E-commerce has transformed the way shopping or business is done with continuous innovations in the industry. Smartphone infiltration is one of the key factors behind the growth of this industry. As of January 2021, the number of internet connections worldwide is around 4.66 billion, out of which 92.6 percent use the internet through their mobile devices.
The e-commerce industry and its business models continuously evolve to fulfill consumers’ expectations. For example enhancing some of the website's features, such as clicking the photo of the product you like, uploading or searching for it on the website, and placing the order in seconds, which is one of the easiest ways to shop right now. Also, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning features, you can show the exact product which meets the expectations of the visitor or customer.
What does the post-pandemic consumer want?
The pandemic has wholly altered the behavioral pattern of consumers. The post-pandemic consumer is more about greater self-awareness and passive shopping. Thus, shopping is now an always-on experience, and meeting the latest demands of buyers in a post-pandemic world requires a website that operates flawlessly. E-commerce is playing a vital role in this entire transformation. Let's discuss some features or services post-pandemic consumers expect from the websites:
- Your website should be mobile-friendly; according to research by Similar Web, 51.61% of traffic on websites comes from mobile phones, so your website should be easy to navigate, scroll, and customers should find what they are looking for easily.
- Your webpage should have a fresh design with up-to-date features and an easy-to-use user interface (UI).
- Speed is one of the main things that everyone should be focused on; every visitor or customer needs the information quickly. Therefore, your website should ideally load in 2.5 seconds or less and render all information quickly, even at low internet speed.
- Every customer should also feel secure on your website as a lot of information is shared online, making data security a priority.
Nailing the basics of e-commerce design
Consistent branding
You should always provide consistent brand satisfaction to your customers, so they can trust your brand and feel secure while shopping with you. The name, colors, logo, or tagline should also create a particular image about your company/shop and invoke brand recall in the customer's mind. If your brand is known to the public, they will expect your website to replicate your brand image. Make your website the same as your brand. Always dry run the website with your team before launching to avoid providing the wrong experience to the public at large. Go for personalization and omnichannel experience. Finally, ensure that your website resonates with your target audience. You are recommended to keep all of these pointers in mind while creating a new website for your business.
Responsive design
Responsive design plays a vital role in designing your e-commerce website. It helps generate more traffic and leads to a higher conversion rate. It also tends to implement a better search engine optimization strategy.
Intuitive navigation
Intelligent navigation means when people have a seamless experience while surfing through your website, bypassing the information they do not want to consume. Your e-commerce website should have all the features or services the customer expects like Saved Favorites, login ID, cart, payment options available on your website. The customer should not have a hard time finding information. Also, provide complete company details and contact information.
Clear CTAs
CTA means Call To Action. You should always create multiple call-to-actions on your e-commerce website to encourage customers to place an order or explore new products or services you provide. A CTA should be prevalent to engage more people and drive up sales. You should update CTA details regularly to have a consistent and on-time lead.
High-quality media
The experience your website provides to the consumers speaks volumes. The website should always have high-quality images or videos because it shows the grade of the services or products you offer on your website. It encourages them to order something or explore more products or services available on your website. Cost-saving in the media will show poorly on how you look forward to your products and services.
Simple, secure checkout
When customers decide to buy something on your website and add products to the cart, they should have a safe and less complicated way to finalize the order. It should be easy to create a new account or log in, and there should be easy, secure, and fast payment options to complete the order. Cash on delivery should be available if possible. Your checkout process should be designed to ensure minimum clicks to complete the order to activate immediate order placement. It is recommended to provide SSL certificates on the website. Secure Socket Layer (SSL) provides an encrypted connection between an internet server and a browser using these security procedures and certifies the website’s authenticity.
Accessibility
All the features or services should be accessible easily, like looking for something unique. Or it should be easy for them to contact the team if they have any confusion or queries related to the products or services you provided. Keep your website extremely friendly for people who have disabilities and aim for inclusivity. For example, have larger fonts, all labels must be very clear and add keyboard navigation. Go check your accessibility score now!
SEO basics
Your website should be SEO-friendly and have content embedded with keywords, meta titles, and descriptions. For instance, even if you create a website with all the latest features or services and have all the products per the market demand, one can not find it without the right SEO strategy. So, your website should always be SEO-friendly, mobile-friendly, and keyword-activated so that customers can find your business or website effortlessly.
9 Emerging trends for e-commerce web designs for 2022 and beyond
These are some of the emerging trends for e-commerce web designs:
Mobile-first designs
Your website should be thumb-friendly. Customers browsing on mobiles should easily find anything they are looking for to place an order. It is an approach where web designers first start with the product design for mobile devices. They perform this by first sketching or prototyping the web app's plans for the smallest screen. If the design and prototype work, they shift to larger screen sizes. This approach is considered helpful as most users use mobile to access e-commerce websites and apps.
Minimalism
The website should have all the needed features, but it should look minimalistic or professional from the front-end. This process helps users find the products more efficiently and lets your site load quickly. If you hold a small-scale business, then this can be a good trend to follow. It would help if you managed everything wisely from the back-end to provide all the features or services without creating any confusion or problem for the customers. The consumers are very impatient about the website loading time and don't think twice before leaving the website. Reducing the clutter can keep your consumers on your websites for longer.
Content-centric design
Customer-centric strategy starts and finishes with one goal in mind: excellent customer experiences. The customer should feel valuable on your website. The site should have helpful details about the product, such as product description, usage, manufacturing, and expiry details. It should also have consumer feedback and direction to use. Content is the backbone of the website. Without content, the website is of no use.
Augmented reality
In e-commerce web design, the usage of augmented reality aims to provide customers with an immersive environment, allowing the user to interact with items in real-time while staying in their current location. With the advancement in technology, websites can now creatively interact with consumers. For example, consumers can ask about the products and services directly. Also, they can pick the calling information from the website itself and have 100% consultancy before landing for the product or service. Furthermore, AR offers two-dimensional methods of giving out information instead of the one-dimensional traditional approach. Therefore, it makes the engagement rate go up and reduces the returns.
Chatbots
Chatbots for e-commerce serve as a powerful lead generation tool for online retailers. With this tool, anyone on your website can find the answers to their questions in seconds. It is undoubtedly one of the most utilized means on a website. You can flexibly frame the designs and questions. Chatbots are like the reception of a company that is available 24 hours. Users are now more comfortable with chatbots as they resolve all their queries from their answers.
Voice assistant integrations
Voice assistant integrations help customers find anything by voice commands on their phones or assistants to find something on your website. Voice assistants enhance the order search speed and prove very helpful to the users who didn't know how to type the product. An individual types at the rate of 30 to 35 words per minute, but with the help of voice search, they can close up to 100 words per minute. It enhances communication speed and provides quick results. It has been found in MSI’s Working Paper that consumers who use voice AI browse 13.6% more and spend about 19.5% more, which adds to $493 million in sales revenue over a year. To understand voice assistants better click here.
ML and AI for a personalized experience
With the help of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning feature, you can show the exact product which meets the expectations of the visitor or customer by tracking their history or search results.
Lead nurturing and capturing forms
Lead capture is a form on a landing page that asks the visitor to submit an email address and sometimes additional information. This helps collect data from the visitors or customers and contact them again in the future.
Faster loading designs
If your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is shorter than approximately 50% of the web. Check if your webpage loads in 1.7 seconds. It means it is faster than about 75% of the net. If your website loads in 0.8 seconds, it is shorter than approximately 94% of the web. Milliseconds matter a lot in website loading. If your webpage takes additional time to load, the customer might reverse on another website. You can't afford that to happen, of course!
Conclusion
Without a doubt, the e-commerce industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. In the future, smartphones or the internet will be made available to more people, even in remote areas of the nation. So, it is amply clear how much the industry is poised to grow.
If this is an industry you want to operate in, it is advisable to enter the drive as soon as you can. Then, all you need to make a mark is to curate a website with in-demand features such as Add to Cart, Track Order, Easy Payment options, Chatbots, Contact options, and other features discussed in this article. Check out how we designed and built a flexible e-commerce marketplace for boutiques to sell their products for Shop the Area.