According to Statista, global e-commerce sales reached $1.86 trillion in 2016. Annual e-commerce sales are expected to increase to nearly $4.5 trillion by 2021. With online shopping being such a popular activity, it’s important for e-commerce retailers to keep up with the latest web design trends.
Online stores now offer a wide range of services and they sell just about every product you can think of. From high-end things like land, vacation homes and luxury vehicles to smaller products like q-tips and toothbrushes, you can find almost anything for sale online. With such a wide variety of goods and services being sold over the Internet, it’s crucial for a web designer to know which trends should be incorporated into a given website design depending on the nature of the goods or services the website sells and its intended audience.
E-Commerce Trends to Watch in 2018
In the not-so-distant past, many people made purchases online from their homes or offices using a desktop or laptop. With mobile now accounting for the majority of online consumption, it’s only natural that more and more people are using their mobile phones and tablets to make purchases when they’re out and about.
With e-commerce becoming increasingly mobile, it’s likely that web designers will roll out a greater number of apps specifically for buying and selling online in the years to come. Regardless of whether you’re going to hire an app designer to make an app for your e-commerce outlet, you still have to adapt your website to today’s mobile world by making your site mobile-friendly.
To make your website mobile-friendly, it’s advisable to use responsive web design. This approach uses page layouts that are fluid and flexible enough for your pages to adapt in accordance with the device or the size of the browser that’s being used to view them. Because it enables your website to be viewed properly using just about any kind of device or a device of any size, responsive web design eliminates the need to have separate websites for mobile users and people shopping on a desktop.
While adopting responsive web design is a leading trend for e-commerce in 2018, it’s far from the only one influencing web design in the e-commerce industry. Here are some of the other trends that will remain apparent throughout 2018 and, quite likely, the years ahead:
Hamburger Menus
A hamburger menu is a smart way to hide and unhide a menu on a website as necessary. This kind of menu is normally identified by three horizontal lines. To see the menu, you just have to press the three lines. To hide the menu, simply press the bars again. Incorporating hamburger menus on your e-commerce website is a great way to vastly improve the experience people will have when they shop at your online store.
Maximized Efficiency
As far as e-commerce is concerned, it’s important for a web designer to maximize the efficiency of a site by only loading what’s necessary on a page. Instead of listing every men’s shirt your online store sells, your website should only load the first 10 shirts or so. If a visitor scrolls to the bottom of that list, your site should then load more products for the person to see. By maximizing your website’s efficiency, your site will be much more attractive to mobile shoppers, particularly those with limited data plans.
Increased Personalization
While responsive web design enables your website to adjust to the device someone’s using, increased personalization that allows a website to adapt to a particular user is a trend that’s gaining a lot of traction given recent advances in technology. If a visitor is left-handed, a website can move certain elements to the other side of the page. If a user has poor vision, a website can adjust the size of its products and text accordingly so they’re easier to see.
If you need a web designer that’s intimately familiar with the latest e-commerce web design trends, you’ve found it in JLB Florida because we offer a full suite of e-commerce web design services. Learn what we can do for your business in our role as an e-commerce web designer now.
