by ScamperBranding - 18/08/2009

We’ve always said that ethical brands need to present themselves well if they want to be taken seriously. Fair Trade businesses that take their brands seriously act as great ambassadors for the whole fair trade movement and help to demonstrate that fair trade is something that all consumers should be taking interest in, and it’s not just for a niche of hardcore ethical consumers who don’t mind sacrificing style and function to follow their principles. With this in mind, here we’ve selected what we think are the five best fair trade website designs:

1. Bibico
The ethical fashion brand Bibico has a great website design that manages to strike that fine balance between being clean and simple, without being bland. It’s fresh, vibrant, stylish and very easy to navigate, demonstrating that you don’t need to be a big corporation to have a fantastic website.

http://www.bibico.co.uk/

2. Divine Chocolate
Divine chocolate is an ethical brand that really knows how to present itself, having achieved top spot in our recent 10 best fair trade brand names. The Divine Chocolate website is bold, engaging and suitably luxurious. It’s simple, clear layout is easy to navigate, and it only real downfall is its heavy use of images instead of text links.

http://www.divinechocolate.com/

3. Clipper Tea
The Clipper tea website really stands out from the crowd with its distinctive colouring and graphic style. It’s perfectly on brand and simple enough that the website is clear and compelling. Distinctive and memorable, you’re unlikely to confuse this with any of their rivals’ websites, and for all the right reasons.

http://www.clipper-teas.com/

4. Jing Tea
Another tea brand, Jing’s website is the perfect example of how to use a clean and simple style and layout to convey a large amount of fairly detailed information, and makes very effective use of integrated video on the homepage.

http://jingtea.com/

5. Wombat
Wombat is another brand from our 10 best fair trade brand names, who have carried a commitment to their brand identity through to their website design. Quirky graphics, distinct colouring, and a simple layout make this site a joy to use, though like the Divine website, it’s let down by its overuse of graphic links that hinder accessability.

http://www.wombatclothing.com/

It’s great to see that there are some fair trade brands out there developing really top-notch websites, so we hope these examples above will provide a little inspiration to other fair trade and ethical brands to follow suit. Please feel free to post a comment to tell us about your favourite fair trade website designs.

Of course, if you need any help developing your brand identity or website design then feel free to give us a call on 0208 1234590 or fill in our no obligation quote form.