site in the high 80s, the desktop site scored 94/100 for performance.
The mobile site presents a more traditional hamburger menu, with the logo minimized to fit the space. The site is well-optimized, with the images retaining their high quality.
The contrast of the text against the background is much stronger than on the desktop site, leading to an improved accessibility score of 92/100, according to PageSpeed Insights. However, due to slightly slower loading speeds that were confirmed in my real-world tests, PageSpeed Insights scored the mobile site 66/100 for performance.
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Idle & Wood is an environmentally-conscious candle company that makes soy candles with natural ingredients. I found the site clean and elegantly constructed, with high-quality images, prominent CTAs, and social media links. A nice addition to the site is the “Candle Care” page which tells visitors how to maximize their candle’s fragrance.
The menu allows for clear navigation that features links to contact details, locations, business information, and philosophy. Shipping information is also provided, with a coupon code for free shipping, encouraging visitors to the site to take the next step.
WAVE reported only an empty heading and two empty links on the site. The site design is modern and minimalistic, allowing the bright product images to shine and highlighting sale pricing in pops of red. Product descriptions include the size and expected burn time of the candles.
The site is only semi-compliant with assistive technologies. Otherwise, we did not find many issues of note on this well-crafted site.
The desktop site makes great use of the available white space to offer visitors clean legibility. The cart is unobtrusive when continuing to browse and offers a simple checkout process. With the clean design, text blocks are not overwhelming and visitors should be encouraged to keep scrolling. On PageSpeed Insights, the desktop site had an excellent performance score of 98/100.
Real-world testing showed that the mobile site loads quickly with great contrast and bright colors. The site is well-optimized for mobile use, and the hamburger menu maintains easy navigation. The cart pop-up covers more of the page when shopping, and needs to be minimized so as not to take away from the user experience. Contrary to my real-world tests, PageSpeed Insights noted slow loading times, leading to a performance score of 62/100.
https://www.spitalfieldscandles.co.uk/
London, England, U.K.
The Spitalfields Candle Co. makes 100% natural soy candles that are sustainable and use high-quality essential oils. The site offers a strong design with good contrast, but the text could be larger to match the size of the images. The products are nicely categorized for easy shopping and include scent descriptions with size and weight information available.
Visitors to the site can also see a page dedicated to the different events the business participates in to sell their products in real life. A page about caring for your candles is also a great addition.
The site highlights a clean, minimalist design with strong contrast between the text and background, optimizing the legibility of the site. The business’s contact details and social media links are highlighted at the top and bottom of the page.
WAVE notes a number of broken ARIA references, which impacts the site’s accessibility, and a few empty links. The text needs to be a bit larger so as not to be overwhelmed by the size of the images.
The desktop site welcomes visitors with a high-quality image of the products and a short description of the business, enticing customers to continue scrolling. By including some images from Instagram and a strong CTA, the desktop site encourages visitors to follow the social media accounts. PageSpeed Insights ranked the desktop site highly with a performance score of 95/100.
The mobile site is well-optimized but does feature smaller text that some visitors may find difficult to read. The social media links that are featured in the top bar on the desktop site are missing on the mobile site and are not as prominent in the footer.
Otherwise, the mobile site maintains the minimalist design and simple navigation of the desktop site. PageSpeed Insights awarded the mobile site a performance score of 66/100.
https://www.rekindlecandleco.co.za/
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Rekindle is a South African company that makes candles with ethically sourced wax poured into handmade ceramic vessels. The site features prominent social media links, contact details, and a GPS location for the physical store which is a good way to start if I was looking to buy one of these myself.
The online shop has high-quality images and includes detailed descriptions of each product. However, potential customers will need to visit another page to read descriptions of the different fragrances on offer. The online shopping system is not very intuitive, as there seems to be no link to the cart unless one clicks on “Add to Cart.”
WAVE noted only two empty links on the site. Images are great quality and product descriptions include the size or weight of the product. The very simplicity of the site draws attention to the text blocks and images, aiding legibility.
The site is only semi-compliant with assistive technology and WAVE reported a large number of contrast errors on the site. The business name over the hero image is almost invisible, and the lack of a link to the cart is noticeable.
The desktop site welcomes visitors with a high-quality hero image of bottles of fragrance, but the business name over the hero image is nearly invisible due to the contrast of the white text. The social media links are always available to visitors on the right side of the screen and the contact details and GPS map are available on every page. The floating top menu aids with navigation when scrolling through the long home page.
The mobile site features a slightly different layout than the desktop site, with a CTA for the newsletter as the hero banner. The desktop site’s hero banner is then available below the newsletter signup on mobile, with the business name not much more visible. The menu doesn’t float with the visitor as they scroll, so a back-to-top button would be helpful.
However, the mobile site does include a link to the cart, which is missing on the desktop site. The mobile site enjoyed strong scores for accessibility, SEO, and best practices on PageSpeed Insights, with an overall performance score of 62/100.
https://treehousecandles.com.au/
Queensland, Australia
Tree House Candles sells pure beeswax candles from locally sourced beeswax. The site offers a rustic appeal that complements the product, with a cute bee icon replacing the more traditional arrow of the mouse on the desktop site. Navigation of the site is simple, as there are only two types of candles on sale, and a page on candle care makes a great addition.
The site offers many opportunities for the visitor to contact the business, including an online chat feature, a newsletter, and FAQs. There is also the option to select your country or region at the bottom of the page, as the business offers international shipping.
The design of the site complements the product, using a yellow-orange color palette and a bee mouse cursor to create a full user experience. The different candles on sale include customer reviews.
WAVE reported a number of missing alternative text, empty links, and contrast errors on the site. The site is quite text-heavy, which impacts the user experience, and the bee icon switching to a pointer leads to a bit of difficulty clicking on links on the desktop site.
The desktop site offers a great user experience, with a large, high-quality hero image highlighting the products and the bee in place of the more traditional mouse cursor enhancing the rustic appeal. However, the bee does disappear against certain black backgrounds. PageSpeed Insights noted some slower loading times for the desktop site, leading to a performance score of 81/100.
The welcome message stands out on the mobile site, but the text-heavy site leads to a lot of scrolling on mobile. The hamburger menu maintains the navigation of the desktop site and includes the social media links, which can only be found in the footer on the desktop site. According to PageSpeed Insights, the mobile site has large content that loads slowly, leading to a performance score of 41/100. However, my real-world tests proved an easier user experience.
There are a number of website builders online that offer free templates for users to work on. These templates can be customized to suit the business, and the site often offers to host the user’s new website on their platform.
We’ve curated a list of five candle websites and reviewed their desktop and mobile sites for you to use as inspiration and guidelines when designing your own site.
Zarla’s AI website builder will create a site and craft content for you in less than a minute. You will then have up to a month to customize your site for free, after which Zarla will offer to host your site for a small monthly fee.
