More and more consumers use ecommerce websites for buying products, ordering services, reading recommendations, and making right decisions. No wonder that more and more people use mobile devices for it.
It’s interesting, 51% of Americans prefer online shopping and 49% – offline. It seems like eCommerce websites will become more convenient and more popular year by year. But the higher the number of online stores goes, the more intense the competition for attracting potential customers gets. To stay competitive, one needs to follow ecommerce trends.
We prepared certain questions for specialists working in the field of online store and other ecommerce websites development. We tried to understand what online stores should expect in 2022, what tendencies will stay, and what advice will be especially useful for our readers.
Elliot Taylor, Founder, Raison, Brighton, UK
1. Web-design trends for e-commerce websites
Messaging, personalisation and communication improvements.
2. Functionality trends for e-commerce websites
Better integrations to other systems (shipping, analytics…) using available APIs.
3. What CMS do you recommend and why?
WooCommerce (WordPress) if you need something bespoke otherwise Shopify.
4. AMP for e-commerce websites. What do you think about this?
Anything that makes sites faster is great! Speed up the web!
5. What can you recommend for starting an e-commerce website? What should be done at the beginning?
Write a clear, detailed and professional specification. Set expectations correctly from the start. Many projects fail because they don’t plan. If you were building a house you would spend at least 10% of the budget on an architect – are you investing the same amount in your blueprints?
6. What can you advice e-commerce websites to succeed?
Make it work on a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy first – then grow your own ecommerce business.
7. What is the best example of an e-commerce website?
I really like the uk.lush.com website, it’s built by another Brighton based company but using Drupcal Commerce. It shows that it doesn’t matter what the platform is, but what the vision and team behind the project are.
8. Do e-commerce websites need mobile apps?
It depends on the market and customer base. Perhaps. It’s likely that a website can achieve the same without having the added friction of having two channels to sell from.
Arturs Kruze, CEO, Magebit, Riga, Latvia
1. Web-design trends for e-commerce websites
One of the design trends that was already heavily used in 2021 was minimalism. Having an eCommerce website with clear user journey and easy-to-spot indicators (such as buy now button that stands out) helps to increase the conversion rate. That is because people are different and overloading the website with different elements will scare or confuse the visitors. If the visitors are not confident in the website they are in – they will most likely leave without leaving any value (conversions) to the website itself.
2. Functionality trends for e-commerce websites
One of the trends for eCommerce in 2022 will probably be smart and AI powered recommendations. While there are companies already offering that, usually they are meant for large scale websites. I think, this will change and smaller companies will also start to use those kind of approaches. There are also very few that offer services like “likelihood of purchase predictions” based AI an ML (we are also working on an experiment project like this) but I don’t think these will play a big role in the smaller eCommerce shops, at least in 2022 as it requires quite a lot data to train the ML models to be precise. For large shops – they will use AI and ML wherever they can in 2022. The key players such as Amazon are already utilizing that.
Also, AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and PWA (Progressive Web Apps) will play a big role in the 2022’s eCommerce. Nowadays, most of the orders happen on mobile devices and serving the online shop properly can increase the conversion rate.
3. What CMS do you recommend and why?
Magento and Shopify. Shopify for small scale websites that have 1 warehouse and 1 language. Magento for anything bigger than that.
At Magebit we focus on Magento and we know it in-and-out. With 7+ years and 15+ certificates we can clearly say that Magento is a good choice for medium and big players. The flexibility of customization makes Magento a leader in eCommerce CMS platforms. Usually, companies that use Magento correctly grow in size VERY FAST and the customization options on Magento are really borderless.
4. AMP for e-commerce websites. What do you think about this?
I think it will happen soon. Some key players of eCommerce are already doing AMP and PWA and the smaller sites will follow. The mobile shoppers are very impulsive and in eCommerce you must use it. Having a fast and easy to use website will make sure the impulsive buyer will not re-think his choice 10 times leading him to abandoning the cart.
5. What can you recommend for starting an e-commerce website? What should be done at the beginning?
Focus on MVP (Minimum Viable Product) first. Making a website with everything will not only lead to a long development time but it will also take your focus on things that do not really matter. First, create the MVP that works perfectly and you will have a good converting store. Then you can look for ways to improve it.
Usually, the ones that try to put in everything at first are the ones that suffer from poor conversion rates and buggy checkout flow.
6. What can you advice e-commerce websites to succeed?
Nowadays, eCommerce is not just an addon for business. Using eCommerce your business can sky-rocket and bring new clients globally. I would recommend businesses not to save on good development, design and marketing services. Taking the low-end for eCommerce growth is same as taking the low-end employees for the business – it will not end well.
7. What is the best example of an e-commerce website?
https://www.hargrovescycles.co.uk/
8. Do e-commerce websites need mobile apps?
It depends. If your website sells under 1k products or don’t have a lot of recurring customers it would be most likely a no. If your orders are mostly recurring within a timeframe of 1 month of less – then probably yes.
For example, AliExpress has a lot of buyers and having the app gives them a big revenue boost. If you have a small store and nobody will download the app – better have spent the money in development and marketing for the website.
Yogesh Trivedi, CEO, M-Connect Media, Georgia, USA
1. Web-design trends for e-commerce websites
Design is important aspect as this is the factor will make customer to navigate on the website on your defined way. Most important trends should be
Full screen layout, fast indexed assistive search, quick popup forms, less page load and guided selling.
2. Functionality trends for e-commerce websites
Every eCommerce website includes – customer account, dashboard, product list and view page, cart and checkout. But what makes an website different from other, how an functional prospect can change the mind of viewers to stay on site to create sales. Lot of factors that can be counted as functional trends for eCommerce website but as per my experience over analytics research over numbers of client globally i found an eCommerce website needs following:
- Landing pages needs to have proper navigation facility for customer.
- Site search needs to be auto suggestive.
- Login and Register should happen on same page without navigating to login or register page, it should be via ajax popup.
- If you offer free shipping over some amount then you may visualize this with great UI and UX.
- Minimize the steps of checkout, the more simpler it is the more customer will feel comfortable.
- Display the only products which are available to ship as per customer county, state or country, or hide products from customer which does not make sense for them.
- Micro data information is very important for the search engine, its defines the rich data of your website on google, yahoo, twitter.
3. What CMS do you recommend and why?
Just one word – WordPress, because its so easy and a non technical person even can handle a website with less guidance.
4. AMP for e-commerce websites. What do you think about this?
An eCommerce website who does not carry mobile application and want customer to display accelerated pages. The much important benefit for setting up AMP for eCommerce site is to serve fast result pages where google will display managed pages on top of search results via mobile devices.
5. What can you recommend for starting an e-commerce website? What should be done at the beginning?
Sounds so easy to start an ecommerce website but the people who think is easy needs to understand the process and marketing plans. Without marketing plans you can not run any business. It includes what products you are serving, targeted audience, press release awareness, website release event, trade shows, logistics and shipping, payment methods security and many more depending on business vertical.
6. What can you advice e-commerce websites to succeed?
Successful door for an eCommerce websites are their customer satisfaction, if you have best customer service team and timely logistics transportation then you are the best and successful business among online world.
7.What is the best example of an e-commerce website?
I think amazon.com is the best example, it have millions of product and visualized based on customer needs.
8. Do e-commerce websites need mobile apps?
Its depends and required on a particular stage, its not mandatory for all the eCommerce websites till you have mobile optimized template to serve mobile experience on phone and tablets.
Mike Podlinev, Chief operating officer, Genico LLC, Florida, USA
1. Web-design trends for e-commerce websites
Classic web design disruption. Trendy e-commerce websites are getting to look more like long form content websites with adaptive web design, asymmetrical grids, colorful backgrounds and lightness. Furthermore animated illustrations and photos take a centric place.
2. Functionality trends for e-commerce websites
Personal recommendations on basis of customer’s activity, omnichannel user experience, smart chatbots, 1-click ordering and cryptocurrencies payment.
3. What CMS do you recommend and why?
It depends on what to recommend – hosted or self-hosted CMS. As a hosted solution I would advise Shopify because of vast features and flexibility with full control over the website nevertheless it’s not free. As a self-hosted solution my choice fell on open source Magento which also is the powerful kit, but a little more complicated for deployment. Both have multi-language and customization capabilities and offer big collection of add-ons and modern themes and templates for any product and taste.
4. AMP for e-commerce websites. What do you think about this?
Many initiatives from Google are noteworthy. It’s very interesting technology, but I think at the moment it doesn’t suit well for e-commerce websites (no JS support) despite its testing by Lancome.
5. What can you recommend for starting an e-commerce website? What should be done at the beginning?
First of all you have to answer the questions:
- What you are going to sell, how, and to whom? Define your niche and target customer, you cannot sell to anyone.
- What budget do I have in order to launch a website and marketing campaign? Assume that your first attempts may fail, but you have to learn from this changing tactics or strategy.
And then you can pick CMS (hosted or self-hosted), think about productservice supply chain, payment service provider you will use to collect money from customers, how you will care about customers (phone calls, email, helpdesk and livechat, the last one is mandatory for modern e-commerce websites even more than phone support) and then drive the traffic to the website. Anyway you can hire an expert to do that the best way on your behalf.
6. What can you advice e-commerce websites to succeed?
Analyze everything. Integrate your website with website and heatmap analytics solutions like Google Analytics, Hotjar and Kissmetrics. And then check and analyze different things like: traffic sources, bounce rate, customer flow, conversion rate of traffic sourcescustomers typesproduct range, average order value. Cut costs of what just eats your money, and invest more time in what brings you profit.
7. What is the best example of an e-commerce website?
Amazon.com is the one of the best. But additionally I would mark the desktop version of everlane.com
8. Do e-commerce websites need mobile apps?
Of course, because mobile apps have capabilities that websites have not. E.g., easy authentication, geofencing and push notification with personalized offer based on it, seamless checkout with inherent loyalty program. Mobile app can also bring such amazing experience like Pokemon Go brought to its audience using technology of augmented reality which can be implemented for cosmetics or clothes online store.
Conclusions
We noticed that almost all experts talk about such tendencies like a bet on mobile traffic, minimalism in design, maximum personalization aiming for creating an individual approach to every client, confidential access since ecommerce is connected to payments.
The main tendency of 2022 for ecommerce websites is responsive design. So, if you want to get more customers, your website has to be simple and at the same time very individual. It should arouse positive emotions, since it’s one of the main factors allowing to stay in users consciousness.
Besides, if you plan to create your own ecommerce website, the best way is to start from determining a target audience and prepare MVP. These two steps will let you define real demand on a market.
And if you want to know more about tendencies of website promotion and design in 2022, we recommend to have a look at the following articles:
- Website Promotion in 2018. SEO Trends and Recommendations from Top Internet Marketing Agencies
- UI/UX Trends in 2018. What experts say
As online sales keep growing, keep an eye on current tech to make sure you’re not losing out.