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The ecosystem of consumer eCommerce is largely driven by the form of price and convenience, which is a good ideal regarding the offers on products that are delivered quickly. A smaller but growing number of consumers are starting to want more from e-commerce, for example, wanting the ability to discover unique goods which they will not find in big-box retail chains, considering shopping from brands that resonate with them, more millennial-focused websites and brands, hip yet intransigent products.
Down the lane next 5 years, a few of these fundamental desires will still exist, but consumer expectations of the eCommerce experience will have changed drastically, along with the shopping experience. It is absolutely safe to say that the desire for instant access or instant gratification and fast turnaround, 24/7, will be the norm by 2025-2026, driven in particular by millennials and also by Generation Z consumers.
The Gen-Z are digital natives to the power of 10. The use of technology is their second nature. They are constantly connected and inhabit an online environment where events happen in real-time without them having to wait, and where social media enables them to dictate terms. They have been around applications, websites, and software that are modern. The colors, themes, typography, language, and content that has been around have become a part of their life.
If one needs to attract these customers, Gen-Z, websites today need to speak a similar language. Talking about which, let’s get to the topic of today.
eCommerce Design Trends for 2022
Talking about design trends, dark mode, accessibility, and simple layouts with plenty of white space may be among the most popular eCommerce design trends for 2022.
Most of the eCommerce professionals today believe that 2022 will have a few significant design-specific trends.
Let’s dive into some of the most noteworthy eCommerce Design trends that will rule in 2022.
Dark Mode
As the name suggests, this mode switches the background of a mobile operating system to black, thus reducing eye strain in most environments, enabling mobile devices to better adjust to ambient lighting conditions. Also, in order to display a black screen, the black pixels on a mobile phone are turned off, thereby extending the battery life.
Apple had introduced “dark mode” this year in iOS 13. Google had added its dark mode in Android 10.
In response to this, mobile app developers and designers at social media sites, and everyone in the design community churned out “dark mode” versions of their apps and websites.
The dark mode is bound to become ubiquitous in 2020, extending its roots to eCommerce website development services and app interfaces.
There could be ‘dark mode’ toggles at the top of popular retail sites and eCommerce apps that inherit dark mode settings from the operating system in the future.
Accessibility
A bill called ‘The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, along the lines with the same year the World Wide Web was invented. At that time, hardly 15 percent of households owned a computer, and the requirement of removing barriers was intended to facilitate access to physical places of public accommodations.
Today, websites offer products and services to customers online. Also, businesses are increasingly getting hit by lawsuits alleging that their content is not accessible.
So, in order to avoid implementing features that are hard to use or are incompatible with devices required by users with disabilities, designers will need to ensure that sites are following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
These guidelines introduce some restrictions like using proper contrast and captioning videos. But, they will not impact user experience nor restrict creativity. With WCAG, designers will be able to incorporate new visual trends that speak of inclusiveness as the digital and eCommerce landscape evolves.
Effectively, designing for accessibility will be important for two reasons. First, it will help eCommerce companies better serve shoppers with disabilities. Second, designing for accessibility could help businesses avoid lawsuits.
Increased Minimalism
There are certain eCommerce sites that will seek to simplify or minimize site navigation and layout. This process helps in emphasizing a product’s function and features instead of using lots of filters and widgets. This will curb design intrusion on websites.
Over the years, in order to stand out among the crowd and be unique, website designers and entrepreneurs started adding more and more content, not realizing that the website was getting overpopulated and cluttered.
We may see that in the coming year, some sites will update their designs in order to meet consumers where they are and not just in the sense of across devices or experiences, but also within a given shopping experience.
As mentioned earlier, these trends will target more millennial and Gen-Z customers. You will notice that some of the more forward-thinking segments of the industry like anybody that sells CBD [cannabidiol, from cannabis] are more inclined towards keeping their website simple and crisp.
Minimal design and simplification have the potential to generate more white space, relatively larger fonts, and simple navigation.
Furthermore, a minimalistic design of the website can help you generate eye-catching content with a greater focus on the products. There’s no hustle-bustle on your website and you are straight into your product description, explaining its features, benefits, and why one must use them. After all, that is what most customers need. Following a minimalistic design has also increased the number of website visitors.
This is because a simple website layout is less confusing for your customers and even the ones not so tech-savvy can venture them. If a simple layout can do your work, why complicate it and scare away potential customers?
Content-centric Design
Simplifying eCommerce site design could also drive some businesses to focus relatively more attention on content and deliver more of it.
The world we live in is content-driven. Content rules today. eCommerce knows the importance too well and is focusing more on content-centric design.
Using headless product-information management systems could make it relatively easy to bring product data and content to other applications or to rich features.
Use of contrasting colors
Using a palette of contrasting colors for your website might enhance its aesthetics. Gone are the days of multicolored web pages that can make your website look less professional. Instead, following a uniform color scheme with contrasting colors help you generate greater engagement. Make sure you use a combination of dark and light colors to add a touch of minimalism and aesthetics to your website.
Contrasting colors can also help you highlight specific pages or areas of your website where you aim to maximize your customers’ engagement. Thus, the chances of your customers missing out on important notifications or deals are seldom in such a color code.
Diverse payment modes
While e-commerce sites have attempted to increase their accessibility by creating a user-friendly site for their customers, they have also included diverse payment options. Customers need not worry about paying through a specific medium. In fact, you can pay for your items through different cards and online payments like UPI, net banking, and much more.
The inclusion of diverse payment modes has also eradicated the need for paying in cash when the items are delivered, thereby reducing money transactions. The diverse payment modes have increased the number of customers visiting a site as they can now pay in their preferred mode. Thus, individuals unable to use online payments can use their cards, or pay in cash.
Real-time delivery tracking
You can now check the status of your order as soon as you place it. E-commerce sites notify you of the delivery date the moment you place the order and send you notifications regarding the same. You can also track your delivery valet as soon as they are out for delivering your items.
Gone are the days when you were unsure of the date of delivery for your items. Most e-commerce sites have implemented real-time tracking features to improve their customer support. Such features have also increased overall customer satisfaction and improved the customer shopping experience.
Conclusion
What technologies are going to have a transformative influence, and what technologies are just hype? How will the e-commerce value chain evolve, and what will be the impact that this will have on online and physical retail? These are some of the questions one should regularly ask in order to adapt and change with time.
eCommerce is huge, unimaginably huge. Those who think that market is saturated needs to look at it from a different perspective. There are still ample opportunities for anyone who has the willingness to innovate, rethink, reengineer the existing paradigm.
