Ecommerce Web Design Trends for 2018

An e-commerce business is not successful for just the products or services it sells or how well it markets them, but by the way, it designs its websites for user’s ease of access, functionality, and features. When you are starting out as an e-commerce business or one that is already set up shop in the World Wide Web, then you need to remember that you are right away competing with the well-established businesses that preceded you. You cannot just be famous by being the new kid on the block, the first things that users of your website will look for are how you have aesthetically designed it, how you connect with them, and ultimately how your e-commerce website appeals to them. To drive that appeal to the user, you need to ensure that your website is not simply a page with tools, but has the required administrative features that are embedded naturally into your business process. Customers enjoy innovation and creativity, and these are driving factors that can increase their affluence towards your business. Some of the top trends that are key to driving customer satisfaction and influencing sales are:

Guided selling

There is the no bigger joy for a customer than a website that has an interactive website that perks up the interest and picks out the right list of items they are looking for based on their selected preference. Guided selling makes it all the more interesting as it is more than a filter option and a shorter more attractive form of a form where a customer is asked to choose and navigate through the website with ease. A good example of guided selling is found on Victoria’s secret page for selecting a sports bra.

Micro-interactions

The best examples of micro-interactions are the like button that pops up when clicked on in Facebook, and the payment success symbol that opens up when your payment has fallen through on the modern day payment portals. Having plenty of apt micro interaction features in an e-commerce website definitely encourages the user to be more interactive and actively participate in adding items to a shopping cart, subscribe to a service, or provide feedback. According to the author Dan Saffer, Microinteractions, there are four main parts to a micro interaction:

• A trigger that initiates or begins the micro-interaction.
• Rules that define or determine what happens in the interaction.
• Feedback communicates what is happening or what just happened.
• Loops and modes which govern, if you will, the content.

Using product pages as landing pages

The reason Apple Store’s landing page designs are mystically beautiful is that its web pages are designed with simple yet catchy descriptions to products, enhanced levels of photography, and the compelling placement of the call to action. Websites today are more focused on linking the landing pages to the product sale page as they have become an essential element of CRO. The best way to capture a customer’s attention is to set up cluster free landing pages that have relevant and concise content on a clean landing page design with an inviting and intriguing call to action feature. There is no better tool to drive sales when you can give the customer a mystical experience of shopping online.

Full-screen Search, Forms

Modals that are controlled typically with a script and overlaid as a cover over the page’s elements has been an effective user interface medium for quite some time. The only change that has modified the trend is that these models are now full-screen so that both the mobile and computer web design are similar for the search and forms features, and this seemingly captures the full attention of the user.

Material design and Card UI layouts

These two features are forming the face of most e-commerce web design and development is due to the seamless and engaging user experience that this layout provides. One of the best ways to improve brand recall and awareness is by adapting material designs that have a smooth and easy to access grid layout with customized transitions, shadow effects, and animations. More importantly, the material design is integral to increasing store level activity and engaging customers efficiently. Card UI layout is a sub-feature of material design and is the success factor of Pinterest’s appeal to visitors. The three key factors that drive the success of Card UI layouts are readability, responsive web design, and development to create the perfect fit for social media dominant store layouts.

When you build your web design to improve user experience, the end result is better site visits and a drive in overall sales. The change of a user to an active buyer depends on how far you can engage them onto your site and improve brand recall.

How to Design More Engaging Website Layouts

The traditional reading pattern is typical left to right in a row pattern. Internet users mostly scan web pages, omitting many words. In 2006, NN Group conducted eye-tracking visualizations on various web pages such as ‘about us’ pages, product, and the search results page. They found that users typically read web pages in the following manner: two full horizontal stripes followed by a vertical movement.

That is roughly an F-shaped pattern. The implication of this reading behavior has extensively influenced website design.

Incorporating F-Pattern into Landing Page Designing

In the course of designing a webpage, the UX designer should factor in the user’s reading behavior patterns to create an engaging landing page. Creating a visual hierarchy can help businesses to convert the users into potential customers at a quicker pace.

The F-Pattern design works best for pages that are text driven like blog posts, news articles, search result pages etc.  F – Pattern can also be used to create impressive landing pages so that the most important elements are exactly where your visitors are most likely to focus on them.

Keep in mind that viewers’ eyes will almost always start in the top left corner of the page before scanning the rest of the page. For example, if you need to incorporate a countdown for an offer, ensure to place it on the top left section. Then, design the rest of your landing page with a clear visual hierarchy and a flow that generates more conversions.

Getting the Landing Page Prepped in Tandem with F-Pattern

To avoid losing the interest of the reader, the UX designer must direct the flow of content appropriately, so that users will not take any bad shortcuts, but will stay interested in your page, and come back for more if they find the business reliable.

Basics for integrating F-Pattern into the landing pages are:

1. Highlight the content.

Once you have the content at hand, arrange them in the order of most to least important. This way, when structuring the page layout, the UX designer can place the priority content in usual hotspots and the remaining content where it is not a hindrance to the user.

2. Concentrate at the top of the page.

When a landing page opens, the user’s eyes are first directed towards the header and the first two paragraphs of content. Focus on the inverted pyramid style of organizing content and give the intrinsic details at the very beginning so that a user can get caught up on the page and then move down at their own pace rather than be disappointed to find nothing of relevance at the beginning of the page.

3. Focus on the scanning component rather than reading.

For introducing scanning content, the UX designer has to have the first few sentences of each paragraph contain the crux of the details, use side headings, use point format, highlight words, incorporate visual aids, etc.

4. Make use of the sidebars.

By setting up sub-landing pages that can help a user navigate to relevant content, a reader will be interested to use your content as a base source for delving further. This adds to the interactive tool concept because users don’t want too much content, but if they want more related info, then you can give them the options to choose from.

5. Don’t stick to an aesthetically flawed layout.

The visualization should not be monotonous or have jarring colors. Harmonize the page with the relevance of the content, and spice it up interesting tags so that a user is not made to see some jarring visualization but rather gets the optimum results out of your landing page.

The use of F-Pattern is just to smooth out the user experience on the page, and there are many other ways to do it. The effective use of this pattern coupled with the right creative tools can appeal to users faster than raw unprocessed or unplanned content. So the first step to meeting user expectation is making content user-friendly.