This month, as part of work to update the site with a new homepage, we took the opportunity to add a new 'dark mode' theme to the &Daughter Shopify website.
The result
Dark mode explained
Dark mode is a new(ish) feature which allows users to have a darker theme on their iPhones/iPads/macs. Some people prefer this for lots of reasons and customers can set dark mode to be on:
- never
- all the time
- from sunset to sunrise
And some people do not use it, know about it or even have access to it.
It is therefore important that the work we did is invisible to those people. It aids the people who know about and want this frature but it does not impact anyone else.
The theory
We wanted to appeal to shoppers who have turned the dark mode feature on. These users could potentially find the all white background quite jarring if they have set up their device to have a dark interface. Especially if they are browsing at night time.
The hope is that this causes an increase the ecommerce conversion rate on the site.
As more and more ecommerce sites adopt a dark mode, the more a site will feel jarring to a user if it does not implement its own dark mode switching between a dark themed site and a bright white site at 3am with the room lights turned down low might prove to be a real turn off.
What about the branding?
Preserving branding
Branding is super important for ecommerce and colours play a large part in &Daughter's brand. The core colours are:
- white
- black
- orange
- off-white
In some ways, the limited colour palette makes this job easier but in other it means that the colour scheme is very important. The decision was made to invert the colours completely whilst maintaining the orange brand colour where it is used (for the logo).
Off-white was switched to a grey colour which is used to convey contrast on areas like menu dropdowns or overlays. Not everything can be pure black and white :)
Update
&Daughter requested this feature was removed in 2023. We still believe customers have set their device to dark mode for a reason and where possible that decision should be respected and will actually increase sales (or rather, it won't decrease them).