Packaging is a very powerful marketing tool in the brick and mortar commerce world, and is used to encourage potential consumers to make purchases. On the internet, the role of packaging is rather amplified. You are no longer simply concerned with the packaging of your product, but that of your ecommerce website too.
Also, on the internet, you are faced with tougher competition and an audience that grows more difficult to impress as the years go by. This stresses the need for online store owners to become more innovative in the way they present their products and services to consumers. According to Brian Hong from Infintech Designs, online storeowners must now consider packaging on various levels, especially how their websites and products appear to consumers on various devices.
If you own, or are about to set up an ecommerce site and are wondering what design trends to specify to your web designer to help you transcend competition and set your website and products apart to consumers, these seven design trends of 2016 are for you.
- Large Typography
The use of large typography is a powerful way to make a bold statement. It brings focus to the featured image or video, which is usually about a new product or the brand identity of the e-commerce site. As soon as a consumer lands on the e-commerce site, they are exposed to the image or video, and this could very well lead to a purchase.
- Material Design
Developed by Google in 2014, the Material Design has continued to grow in popularity among website owners and more among e-commerce sites, and the trend doesn’t seem to slow down. With its use of grid-based layouts and responsive animations and transitions, it’s perfect for displaying products on e-commerce sites in a way that is simple and clear to the end user.
- Animations in Design
Animations are great, and we enjoy them because they tell stories, and we all love a good story. Imagine the experience of viewing a product in animated form. The fact that it’s perhaps, in a rotating motion allows you to view all sides of it. Therefore, if you are looking to engage consumers and inspire them to make purchases on your ecommerce website, it’s high time you start creatively injecting animations into your design. E-commerce sites like Nixon and Fleet Feet Sports are using animations to engage their consumers, and they are thriving.
- Storytelling in Designs
Speaking about how everyone loves a good story, there is nothing more evocative than a visually striking content arrangement. Stories make you think and feel. They inspire you. Although such designs are hard to pull off and require much creativity, it blends great images and vectors with a few strategic words to pass deep messages that would have expended thousands of words in the text form. E-commerce sites like Greats and Bonobos leverage storytelling to entice their consumers.
- Large-Screen Responsive
Every website owner already understands the importance of having a responsive design. The years 2015 and 2016 have seen the percentage of internet usage on mobile devices surpass that of internet usage on desktop computers. This has forced businesses to make their sites mobile responsive. New trends are developing and devices of various sizes are sprouting up. There are smart TVs everywhere. This stresses the need to not only optimise your e-commerce website for mobile, but for higher resolution devices too.
- Card-like Layouts
This is similar to the Material Design, but a tad simpler. With simplified navigation and great division of content in card-like forms, this design is popular among many e-commerce sites and is ideal for getting consumers to notice a particular collection. The banner card can even be used for sales announcement. It is very popular among other site types and is easy to make responsive.
- Long Scroll
Mobile devices have made the idea of long scrolls easy for internet users to identify with. Scrolling just feels natural, and websites that leverage that design usually focus on engagement through storytelling and interactivity. The goal is to keep site visitors on the page. In the case of Nasa Prospect, which makes good use of this design, the background music of the site even changes as your scroll down the seemingly unending page.
An e-commerce website can get creative with this design, by displaying the newest products and personalised recommendations at the top of the page to various customers based on the products they viewed or bought in the past. To get a good idea of what a long scroll design looks like, here is a list of sites that make use of it.
The Design of your e-commerce website is the first aspect of the site that consumers notice, thus you need to make a great first impression. If you make the wrong impression, you risk losing potential customers. Therefore, always hire a designer that understands the latest trends and can integrate that understanding with their skills and your brand to produce a design that speaks to your customers.