Even though the Play Store application for Android has gone through many design iterations over the years, the Play Store website has been frozen in time. For years, it has had the same early Material Design look, but that is finally changing. Google is now testing a new Play Store site design in some regions, which seems like a substantial improvement from the current layout.

The new design (via Android Police) is seemingly only rolled out in a few regions so far, such as Korea and Taiwan, and it varies by user account. Content is more stretched out, instead of locked inside a horizontally-centered row. The page background is now white, icons are larger, and some app listings (like Netflix) have a header image that stretches across the top of the screen.

 

Everything is roughly in the same place, but a few important elements have moved. The side menu, which included links to check purchased content, Play Points, and other information is now only visible when you click your profile picture in the top-right. Having that menu pinned to the left or right of the screen on wider displays (like the old site) would be helpful, but it's not the end of the world.

There are also a few minor functional improvements over the previous design. The screenshot/media gallery on app pages finally has a scrollbar, so you can see everything without holding down your mouse on the left and right arrow buttons — why Google ever thought that was good design, I will never know. The main 'Apps' and 'Games' pages also now have buttons at the top for quickly filtering between phone, tablet, TV, Chromebook, Wear OS, and car applications.

Overall, this looks like a step in the right direction for the Play Store website, without the usual handful of regressions that come with most redesigns. Here's hoping Google rolls it out to everyone soon.