Have you ever walked into a store and felt transported? It might have been the intoxicating scent, the unexpected decor, or the labyrinth-like layout.
But that magic often disappears when you visit a brand’s website, despite increased investment in digital brand experiences.
Replicating an in-store experience online isn’t easy, and it’s where many brands go wrong. The goal isn’t to recreate it, but to immerse people in the brand, its values, and the emotions you want to evoke. That’s a whole lot easier to do.
Creating a real life brand experience
In retail many brand-centric shopping streets have become miniature versions of Disney World. Each store feels like its own universe. Even large chains, like those under the Inditex umbrella, are focusing on creating a feeling rather than merely displaying products.
You can catch the distinct scent of a Stradivarius store many seconds before you even spot it. Rituals, the body care brand, features full-size Japanese blossom trees, stone sinks, and many natural elements in their stores.
Luxury retail is no exception. Prada embodies elegance, with stores featuring sleek, modern interiors, clean lines, and neutral colour schemes. Versace, by contrast, revels in opulence, with marble floors and sculpted Medusa motifs.
Now consider places specifically designed to create an experience — five-star luxury hotels in exotic locations. People don’t go to a luxury hotel in the Maldives just because they need shelter and food while spending a day at the beach. They go for the full experience: fine dinning, expensive wines, and spa treatments in a hut above the water.
But many of these hotel websites fail to convey any sense of a the luxury destination that awaits.
Examples and why they happen
Creating an online experience might take some creativity, but it’s even harder to take a brand, and build a real life experience around it. The real challenge, however, lies in bringing that experience to life online — another intangible.
Lush, for instance, offers an in-store experience that falls flat online. Sure, you can’t smell products through a screen, but you can evoke their atmosphere with dynamic visuals.
Prada’s signature elegance seems to vanish online, replaced by a standard layout: a black announcement bar, white menu, and rows of product images. Versace’s site swaps the video for a static header, but the aesthetic is similarly minimalist, losing the opulence that defines the brand.
The luxury hotel industry also sees this tendency towards standardisation. Maldives resorts like Six Senses, Four Seasons, Constance Hotels, and Marriott are great at selling the allure of the place, but fail to differentiate the hotels themselves. So, when choosing where to stay, consumers are left to compare prices — exactly what luxury brands should avoid.So, how can you recreate that brand magic online?
Best practices for a cohesive UX
When it comes to websites, many brands focus on design trends, the quality of visuals, and, more recently, emerging strategies like generative AI optimisation, which help create and optimise content for AI-powered searches.
What they all have in common, though, is the impulse to put their products front and centre. That’s not the essence of a brand, though.
The core is what they stand for, and, more importantly, how they make people feel. That’s what brands should aim to convey both in their stores and online — and that’s not as difficult to do.
Take Oatly, the Swedish oat-based food company. Known for its witty, ironic tone and unconventional marketing, its cohesive visual identity makes its products instantly recognisable. The website mirrors the brand perfectly: a distinctive design, humorous tone, and a sustainability message that avoids the usual doomsday tone.
Bragg Live Foods is another great example. The moment you open the site, you it’s unmistakably Bragg. Similarly, Born To Stand Out, a South Korean niche fragrance brand, extends its unconventional take on a conservative industry with unisex scent names like ‘Filthy Musk’, ‘Drunk Lovers’, or ‘Burnt Roses’, creating a website that’s as unapologetically daring as the brand itself.
That “extension” is increasingly rare. This disconnect isn’t just a missed opportunity — it undermines what makes a brand memorable. The goal is not to mimic but to evoke.
It’s about deconstructing the spirit of a brand and infusing it into every touchpoint.
As brands like Oatly, Bragg Live Foods, or BTSO demonstrate, when your online presence becomes a seamless extension of your brand identity, it doesn’t just complement the in-store experience — it amplifies it.