10 Beautiful Examples of Miva Merchant Sites
If you’ve read this blog for awhile, ever talked to me, know what I do for a living, or have anything else to do with me in any other way, you probably know that I eat, sleep, and breathe e-commerce…and that my usual platform of choice is Miva Merchant. I’ve used other systems on occasion, for fun and for work, to various degrees, but Miva is where I started and where I spend most of my time.
No MMUI Please!
Miva Merchant ships with a default look-and-feel called MMUI – the Miva Merchant User Interface. It’s there because it HAS to have SOMETHING, right? But it was never meant for public consumption…the developers always assumed people would replace it with an actual design. But many retailers didn’t replace it – either they didn’t have the skills, they were cheap, they were lazy, they didn’t know better, or whatever – but lots of stores used it. And have been since year 19-whatever. Miva Merchant has since released a built-in CSS skin that is better, but still very basic, and yet this MMUI (see image, right, under the big red X) is still around on the web. You’ve probably seen it and groaned.
So I wanted to take this chance and showcase a bit of what CAN be done with Miva Merchant. Although I’d been planning this for a couple of weeks, in a timely coincidence, Chuck over at Merchant Tutorials posted about common Miva Merchant myths and the very first one is that the cart is limited in it’s look and feel. Let’s debunk that right now.
1. Green Tree Coffee & Tea
Green Tree Coffee & Tea
2. smallfri.com Birth Announcements
smallfri.com Birth Announcements
3. DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow
4. California Caviar
California Caviar
5. Mad Cat Toys
Mad Cat Toys
6. Bee Global
Bee Global Candle Studio
7. Mezzetta
Mezzetta Mediterranean Food
8. Rusty’s Off-Road Products
Rusty's Off Road Products
9. Arcadia Publishing
Arcadia Publishing
10. Michael’s Finer Meats and Seafoods
Michael's Finer Meats and Seafoods
One small caveat just for the sake of transparency: Mad Cat Toys is out of our clients at NetBlazon. But the design is completely the work of the owner, Dale Carlson of Propaganza…we just did the backend programming. So I’m not sneaking in a self-backpat or anything. Also, thanks to Scott from Sebenza for pointing us in the direction of Michael’s Meats, a site I hadn’t seen before.
Got any other examples of truly beautifully-designed Miva Merchant websites? Post them in the comments below!
Tags: design, miva merchant
Awesome sites! Even with my experience with Miva Merchant, it’s hard to believe some of these are Miva Merchant sites. There really is no limit to the creativity possible anymore. Thanks for the post!
[...] my last post about Miva Merchant myths, NetBlazon posted “10 Beautiful Examples of Miva Merchant Sites” at their DoublePlus blog. Check it out – fantastic examples of how Miva Merchant can [...]
Awesome post! These are some great sites. I especially like the Green Tree site. The stuff you can do with Miva (and the fact that it is easy and cost-effective) is pretty amazing.
I actually enjoyed the simplicity of the Toy Web site. I prefer lots of whitespace. Thank-you for sharing!
Awesome MIVA sites! I am jealous! I’m confused – is there one designer for most of these sites?
@Pat, I don’t believe so. Since I worked with Mad Cat Toys, I know he did his own design work and I’m pretty sure he didn’t work on any of the others. I believe Miva Merchant’s inside designers may have done one or two, but again I’m not certain.
A few show attribute links – California Caviar references a company called Atlantis57. Bee Global has a “JR” logo that links to JaredRay.com. And Green Tree appears to be done by a company called iSite. (I didn’t check them all but those are the first 3 I found with obvious attribution links.)
Wow love the first one, its absolutely gorgeous!
All are very nice sites. I especially like the Mezzetta website. Nice job!
[...] You can read the full article here >> [...]
These sites are really well done. I especially enjoyed the search by state, city or zip for the Arcadia Publishing site. I was wondering if you could offer any assistance on where I may find some help in creating something similar for our site. We want to create a dealer location page and I’m fairly new to Miva Merchant. Thanks so much in advance for any help.
P.S. Our site is http://www.PECARD.com if anyone would like to view it. Thanks!
Reanna, it appears to be some kind of store locator script, something like you would find here: http://www.hotscripts.com/category/php/scripts-programs/e-commerce/store-locators/ – but I’m not sure which one. Instead of inputting the data for physical stores, though, they have put in data for the locations referenced in their books. A nice concept. It’s definitely a PHP script that’s not directly part of their Miva Merchant store. Good luck! –Susan
Thank you so much! This looks just what I was looking for.
While it’s true that there still seem to be a number of sites using the dreaded MMUI interface (a couple in my own industry in fact) I believe most Miva merchants have the sense to know that the look and feel of their site is invaluable to getting and retaining customers & clients. They will seek out talented designers and pay for the work if they are incapable of doing it on their own…much like the sites referenced in this article (beautiful!)
I was fortunate enough to find Susan and Pete Petracco of Netblazon several years ago. What my site offers isn’t “pretty” or edible (darn!) but it definitely draws and holds the attention of many visitors and converts them into buyers. Lockpickshop.com has much of the best that Miva has to offer including the best programmers and graphics artists that are experts on the Miva platform. I am very pleased with the versatility that exists with Miva 5.5 vs. the way things were 11 years ago when my first store was built.
http://eurogourmet.biz is a pretty awesome site. Incorporating the cart into the bottom slider and stuff is a pretty sweet idea that looks to be a fairly custom job. I think it uses mootools. And it’s valid XHTML/CSS, which is always great to see!
California Caviar seems to be using the MMUI interface for their actual store… that’s a little sad…
Conrad, you are totally right, and it doesn’t look good at all. Pooey.
I have used several different ecommerce cms systems, but I have not tried Miva Merchant. It does look like a great platform based on these site designs. With some cms systems it can be quite a hassle to customize things this much. I will have to keep this in mind next time I have to setup a shopping cart system.
Thanks for posting such wonderful assortment of merchant sites! The Bee Global is particularly striking, the boldness of the color is just awesome.
California Caviar seems to be using the MMUI interface for their actual store… that’s a little sad…
Miva Slow, and some pages time out.
I have a problem where the Miva Generated pages are taking a long time to come up. If you click on any of the pages it seems to hang for quite a few seconds on only the miva generated pages. Static Pages that are not Miva Generated load fine.
EsterlinaVineyards.com
My host is APlus and they don’t seem to know what is going on..
The worst part is that when our staff tries to retrieve credit card numbers and try to unlock the page with the Credit Card number it times out. So the Staff is unable to get the info.
Even when logging into the miva admin the menu at the left seems to take a bit of time to load. As well as making changes
I Have packed databases and removed expired shopping cart.
Does this problem ring a bell with anyone?
Thanks for any ideas or help.
First site a really good example
I like the “California Caviar” most. All the site list is really awesome. I am pretty much pleased with your good work.You put really very helpful information. Keep it up. Keep blogging. Looking to reading your next post.
i am stuck in miva 4 as my modules have no migration path! i have searched and searched for a developer who could assist. can you?
i *really* need to upgrade to keep in tip top shape but cannot lose consistency…
thank you in advance.
wendy
The Green Tree Coffee & Tea and Michael’s sites are awesome. Super clean, great color scheme, easy to follow. I love them
Great use of photography and gradients. This site is easy to navigate and pops.
Really good sites, First and Fifth web sites seems to be much better.
Have used Miva for several years, have to upgrade. Talk to some non Miva users that suggested word press. Any thoughts on why not to design a store using wordpress vs Miva?
Honestly I haven’t used the ecommerce plug-ins for wordpress, but I probably wouldn’t go that route. For a “real” ecommerce site, I’d stick with a shopping cart. I like Miva 5.5 a lot, but Magento is also a good platform. Someone I know also recently switched to 3D Cart and he raves about it. There are definitely good choices out there, but I’d really look more into the true shopping carts rather than a hybrid like the wordpress plug-ins for ecommerce.
Thank you so much for your response. I have read mixed reviews and it seems like it depends on who you talk to. Thanks again.
Definitely true! I think Miva comes with a built-in love/hate relationship
The fourth and the tenth sites are just eye-catching. Makes me want to purchase. I wonder how much do these cost.
Veronica, I would bet that both of those (in fact, probably all of them) are custom-designed. I know for a fact that #5 is, but I’m guessing about the others.