The world of e-commerce is continually evolving. Every year brings new trends and ideas that allow you to more effectively capture visitors’ interest and convert that interest into sales. Keeping up with these trends is an important element in keeping your e-commerce website thriving and profitable. While there are many potential changes you can make to your website, the following five trends are some of the most current for e-commerce websites.
Storytelling
No matter where or how they are used, stories have a universal appeal. This appeal makes them an especially effective marketing tool because it allows them to capture people’s attention and persuade them to make a purchase. Largely because of its marketing power, storytelling is becoming a frequent presence on e-commerce websites.
Online marketing through the use of storytelling can be achieved in many ways. For instance, the story does not necessarily have to be spelled out through written text. Instead, a brief and carefully crafted slogan can be combined with powerful images to transform your products and services into part of a compelling story. By showing how your products and services can solve a problem or resolve a conflict for your website visitors, you create a more emotional connection between your website visitors and your brand and encourage them to purchase from you.
Large Images
Images have long played a critical role in the success of web design, both e-commerce and otherwise. Nowadays, there are two keys to successful e-commerce images. The first is that they should be large. Instead of filling your web pages with chunks of text, you should instead create a web design that focuses on large, active images and strong photos of your products. These images, when done right, allow visitors to see and enjoy your business in its most appealing light.
In addition, large backgrounds are currently serving as a particularly effective addition to e-commerce websites. Filling your background with beautiful, brand-relevant, and compelling images creates a far more engaging and persuasive feel to your site than would be possible through a bland background.
Large-Screen Optimization
A third trend among e-commerce websites is related to a growing tendency among consumers to do their online shopping on larger devices (such as televisions). These larger devices require higher-resolution images and a larger web design to effectively portray the site. As a result, current e-commerce web development must include developing a website that is suited for these larger screens.
One way to create a large-screen optimized e-commerce web design is to make it compatible with screens that have resolutions of 1920 pixels or higher. The design should also be flexible, or “responsive,” enough to also work with the smaller screens of mobile devices. This versatility should allow your site to appeal to consumers, regardless of the type of device they use.
Card-Based Layout
A card-based layout uses images and text grouped together around a single topic. Several of these cards can then appear on a single page of the website. One advantage of this type of layout is the fact that it allows visitors to more quickly view your options and find the products and services that are most relevant to their needs. By allowing consumers to more quickly navigate through your site, this increasingly popular type of layout encourages visitors to connect with and commit to your brand.
Cards can be used in a variety of ways to connect with and persuade consumers. For instance, you can create cards based on sale items, or on seasonal items. You can also use cards to quickly communicate the depth and breadth of your product offerings and to allow consumers to understand your website. The result should be a more effective way to convey the essential information of your business to your website visitors.
Dynamic Design
As a visitor navigates through your website, they want to enjoy an experience that is tailored to their shopping needs. For instance, they want to be able to quickly access product offerings, special deals, and so forth that directly relate to what they are looking for. In response to this need, e-commerce websites are increasingly adopting a dynamic website design.
A dynamic design organizes and presents the information on each web page in response to how the consumer is moving through the site. As a result, this type of design makes it easier to deliver targeted information to your visitors. When provided with this information, visitors more easily find the products and services they want and avoid information that does not relate to them.
Because of the user-friendliness of dynamic design, it is becoming one of the most popular trends in e-commerce web design today. The skills of an experienced web development company should enable you to create a website that will be as easy to use, as compelling, and as persuasive as possible.
Thoughtful Pop-Ups
You have probably experienced the annoyance and frustration of having your Internet searches interrupted by pop-up advertisements. While these pop-ups are annoying, they are also effective, especially when used prudently. In fact, they are becoming an increasingly popular trend in e-commerce web design thanks to the fact that they are particularly effective at turning website visitors into paying customers.
The key to using pop-ups successfully is to use them thoughtfully. For instance, avoid placing them on every page. Instead, reserve them for certain searches or use them to offer discounts and coupons. By doing so, you allow visitors to enjoy your deals without feeling overwhelmed by interruptions.
E-commerce web design is currently providing a number of ways to maximize your sales and conversions. In particular, by using storytelling, large images, large-screen optimization, card layouts, dynamic design, and thoughtful pop-ups, you can create a web design that allows your e-commerce website to be as profitable as possible.