Gestalt Principles in eCommerce

Websites in the 1990s often looked ugly and were difficult to use due to poor design practices. Early sites had cluttered layouts, inconsistent colors, and lacked visual organization—there were no established design standards, and little attention was given to user experience.


Enter Gestalt principles.

"Gestalt" means "unified whole" in German. In the 1920s, psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler developed Gestalt principles to understand how people make sense of what they see and hear. They identified laws explaining the mind's natural tendency to perceive individual elements as a cohesive whole.

Graphic designers quickly adopted these principles to create more organized, eye-catching designs. We see these principles applied in popular e-commerce sites to create intuitive and engaging user experiences.

1. Proximity

Proximity is one of the most commonly used principles.  Elements that are close to each other tend to be perceived as a group. For example, when we see a product image, name, price, and colorways together, we know they are associated.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/gestalt-proximity/


2. Similarity

Elements that look similar (e.g., in color, shape, or size) are perceived as belonging together, helping us differentiate between groups of objects. For instance, on Ralph Lauren's product wall, products are displayed in a uniform three-across layout, while category headers stand out with larger two-across images.

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/similarity-gestalt-principle/


3. Continuity

The principle of continuity means that the eye naturally follows continuous lines or curves, perceiving aligned elements as a group. This helps users move quickly through checkout forms by guiding their focus seamlessly from one field to the next.

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/continuation-gestalt/


4. Closure

The principle of closure is used in logos, advertising imagery, and loading indicators. Incomplete shapes make logos memorable, engage viewers in ads, and help convey progress through loading animations.

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/closure-gestalt/


5. Figure-Ground

This principle explains how we distinguish between a figure (focal object) and its background, using contrast to focus on the main element. For example, the isolation and size of this iPhone on apple.com bring it to the foreground, naturally drawing our focus.

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/figure-ground-gestalt/



Interested in learning more? Here are a series of videos from the Nielsen Norman Group.

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/the-gestalt-principles-intro/


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