As online shopping grew in popularity, brick-and-mortar stores began to offer their products online, and entire companies were created to facilitate web sales. In 1995 Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com which is now the world's largest online retailer - they brought in $48 billion in 2011 alone. Online auction site eBay also opened shop in 1995. Expedia was founded in 1996 as a small division of Microsoft, and Zappos.com opened it's digital doors in 1999.
With today's high-res photos and speedy shopping carts, it's easy to forget how primitive most ecommerce stores used to be. Check out how these big brand-names sites looked before they became popular. Although they seem simplistic, unintuitive, and kind of ugly, at the time they were cutting-edge, and they paved the way for what ecommerce is today.
Dell - 1996
Pizza Hut - 1997
Expedia - 1997
Zappos - 2000
Netflix - 2002
Apple - 1997
American Apparel - 2001
GAP - 1996
Wal-Mart - 2001
Toys-R-Us - 2000
Diapers.com - 2001
Barnes & Noble - 1999
Best Buy - 1997
Zazzle - 2004
Amazon - 2006
Staples - 1997
J Crew - 1996
Buy.com - 1999
Sony - 1996
Macy's - 1999
Nike - 1998
Target - 1997
Wine.com - 1997
American Eagle Outfitters - 1999
CD Baby - 1998
LL Bean - 1999
eBags - 1999
Ancestry - 1998
Coach - 2000
Overstock - 1999
Threadless - 2002
1-800 Flowers.com - 1999
Ashley Madison - 2002
CD Now - 1999
The Hudsons Bay Company - 2001
Art.com - 2000
Shopify - 2008
All screenshots from Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
Some really great (and embarrassing) examples you found here. Great post!
I can’t believe how far they have come!
What an epic collection – I especially get a kick out of Netflix and BestBuy.
Amazing how little Amazon has changed.
Love it! ha
CD NOW has not be to the best…
haha coach looks great. Apparently they were ahead of their time.
Such a transformation in little time!
tables tables tables tables tables tables
Hehe, so amazing. Another 10 years and we will be looking at our todays designs the exact same way. And that’s a good thing of course. Keeps us busy
What a great list – thanks for putting this together.
Sadly, the Hudson’s Bay site from 2001 doesn’t look much different than it does today!
Michael
Unreal on how much their websites have changed in the past few years, Swag Is Back have done a major renovation of design on their homepage, it still isn’t finished, but check it out and tell us what you think?
www.swagisback.com
Lol! These made me laugh. Good post :).
Great post. Gives new meaning to “form follows function.”
They all worked – and I think that was the #1 key early on. It just needs to work. Only now has design really started catching up.
What’s on the page now that 5 years from now we’ll be laughing at?
The table era. ;)
This is so interesting – excellent post Mark!
Great collection!
So many GUIs, very not so long ago. Fun.
I recall RCA’s work with US Interactive ~2000, remote control embedded as nav: http://web.archive.org/web/20000303011654/http://www.rca.com/
It’s amazing. Today, most eShop owners have more knowladge about online marketing/design/product placement that those giants 8-10 years a go!
This is one of the most interesting walks down web-memory lane. And to think, once upon a time, some of these were the coolest sites online.
good collection!!!
http://www.woodentoddlertoys.com/hotholidaytoys.html
HI
Today i came across this amazing new website named nupinch.com…i really think you guys should check it out..
Link: http://bit.ly/XczfI3