The online shopping experience has changed drastically over the past decade, with changes in design and UX leading to new opportunities for retailers and consumers alike.
Moreover, 2022 has been a big year for e-commerce, with tons of new platforms and design styles; however, 2023 seems to be a promising year for the industry.
To stay ahead of the competition, eCommerce business owners must know the latest trends that might affect their success.
In this article, we’ll explore the nine most important eCommerce design trends in 2023, so you can make better decisions when it comes to improving the design of your eCommerce website.
1. Interactive Shopping Experience
Interactive shopping experiences will be one of the top eCommerce design trends in 2023, helping retailers to engage customers during their buying journey.
But what does an interactive experience mean? It means delivering your consumers a shopping experience that is meaningful, personalized, aesthetically pleasing, and stimulating.
While the number of people who prefer online shopping is increasing, over 47% of Gen Z customers and Millennials are still interested in the in-store experience.
To attract these consumers, online retailers should focus on incorporating features like augmented reality, interactive signage, and intelligent mirrors to offer an interactive shopping experience to consumers.
2. Vaporwave Aesthetics
Source: edz.neocities.org
A simple logo and a website are not enough anymore. Websites must have a unique personality.
The following fantastic and outstanding eCommerce web design trend is called vaporwave aesthetics. Nowadays, a vaporwave aesthetic has rapidly evolved into a new pop culture that embraces the contemporary web.
The most common characteristics of a vaporwave style in web design include psychedelic backgrounds, neon tones, vintage typography and old-school, retro gradients, bold palette, abstract forms, and instant rise of antique sculptures.
Furthermore, the aesthetic is easy to get behind: It focuses on art as a source of self-expression, whether drawing your style or collecting other people’s work. It’s also about showing off your individuality and creativity.
3. Micro Animations
Micro animations will be one of the innovative and powerful ways to achieve a good user experience in 2023.
Micro animations let you explain many things through visual representations without using words. E-retailers are increasingly implementing micro-animations to design their online stores and make them more appealing and memorable for customers.
Micro animations are a great way to improve and create a positive user experience and drive them to focus on specific areas of a page.
Also, incorporating micro animation effects to design eCommerce websites makes user navigation effective and offers helpful visual feedback.
4. Chatbots
Chatbots are often designed to be used as a first-contact mechanism between businesses and their customers.
They can respond to frequently asked questions and even create support tickets automatically.
For these reasons, online shoppers are increasingly interacting with chatbots. They provide a lot of automation and user engagement.
Furthermore, customers, these days expect 24/7 customer support. Also, they do not like to wait for the resolution of their queries or issues.
With an increase in the number of e-commerce companies adopting chatbots, the conversion of AI chatbots will also improve in terms of design and functionality. Eventually, interactive AI may set new standards for customer experience.
So, if you want to keep your e-commerce business ahead of the curve, using a chatbot to interact with your customers instantaneously will be a significant investment.
5. Dark/Light Mode
Google’s Search Dark Theme
Dark/Light mode is a feature that highly authoritative websites have been implementing lately. In short, it allows users to change between light or dark modes.
By allowing users to change between a light or dark theme, you can enhance the readability of your online store.
The right mode depends on the level of external illumination. It allows users to see and distinguish all the important details on a website, making it noticeable and accessible.
But why? Well, imagine you’re trying to work with the light in your room turned off; that’s why dark mode is useful because fonts and colors are much easier to read and less heavy on the eyes.
6. Lightning-Fast Websites
According to Google, The probability of bounce increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.
Lightning-fast websites are the new standard for eCommerce businesses. When your customers can’t wait to find what they’re looking for and get to the checkout process, you know you’ve got a winner.
Fast websites are designed with every small detail in mind, from a lightweight theme to optimized media files.
So, what measures can you take to fasten your website? Here are a few simple yet effective ways:
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CND)
- Use a fast hosting
- Optimize your images and enable lazy loading
- Reduce the number of plugins to the essential
- Minimize CSS and JavaScript files
- Implement website caching
- Implement Gzip compression
- Reduce the number of 301 redirects
With a fast website, you can spend less time worrying about your website’s performance and more time growing your business. But that’s not all; these are some of the benefits of having a fast website:
- Enhanced user-experience
- Better SEO
- More website conversions
- More traffic, less bounce rate
7. Centered Navigation Menus
Most websites followed the classic pattern when styling menus in the top left corner of the page.
However, centered navigation is becoming a popular practice among eCommerce web developers, as it is minimalist and innovative.
It is a great way to attract your visitor’s attention to your menu and increase their time on your website.
8. Minimalism
Source: www.owloptics.com
Minimalist site designs are simple and clear, which makes them easy to navigate. No other type of material is as confusing as cluttered text links. The website’s results are arranged in a stunning, readable layout.
Pop-up windows are minimized from minimalist websites. To mitigate a website down to its most essential elements, designers should accept a cascading of repercussions that affect both the user interface (UI) and the website’s content.
Most of the time, minimalism has been adopted along with several visual design traits frequently linked with it because they support the minimalist’s primary approach particularly effectively.
9. Navigation With Page Transitions
Page transitions are a way to visually show that you’re moving from one page to another. They can be used when you want users to feel like they’re moving between pages.
For example, if you’re creating an app that lets people order food, you might want to use page transitions to show them how their order is processed.
Or maybe you have a blog post and want your readers to know when they’ve reached the end of it so they can click the “next” or “back” buttons.
Conclusion
The eCommerce industry has seen tremendous uplift in the past few years. With eCommerce design trends evolving every year, the future of this industry seems bright.
While it’s hard to keep up with ever-changing trends, there’s no other way to achieve success in the cut-throat competition.
