E-Commerce Design Trends For 2018
Predicting the future of E-commerce design is a challenging task as the trends today might become unpopular tomorrow.
No one knows what’s going to rule the world but we can always go through the current state of web design for E-commerce sites to analyze and predict what the current and future state will be and how to grow its importance.
Some few years back, the trend was to create beautiful desktop websites and then the design become responsive and adaptive for mobile and tablet devices but now the trend has shifted once more.
Web designers for E-commerce website need to think mobile first – that means the website to be designed are for mobile first and then they are made responsive and adaptive for bigger screens like a desktop. When planning for mobile responsive design, factors that should be considered includes large images, buttons, icons and hidden menu bars.
Here are some E-commerce Website Trends for 2018
1. Images and Lots of them
Images remain the fastest way to grab your customer’s attention. A site with lots of images can show off lots of products and services that customers are looking for in 2018.
The text is important and it helps with SEO but when you have images, you tend to keep more customers as users can stick around and browse through your products.
Too much text on an E-commerce site will drive visitors away. Recent research shows that 92.6% of people feel that the visuals are the most influential factor affecting a purchase decision. Store owners have less than 7 seconds to make a great first-time impression to new time visitors and the way to do it is by using great images.
2. Evolution of semi-flat design trends
Flat design has had its ups and downs but it has largely been a great hit in 2017 and it is loved by a lot of people all across the globe.
Its popularity has started to dwindle though as there appears to be a shift towards semi-flat design. Semi flat design makes the designing more engaging, visually more beautiful and attractive and user experience wise, more usable.
However, this web design trend keeps the simplicity, functionality, and style of flat design. We can expect more changes in this area in 2018.
3. Evolving of Material Design
Introduced by Google in 2014 on Android devices, the material design has increased in popularity across the internet and it has helped a lot of brands establish an identity on the internet.
Today, many stores have also adopted the design on their stores including the use of rapid and responsive animations, transitions and card-like layouts. As more online stores continue to try out material design, it will continue to evolve and its popularity will grow. This will hugely benefit E-commerce stores.
4. Long scroll with lazy loading
Long page scroll designs are going to dominate in 2018 even with the limitations placed on how it operates.
It could be difficult to continue clicking the next page especially when browsing through a mobile site, but the speed and ease of flow it brings mean it makes more sense to add more products to the current view page rather than loading a new page from both the performance and page loading view. We believe this will only increase in 2018 as more pages will use this feature.
5. Rich animations
The most important element in web design trend will continue to be the use of images and we expect this to remain the same for the foreseeable future but there is no doubt that you might also see a little bit of animation here and there.
Video animations, GIFs or cinemagraphs are becoming popular all over the internet and it’s only a matter of months before they find their way into e-commerce stores.
We believe that embedding rich animations into your online store will enable you to create an unforgettable users experience that your visitors will rave about and will increase conversions.
Animations and cinemagraphs may appear in headers to motion graphic demos, 360 videos of products, background images, homepage banners, product images and much more. Get ready for more animations and cinemagraphs in 2018!
6. Hand drawn elements
This has been gaining tractions over the years and we believe 2018 is the year it makes its entry into eCommerce. hand drawn elements are being used in business blogs and for B2B companies as the first choice for icons, banners and sometimes for logos.
We predict they will become more popular in 2018. Incorporating hand-drawn elements in websites is a great way of conveying your brand’s originality as well as giving your customer a customized note about your brand.
It creates a strong impact on your customers and makes your brand unforgettable. So, get out of those boring same images for your logos, icons, and banners. Design different and be different with unique hand-drawn elements.
7. Hamburgers on the left
Using Hamburger menus is not a new thing in the world of e-commerce. We believe its upward trend will continue far into 2018 and you might have begun seeing this already and we know that it’s commonly used by designers who favor the Bootstrap nav 3 framework for building their sites.
It’s often placed on the menu but in 2018, we predict that might be a change in the placement as it could shift to the left. Google and other top technology sites have already started placing their menus on the left side on the site. This was done to ensure it is the first thing the user sees when they visit the site. It will shake the world of web design in a matter of months this year.
8. Large and Flexible Typography
As with the previous 3 years, 2018 is going to be a year where large and flexible typography will take center stage on many devices – from the smallest of mobiles to the large screen monitors.
Using a large typeface sends a powerful and assertive message to the customers and this often has an impact on readability and user experience. You should incorporate it into your E-commerce site if you haven’t already.
With the increasing number of customers making their purchase through their mobile devices, you should make sure that your website has larger typography easily readable from any mobile devices. This will not only help you build a strong brand identity but, will also attract your potential customers towards your products.
9. Bright colors
This is so important and it has already begun in 2018. We should expect to see an explosion of bright colors in designs.
More eCommerce sites will focus on audience demographics and they will analyze users based on their specific age group from the rest of the audience that visits the sites and uses the color that matches the preferences on the sites.
The color schemes as well will attract new shoppers as there will be an explosion of colors on the website screens.
