The internet is definitely the biggest marketplace these days. Lots of companies leverage it to increase their businesses. Even more are gradually setting up websites to establish their foothold in the web world. And for businesses who deal with products, the internet is turning out to be a great place to sell those. All they need to do is create an ecommerce portal from where the products can be showcased and sold effectively.
The ecommerce portals need to be designed prudently. A few trends are expected to emerge, which are likely to shape the ecommerce web design for 2015.
Here’s a quick look at some of them.
#1. Almost Flat Design
Flat design is all set to rule the world of web design in the coming years. The ecommerce websites are going to be no exception as well. Like any other example of flat design, the ecommerce websites will have a minimalistic approach. The focus will be more on usability and less on appearance. The navigation will be simple and the website should be:
- Clean
- Crisp
- Bright
- Two dimensional
The design will not be using small, real-life pictures of different objects, such as phonebooks, calendars, and others. Instead, the use of images that resemble icons is going to become more and more popular. Besides, the use of drop shadows or call-to-action buttons is going to make it meet the ‘less is more’ approach, which is the need of the hour.
#2. UX Effects and Transitions
When a customer is visiting your ecommerce website to view or purchase a product, you need to ensure that they do not leave midway. There might be a number of ways to do that. But you have to ensure that the purchasing experience of the customers are excellent. Only then you can expect them to return to the site.
Among the major web design trends that are expected to make the purchasing experience better is micro UX effects and transitions. Some of the most effective utilizations of this form of web design trend lie in offering animated transitions in the website that the users least expected. For your potential customers, this is likely to create a frictionless experience. The indelible impact of the micro transitions is sure to add to it. Some of the most common uses of UX effects and micro transitions lie in:
- Creation of hover effects
- Sliding boxes in flat design
- Simple slide-out or vertical menu
- Product details in thumbnails
These designs are likely to decrease the bounce rate for your ecommerce website and, in turn, drive the business.
To make the user experience in a website better, navigation has to be world-class. It makes no sense to have a navigation, which the users won’t be able to comprehend and leave from the landing page itself. Instead, you need to create a design that ensures easy navigation from one page of the ecommerce website to another, thus giving the potential customers a detailed view of the products offered.
To make the navigation interesting, it is important to go for something that attracts the users. And what can be more attractive than an image? These days, a large number of sites are using images to create tiled navigation. The image tiles with graphics of different elements of the website are sure to make it easier for the website visitors to navigate without getting lost.
The use of tiled navigation in the design of ecommerce websites is likely to be in line with the upcoming trend of web design as a whole where visual content will gain ground.
#4. Parallax Scrolling to Help Increase Focus on Products
Parallax scrolling is all set to become extremely important in the field of web design in 2015. It will also play a major role in ecommerce web design as well. In this, the background images of the web page will scroll slower than what are there on the foreground. So, the viewers will be able to focus more on the products that have been placed on the foreground.
#5. Going Beyond the Responsive Experience of Smartphones
Responsive web design gained ground over the last few years. Its use was primarily driven by the emergence of laptops, smartphones and other internet-friendly devices, which helped the process of surfing the websites to go beyond personal computers.
These days, different smart gadgets, such as smart televisions, home appliances, and others are also becoming increasingly popular among the users. When it comes to viewing the ecommerce websites on these smart devices, the site designs have to be completely changed.
So, the ecommerce websites need to be designed in such a way that they are perfectly visible and navigable on all the smart devices.
#6. Thinking Out of the Box
Creativity has always been one of the most important forte of well-designed web pages. It is likely to remain so in future as well. This will hold true for the ecommerce web designs for 2015 also. Hence, visual storytelling and unique content are all set to capture the audience. So, it is important that you include both of these in a creative manner while designing the ecommerce website.
With new trends appearing in the field of ecommerce web design, purchasing online is expected to become a better experience in 2015. Companies are likely to follow and implement many of these trends, in turn, making it a better online purchasing experience for the customers. This will also help to drive the sales in a significant manner.
Images: ”e-commerce and business concept signs – text and symbols in 3d blue glass cubes with white letters/ Shutterstock.com“
__________________________________________________________________________________
Connect with Tweak Your Biz:
Would you like to write for Tweak Your Biz?
Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month [See our review of 2014 for more detailed information].
An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.
