UX/UI Trends in Ecommerce

With technology advancing, it seems like everyone from small retail businesses and large retail businesses are jumping on the ecommerce bandwagon. Customers now have the ability ­­­to shop at home or on the go and get it delivered to their door. People don’t have to go into a store anymore to buy products. The easier it can be for customers, the better business you will get. Giving the option of both a physical location and ecommerce site are your two best options.

Ecommerce Trends

 
Mobile Commerce
Mobile Apps are on the rise everywhere we look, especially with ecommerce sites. The biggest trend we are seeing right now is payments being made from smartphones. With Apple Pay, Google Wallet and PayPal emerging and allowing customers to make payments right from their mobile devices, it’s creating an easier and more sufficient way of making sales for ecommerce sites.
24/7 Shopping
Customers shop when it’s convenient for them. Whether it’s in the morning before work, during their lunch break or when they’re winding down from a busy day. Also, depending on your consumer base, you might have customers from all over the world making orders. The good thing is that you don’t have to worry about physical store hours being an inconvenience to your customers anymore. What you do have to worry about is 24/7 customer services and delivery. You can select a carrier company that allows for extended delivery times that also ships wherever in the world, if you allow that service.
Social Commerce
Social media is going to be your biggest tool to spread the word about your business. With social media marketing being a big trend right now, it’s going to be huge for motivating your customers to buy from your ecommerce store. Facebook, for example, gives you the option to find a specific target audience. You can target “likes”, gender, location, age, and more. Social media allows you to communicate with your customer directly and when you do that, you’re creating a buzz about your products or services. This creates a network for you because your customers will be sharing their thoughts and experiences about your business.
Same Day Delivery and in Store Pick-Up
Same day delivery services are a huge trend right now. A similar concept is where the customer can order a product online and collects the product from the store’s physical location depending on their location. This service is cheaper, faster and convenient. Local stores having their own ecommerce website or application have proved to be beneficial to local customers because they can order online and either get it delivered to their door or they can pick it up from the store. This trend is popular in the food industry. You don’t even have to worry about lines at the grocery store anymore. You can just order it from your mobile device and get it shipped to your door!

UX/UI Tips for Ecommerce Sites

 
Responsive Web Design
Making sure your design is responsive is really important for any site but especially for an ecommerce site. The usage of mobile devices keeps growing and isn’t slowing down any time soon. Designing a pretty website or application is great but doesn’t mean much if it’s confusing for your users to use. Make sure it’s as easy as possible for them to get the best experience for your customer.
Bigger Emphasis on Typography
We’ve mentioned the importance of typography quite a few times on our blog before. It’s just something that can’t be stressed enough. Just as content is key, displaying it as effectively with typography is just as important. Technology has made it very easy to get web fonts these days so there isn’t much excuse to not take advantage of these services. Google Fonts and Typekit are now offering a wide range of high-quality font sets at reasonable prices.
Parallax Scrolling
Parallax scrolling in general has been a huge trend lately and really amplifies your user experience. Parallax scrolling delivers a seamless content experience to visitors and also cuts down on a website’s load time. When it comes to one-page websites, there is no better design element than Parallax scrolling for delivering your content in an almost storytelling way that gets them interested. It’s a visually appealing element that will surprise and impress your customers.
Use of Icons over Text
The harsh reality is that people are lazy and don’t always like to read things. Over the last year, designers are using icons and images to represent their text and adding small amounts of text to further explain an idea. Anything that takes “less effort” to get a point across, you want to utilize it. Whether it’s in the form of an icon, image or infographic, you will get your idea across much faster to your customer. One main reason to this is because these elements will grab your customer’s attention a lot faster than a paragraph of text.
Social Login and Ease of Checkout
Making it easier for your customers to quickly checkout is critical to success. Offering services like login with social media, pay later with Paypal or Klarna are great ways to speed up the checkout process. Also making the add to cart, cart page, and checkout pages easy to use are also keys to checkout success.