The world of ecommerce web design doesn’t stay still – there are always new techniques and technologies coming on stream to guide the site design process.
Here are just some of those that you should be aware of for the coming 12 months.
1. An even greater emphasis on video
Could we possibly have any more video online than we’ve had for the last few years? You might not think so, but with the amount of video on the web continuing to edge upwards, it’s a medium that still hasn’t been explored to its full potential on ecommerce sites.
Expect the coming year to be characterised by the ever-greater prevalence of videos in the background of websites or as hero images, as well as on product pages to provide greater insight into how specific items may be used by the customer.
2. Guided selling
Guided selling involves asking shoppers questions about what kind of products they’re looking for, what features they need and how they intend to use such products, so that the customer can be directed to the items that are the best match to their needs.
It’s not an entirely new phenomenon – the chances are that you’ve already seen sites incorporating ‘selectors’ and ‘finders’ to help to narrow down the products that suit you most.
However, there’s a strong likelihood that you will see much more functionality like this on ecommerce sites as 2018 wears on.
3. More microinteractions
Microinteractions are those little details that help to make the design of a website more satisfying for the human user – the ‘like’ function on Facebook is a great example of the original microinteraction, and they’ve become ever-more numerous since then.
On an ecommerce site, a microinteraction may also occur when a user writes a review for a recently purchased product, in the form of a small animation that thanks them for the submission and encourages them to write a review for any of the other items they’ve bought from the site.
According to Dan Saffer, who wrote the book Microinteractions: Designing with Details, a microinteraction consists of four key parts. These include the trigger that initiates or begins the microinteraction, the rules defining or determining what happens in that interaction, the feedback that communicates what is happening or has just happened, and the loops and modes governing the microinteraction’s content.
Microinteractions may only just be becoming ‘big’ in the ecommerce space, but you can expect site designers to be peppering their creations with them throughout 2018.
Would you like to equip your brand with the complete feature-laden, but effortless-to-use ecommerce portal in the coming 12 months? If so, get in touch with the Piranha Designs team now to discuss how our experts in ecommerce website design can help to make it possible.
