What Design Features Does Your Ecommerce Portal Lack in 2021?
If you want to update your ecommerce portal design, study this guide to find out about top features for 2021 and make your portal more advanced.
Having a smooth-running ecommerce portal is only half the battle. The other crucial part is its design.
Back in the pre-pandemic times, the significance of the visual components was slightly underestimated. Today we have a somewhat different situation: ecommerce is a lifeline for consumers and business owners, where portal design is as important as the site performance. Indeed, almost 60% of people prefer to engage with a visually pleasing website.
Addressing the needs of discerning customers and the fierce competition in the ecommerce market requires advanced solutions. These solutions should also incorporate a cutting-edge visual ecommerce portal layout. It is an effective way to increase a market share along with growing the targeted audience.
For the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, it is advisable to tailor ecommerce portal design according to the following trends.
Trendy Ecommerce Portal Design Features
Augmented reality and 3D modeling
The gap between physical and digital reality is becoming increasingly blurred. To take the interactive customer experience one step further, 3D modeling and augmented reality (AR) can be a great choice.
With a virtual store in place, your customers will be able to immerse themselves into real-time product presentations and try-ons, raising the value of your ecommerce portal. This way your customers can use a 360-degree view, explore every angle of a product and make an informed purchasing decision.
Hyper-personalization
The shift towards personalization in portal design is well-explained: such an approach is highly valued by demanding customers for whom a one-size-fits-all experience is a thing of the past. The individual approach allows tailoring customers’ experience to their needs, expectations, and demands.
Improved loyalty, relevant product recommendations, more convertible CTA are some features that can be integrated during portal designing.
Advanced chatbots
Unlike aesthetics and colors, chatbots are challenging to categorize as a design component, yet they fall into a unified portal concept. Moreover, an advanced chatbot is an indispensable feature for medium and large businesses.
Chatbot development has been advancing by leaps and bounds through the implementation of machine learning in ecommerce, and today's high-tech chatbots can ensure a more profound personalization level, which digitally savvy customers highly appreciate as they expect round-the-clock service, individual approach, and prompt interaction.
An AI-driven chatbot can also streamline workflows by providing customers with the latest information about discounts and shipping processes, deliver notifications and assist in making an informed purchasing decision.
Multidirectional design
The 2020 tendency towards unconventional grid layout has evolved today into an even more unorthodox solution—multidirectional design.
This approach to design processing has become more popular with the emergence of mobile-first design. With this feature, users are free to scroll through a multi-product gallery left, right, diagonally, forwards, and backwards.
If a multidirectional design application is used correctly, your portal is sure to look extraordinary, creating an interactive shopping experience and flexibility in web navigation.
Vaporwave aesthetics
Also known as anti-consumerist electronic music, vaporwave has evolved into a visual art style combining surrealism and futurism. In design, it resembles a mix of retro styles ranging from the 60s to 90s.
The vaporwave aesthetics trend is widely apparent in website design as it appears to be a new way of looking at things and at design itself. This style is still evolving and is complemented with new elements, helping brands stand out from the crowd.
Portal design in the vaporware style implies:
- Japanese typography of the 60s and 70s
- Neon colors with pink hues
- Preference for gradient colors
- Low-resolution visuals with graining
- Glitch art
- Adding of Roman sculptures
If your product message allows you to apply the vaporwave aesthetic or several details, your portal is likely to resonate with your audience as super trendy and unconventional.
Engaging animation
Nifty page transitions have been at the forefront of design in recent years, as it makes shopping journeys a lot more exciting and engaging for customers. However, be it a micro animation of the CTA button or an animated page transition, it is better to consider your product message and insert motion appropriately.
Conclusion
There is no absolute answer as to what approach to take when it comes to ecommerce portal design or redesign.
Whether it will be bright colors or pastel tones, ubiquitous animation or several animated page transitions, multidirectional design or a classic one, the main thing is to engage portal visitors and convert them into loyal customers. Taking into account their high demands, your engagement strategy should be well thought out. Hopefully, the list of trends above will serve as your guide.