Welcome to our brand new website! Here at Left Leaning Merchandise, we’d gotten a little tired of our old Etsy site and decided to spruce up our online shop. You know what they say, New Year, new site!
As much as our old website served us well, we thought it was time to move on to one that allows us more freedom to design and manage the site as we wish. The Etsy platform has many benefits for small retailers and independent shops to use to help launch their brands and manage their products, but it also comes with many limitations on how you can organise your pages, manage settings for SEO, and, of course, design the visual layout and aesthetics of your store!
The same can be said for the Pattern by Etsy system, which allows you to manage your own domain rather than a simple Etsy store. Pattern by Etsy is fantastic for those looking to launch their first website without worrying too much about the nitty-gritty of the back end settings, but it still doesn’t allow you the freedom that other web design and page building platforms do.
We think we’ve definitely made the right decision! Let’s take a look at our old website compared to our brand-new design, so you can see what’s changed here at Left Leaning Merch:
Header and Homepage Design
Our old header and homepage were a fantastic start at our own branding, but they also left a lot to be desired. We had the Madness in the Whitehouse design – one of Paul’s most popular – prominently displayed in our header, alongside the old Left Leaning Merchandise logo.
Due to the site being hosted on the Pattern by Etsy platform, we had very few settings for customising the homepage. So on our old site, the homepage went straight into the store with a featured slider and all products listed below.
Now, let’s compare to our new design. Our new header and footer alludes to our left leaning nature with a left-right gradient displaying our new brand colours of garnet, black, and white. We re-designed our banner to help visitors immediately see exactly what we offer, while paying homage to our old site with the Madness in the Whitehouse logo!
We also made the homepage more engaging, more visually appealing, and easier to navigate with a series of links leading to core collections followed by product sliders showing our best sellers, our newest arrivals, and our products on sale!
But that’s not all! We’ve also created dedicated pages for all of our (growing) collections, making it super easy to search for exactly what you’re looking for, along with specific pages for requesting bespoke work, and browse by products links for those who know exactly what item they want, but aren’t sure which design.
Left Leaning Merchandise is thrilled to launch our new site for 2023 and will continue to deliver the best collections of satirical left-wing t-shirts, socialist apparel, and anti-Tory merch on the net! Keep checking back on our site to stay up to date on all our latest designs, or get in touch with the team to discuss a bespoke product.