A candy store website should offer visitors high-quality images with descriptions of the candies and their ingredients. The site should also provide an online shopping function to encourage potential customers to buy immediately! However, it's also a great idea to include the physical store's location and operating hours prominently on the site.
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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.
Cravin's Candy Emporium is a neighborhood candy store with four locations around the U.S. They specialize in retro candy, glass bottle sodas, gelatos, and chocolates and aim to bring that nostalgic candy experience to future generations. The site highlights the children-focused niche through bright candy colors.
High-quality images full of laughing children and colorful candy draw attention to the fun, family-friendly vibe. The site goes a step further by highlighting their scavenger hunt event for birthday parties. Visitors can also shop for candy and gift cards online.
The site has an esthetic design with high-quality images and clear contact details, location, and store hours are provided. Customer reviews are included on the contact page and the site features a floating menu to aid in navigation.
According to accessScan, the site is not compliant with assistive technologies and WAVE reports a number of empty headings and contrast errors. The online shop lacks product descriptions or ingredients.
The desktop site offers visitors both a sticky top menu and a footer menu in different colors. The social media links are in the footer menu but may be overlooked as they're in the same colors and font as the rest of the footer menu.
The desktop site scores exceptionally well on Google's PageSpeed Insights test, with 100/100 for best practices, 90/100 for accessibility, and 94/100 for performance. However, our real-world tests did show some lags in loading times for the online shop.
With the vertical layout of the mobile site, it seems to be more text-heavy than the desktop version but is well-optimized to fit smaller screens. The hamburger menu travels with the reader as they scroll — a stand-out feature that ensures easy navigation. Real-world tests also showed slow loading times in the mobile online shop, and PageSpeed Insights confirms these findings with a performance score of 43/100.
Covent Garden, England, U.K.
SugarSin is a gourmet confectionery store specializing in cocktail-inspired gummies, chocolates, and vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free candies. The site features bright, high-quality images and moving graphics to engage the visitor. There is an online shopping feature, a wishlist feature, and a login option for visitors to create their own accounts.
Visitors to the site can view a range of different candies and styles (including gifts and subscriptions) for purchase, while the business's story, customer care options, and social media links are available in the footer.
The menu options are clearly defined, with online shopping categories available in the floating top menu and business information available in the footer. The addition of customer reviews and awards won builds customer trust.
The site is only semi-compliant with assistive technologies and WAVE reports a number of empty links, missing alternative text, and contrast errors. The site lacks a GPS location option to find the physical store, and a link to the business information in the footer would aid navigation.
The desktop site stands out with bright colors that reflect the colorful, sweet nature of the candies on sale. The shopping cart, wishlist, and login links are all helpfully available in the floating top menu. CTAs are prominent in colors opposite to the background they appear on, enhancing the fun design. However, despite strong real-world experiences, the desktop site scores an average of 62/100 for performance on PageSpeed Insights.
The mobile site is well-optimized, maintaining engaging visuals but offering a brighter color palette than on the desktop. The CTAs also stand out more with the brighter color palette. Unlike the desktop site, the mobile site only highlights the wishlist in the top menu, with the shopping cart and search function available in the hamburger menu.
The login function, however, appears to be missing from the mobile site, which seems more compact than the desktop version. Despite strong real-world tests, PageSpeed Insights reports slow loading times, leading to a performance score of 42/100.
Ulladulla, New South Wales, Australia
Lolly Kingdom is an online mix-and-match candy store that has expanded to include physical stores across Australia. The site features a somewhat overwhelming selection of menu items and different candy options to choose from, and the design highlights a great cookie-cutter pattern, reminiscent of old-school paper bags of candy, perfect for their brand message. A candy-focused blog is a great addition to the site.
The site's branding and design are on-point, complementing the brand message of the business. In contrast to the busy menu, the footer is clean and offers visitors information on operating hours, social media links, and contact details.
The site is not compliant with assistive technologies and WAVE reports a large number of broken ARIA references, which impact the use of assistive technologies, and contrast errors. The site's menu is overwhelming, especially for the children that are the target market, and the "Contact Us" and "About Us" pages get lost among all the candy options.
The desktop site stands out from more traditional sites by using a hamburger menu. However, this is the best option for the large menu selection, including pages dedicated to holiday specials.
The site's cookie-cutter edging shows its best advantage on the desktop, while the large shopping cart icon draws attention to the online shopping function. Confirming our real-world tests, Google's PageSpeed Insights test awards this site an excellent performance rating of 90/100.
The mobile site shines with brighter colors and perfectly resized images and text. The menu is just as long as the desktop site, with the pages for gift vouchers, contact details, and business information hidden among all the candy options.
With the verticle layout, visitors to the site will need to do a lot of scrolling to reach the social media links and operating hours in the footer, but reaching the handy click-to-call contact details makes the effort worthwhile. According to PageSpeed Insights, the mobile site loads slowly, leading to an average 53/100 performance score.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Candy Catchers is an online candy store based in Canada that also offers gifts such as bags, teddy bears, and balloons. The site features bright, high-quality images of candy, some of which do have the feel of stock images and a fun shop-by-color option.
The quick links at the bottom of the page direct visitors to important information, including FAQs and contact information. A clear menu offers visitors the chance to browse the different categories but does not float with the customer while scrolling.
The site is bright and enticing, with simple navigation options. The online shopping experience is seamless, with the option to add a special note for gift-giving, and the social media links are clearly displayed in the footer.
The site is semi-compliant with assistive technologies, while WAVE reports a number of broken ARIA references and contrast errors. The CTAs in the shopping cart lack any text, leading to confusion as the customer won't know where the link is taking them.
The desktop site makes great use of the available white space for an uncluttered design that is easy to navigate and provides a great UX. The list of accepted credit companies at the bottom of the page catch the eye in the otherwise white design, highlighting which cards customers can use to shop. The desktop site ranks very highly on PageSpeed Insights, with scores in the 90s for performance, best practices, and accessibility, and a score of 100/100 for SEO.
The bright colors of the site immediately grab visitors to the mobile site, encouraging them to explore the site in more detail. The hamburger menu maintains the easy navigation of the desktop, but also includes a login link and the social media links.
The large images for the shop-by-color categories stand out, but the CTAs are once again lacking text. While the mobile site maintains the high accessibility, SEO, and best practices scores, large content lowers the performance score to 62/100.
https://www.grifitscandy.co.za/
Plumstead, Western Cape, South Africa
Grifits is a candy store based in South Africa that offers customers a range of South African and international candies. The business aims for a nostalgic aesthetic, highlighted on its site through a pink color palette and a handwritten-styled typeface. The site features various options, from wholesale candy to gift boxes and treats for school lunches.
The store location, contact details, and operating hours are prominently displayed at the bottom of the home page, along with social media links. The site offers only three pages and the lack of an online shopping feature is noticeable. Instead, the company uses WhatsApp and email for orders.
WAVE reports just one empty heading and three contrast errors. The site is simple, leading to an easy user experience, with the store location, contact details, and operating hours clearly visible on the site.
The site is semi-compliant with assistive technologies and lacks an online shopping feature. The gallery page features a simple block with a range of images inside it, as well as a long text block that shows poor legibility.
The desktop site makes great use of the available white space for easy legibility; however, the text block on the gallery page is almost too small for legibility. The branding remains constant throughout the site, with the logo featuring prominently on the contact page. The desktop site shows slow loading times on the gallery page, which has resulted in a performance score of 89/100 on Google's PageSpeed Insights.
The mobile site is well-optimized for smaller screens, and shows better contrast between the text and background than can be seen on the desktop site. A handy click-to-message button is featured prominently on the home page to utilize WhatsApp for orders, but the company's name and logo in the top banner are very small.
The contact details, operating hours, and social media links in the footer are also very visible. The gallery requires a lot of scrolling, but the test block shows better contrast than on the desktop site. Despite strong real-world tests, the mobile site has a performance score of 66/100 on PageSpeed Insights.
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We've curated a list of real-world candy store website examples for you to browse. We've provided an overview of each site with the pros and cons listed.
This will be completely up to your business model. Some sites do feature free local shipping, such as SugarSin, but it is not a feature that will draw new customers to your site; simply an encouragement for those customers to place an order.
