NY UX Agencies

Ecommerce, retail and fashion UX agencies in New York

Commerce UX is the one category where the design work has a number attached to it, and that cuts both ways. Conversion is measurable, so good work is provable, but every design decision gets argued against a dashboard, and studios without commercial experience lose those arguments.

See the agencies Read the FAQ

The problems that don't go away

Product discovery when the catalogue runs to thousands of items, size and fit anxiety, returns, checkout abandonment, and imagery that has to sell a garment without lying about it.

New York is a reasonable place to solve them, with the fashion houses, the retail headquarters, and the DTC brands all within a few neighbourhoods.

At a glance

Seven studios, side by side

Facts only, no scores or rankings. What each team is built for, and where it sits.

Studio Commerce focus Presence
Work & CoLarge-scale retail, conversion at volumeDumbo, Brooklyn; global
CorraFashion and beauty commerce, platform-ledNYC HQ; LA, London; 100+
Code and TheoryBrand-led retail storytellingOne WTC, Manhattan; global
Clay GlobalMarketplace and platform commerce, plus brandSoHo, Manhattan; remote-first, SF HQ
UtilityMobile ordering and checkoutNew York
Big HumanEarly DTC, store and identity togetherManhattan
Local ProjectsPhysical flagship and retail environments123 William St, Manhattan

The agencies

Seven for commerce and retail

The read, signature strengths, work to know, presence, and who each one suits.

Work & Co logo

Retail at a scale where fractions of a percent are money.

The read:
Work & Co's commerce work is with brands whose traffic makes small improvements financially significant, and the team designs with that in mind rather than treating conversion as somebody else's department. Its designers work alongside engineers throughout, which matters in commerce because performance is a conversion factor, and a beautiful product page that loads slowly is a worse product page.
Signature strengths:
Product UX, information architecture, usability research, design systems, interaction design.
Work to know:
Digital products for Nike, IKEA, Apple, Google, and Mailchimp, plus the MTA's live subway map.
Presence:
Dumbo, Brooklyn headquarters, with global offices.
Suits you if:
You're a large retailer and the difference between design options is worth measuring.
Website:
work.co
Corra logo

The New York specialist in fashion and beauty commerce.

The read:
Corra has worked in luxury commerce for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands since 2002, which makes it the closest thing New York has to a dedicated practice in this category. Its UX sits close to the platform, with deep work on Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce, so it's a fit if you're replatforming and a less obvious one if you want research divorced from implementation. Now part of Publicis Sapient, so confirm team continuity before signing.
Signature strengths:
Ecommerce UX, site structure and taxonomy, usability testing, visual design, commerce platform strategy.
Work to know:
Eileen Fisher, Milly, Nicole Miller, Brahmin, BaubleBar, Sigma Beauty, Sugarfina, Yeti Coolers, and The Met Store.
Presence:
New York headquarters, with Los Angeles and London offices. Over 100 people.
Suits you if:
You're a fashion or beauty brand and the storefront and the platform decision are the same project.
Website:
corra.com
Code and Theory logo

Retail brands where the campaign and the store are one experience.

The read:
Code and Theory came up designing for publishers and applies that editorial instinct to consumer brands, treating a product page as something with hierarchy and a point of view rather than a template with photography dropped in. Useful when the brand story and the shopping experience are supposed to be continuous. It's a large agency inside the Stagwell group, so establish who is actually assigned.
Signature strengths:
Brand experience, content and commerce design, product design, design systems.
Work to know:
adidas, H&M, L'Oréal, Maybelline New York, and Burger King, alongside publishing work for Bloomberg and Vogue.
Presence:
One World Trade Center, Manhattan, with offices in San Francisco, London, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Manila.
Suits you if:
Your retail brand markets through storytelling and the commerce experience keeps breaking that thread.
Clay Global logo

Commerce interfaces plus the identity around them.

The read:
Clay Global's commerce-adjacent work runs to marketplace and platform scale, and its distinguishing feature in this category is having brand and product design in the same studio. For a DTC brand that needs an identity and a storefront designed together rather than sequentially, that removes the usual translation loss between the brand book and the actual site.
Signature strengths:
Product UX and UI, web design and build, design systems, brand identity, UX research.
Work to know:
Product and interface work for Amazon, Google, Snapchat, Sony, and Slack.
Presence:
148 Lafayette St, SoHo, Manhattan. Remote-first, San Francisco HQ.
Suits you if:
You're launching or repositioning a commerce brand and need the identity and the store to arrive together.
Website:
clay.global
Utility logo

Transactional mobile flows, done carefully.

The read:
Utility's relevant work here is in ordering and booking rather than traditional retail, which turns out to be the same design problem: a person committing money on a phone, usually in a hurry. Its attention to interaction states pays off in exactly these moments, where a checkout that feels uncertain loses the sale regardless of how few steps it has.
Signature strengths:
Mobile and web UX/UI, interaction design, iOS and Android interface design.
Work to know:
Apps and products for Shake Shack, Airbnb, Samsung, Verizon, and the NBA.
Presence:
New York.
Suits you if:
Your commerce happens on a phone and the checkout is where you're losing people.
Big Human logo

DTC brands that need a store and an identity at once.

The read:
Big Human works across ecommerce alongside mobile and SaaS, mostly with startups, and its useful trait for a new DTC label is that branding sits in-house next to product design. That suits a first storefront where the brand doesn't exist yet either. Less suited to an established retailer with an entrenched catalogue and merchandising team.
Signature strengths:
Product UX and UI, ecommerce design, branding, product strategy.
Work to know:
Client work for Whistle, Rockefeller Center, Netflix, and Gemini, plus the team behind HQ Trivia and Vine.
Presence:
51 E 12th St, Manhattan.
Suits you if:
You're an early DTC brand building the store and the identity from nothing.
Website:
bighuman.com
Local Projects logo

When the retail experience is a physical space.

The read:
An experience design studio best known for museum work, Local Projects also builds brand and retail environments, and it belongs here for flagship and destination projects where the digital layer lives in a room rather than on a phone. A narrow use case, and there are very few studios in New York who do it at this level.
Signature strengths:
Experience design, interactive installation, creative technology, spatial storytelling.
Work to know:
Target, Brookfield Properties, and the Times Square Alliance, alongside cultural work for Cooper Hewitt and the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
Presence:
123 William Street, Manhattan.
Suits you if:
You're building a flagship store or brand destination and the experience is architectural.

FAQ

Commerce UX, answered

What's different about fashion and luxury commerce UX?+

The product is the problem. A customer can't touch the garment, so the experience has to substitute for that through imagery, fit guidance, and returns policy presented as reassurance rather than fine print. Luxury adds a tension general ecommerce doesn't have, because the conversion patterns that work in mass retail, urgency banners and aggressive upsells, actively damage a premium brand. Ask any agency how it has handled that trade-off on a real project.

Do we need a platform specialist or a UX studio?+

Depends on whether you're replatforming. If Shopify Plus or Adobe Commerce is already decided or already in place, a commerce agency like Corra keeps the design and the implementation in one conversation. If the question is why customers abandon and what the experience should be before you commit to a platform, a research-led studio will serve you better, and you can bring implementation in afterwards. Doing it in the reverse order is how brands end up designing around a platform's defaults.

How is commerce UX work actually measured?+

Conversion rate is the headline, but it's a noisy metric that moves for reasons unrelated to design. Better ones to agree upfront are add-to-cart rate, checkout completion, return rate, and search-to-purchase for catalogue-heavy sites. Insist on a measurement plan before the work starts, because attributing a revenue change to a redesign after the fact is close to impossible.

What does ecommerce UX cost in New York?+

A focused engagement, a checkout redesign or a product discovery overhaul, commonly starts in the tens of thousands. A full storefront design with a replatform runs into six figures, with the platform work usually the larger share. Agencies serving enterprise retail quote from a higher floor, and DTC-focused studios are more flexible on phasing.

How long does it take?+

Eight to twelve weeks for a defined problem like checkout or navigation. A full storefront design and replatform is typically four to eight months, and most brands sensibly avoid launching one in the run-up to peak season. Build a testing period into the schedule rather than treating launch as the finish.

How do I choose between two strong agencies here?+

Match to the shape of your business. Large-scale retail where small gains matter points to Work & Co. Fashion or beauty with a platform decision attached points to Corra. Brand-led retail storytelling points to Code and Theory. A DTC launch needing identity and store together points to Big Human or Clay Global depending on your scale. Mobile ordering and checkout points to Utility. A physical flagship points to Local Projects.