A trillion-digit industry, yet you find over 65,000 names struggling to cross the bar of $1,000 in the world of E-commerce. Go through the stats, and I bet you will find an empire full of disparities.

You may be offering far better products than the big names in the market, but that will not be enough unless your website is offering seamless user-experience, visitors would love to come back again for.

If you are an avid follower of the design blogs, you must be aware of how the design of the website enhances the user-experience, and affect the type of products they buy online. A mere product placeholder that takes forever to load holds the capability to drain out the user’s interest in less than 3 seconds, while an attractive & de-cluttered web design stands accountable for the ease in the transactions and increased user engagement on a website.

Many website design trends ruled the e-commerce word throughout the year 2015. As we are now heading towards the end of the year, let us have a look at some of the groundbreaking web designs that E-commerce website users embraced with arms open wide.

Flat Design

“Keep it Simple, Silly”

Initially termed as monotonous, the flat designs soon became the face of million websites. In the last two years, many developers bid goodbye to a list of complicated patterns, shadows, gradients, fonts, and stole the show by incorporating a minimalist approach in their web designs.

One of the major reasons for the acclaim of the flat design could be the range of perquisites the designs are serving to both the developers, and the users. The flat and minimalist approach is inviting the users, who find it difficult to habituate with the complicated websites. Unlike skeuomorphism, the minimal illustrations and absence of heavy elements like shadows, depth, and gradients, offer faster load times, and an all-device friendly interface.

Device Agnosticism

“Go With the Flow”

“Before beginning with anything, just have a look at the picture above”. A smart developer knows it has now become meaningless to stick to the website optimized for a particular device with Smartphone & tablet owners taking the lead over the old-school desktop users.

The website owners realized the importance of a layout capable of spreading evenly into every dimension of the device if they seek to nurture their customers for a prolonged period. While the mobile drive nearly 50% of the total traffic to the e-commerce websites, executives know, having a device-agnostic website might give them a user, willing to come and again on their website.

Full-Width Background

“Set the Mood”

Full-width background of falve website.

You can hate it, you can love it, but you cannot simply ignore a website’s full-width background, as soon as you reach there to spend some pounds. The year 2015, witnessed the full-fledged emergence of large backgrounds, and do not know when it become the new favorite of the industry.

The full-width background makes the websites appear tidy. Large background with a sleek header lets users navigate on the page, and set the mood for you brand. The large image at the forefront lets the website communicate the message to the users effectively. The design uses the front space entirely to communicate the idea, by grabbing the attention of the users as soon as they enter the website.

Ghost Buttons

“Do not Disrupt”

Ghost buttons in iuvo website.

Most of us might have noticed them placed elegantly, right in mid of the large background but never bother to know how they are different from the traditional clickable geometric-shapes placed around the prominent locations on the website. Ghost button is comparatively larger and has a white outline with no filling or some text inside.

The need to have ghost buttons in the web design emerged, with the growing popularity of the minimalistic design approach. The buttons do not really appear like the traditional buttons but perform the similar actions (hence, called as “ghost”). The basic advantage of incorporating the ghost buttons is to have the clickables that do not disrupt the visuality of the images. Due to the nature of the Ghost Buttons, they occupy comparatively larger space and are displayed only on the homepage or the about section of the website.

Large Typography

“Bold Is Beautiful”

Large typography in Austineastciders website.

Gone are the days when website owners were asked to spend millions on the text style of their web page. The current E-commerce industry is following the mantra of “Keep it bold and simple”. The usage of the bold & large typography along with the complementing images took the user-experience to the above level and made the things easier to perceive.

Along with making the site appear clean and tidy, large typography delivers the message strongly and have an instant impact on the visitors. Large graphics or text centralizes user’s attention & boosts the visual ranking of the main content of the website. The trend is just perfect for the mobile websites, as there is no need for the users to zoom in or out while making a purchase using mobile, but you have to look upon the space that your front page have before incorporating large text in your web page. The extra use might make your website appear like a hodgepodge.

Hidden Menu

“Reckon the Navicon”

Hidden menu from codrops tutorial.

You never leave your paraphernalia scattered in every corner of your room, then why would you do that to your website? The companies that understood the significance of a clean and de-cluttered website, in enhancing the user experience, very well incorporated the hamburger button in the upper right corner of their e-commerce website. The concept of Hidden menus is not very new, but the trend took hype in the year 2015, majorly due to an increase in the number of the mobile friendly websites.

The off-screen navigation makes the site appear tidy, and hamburger icon let the user refer to the menu from any page, without having to find it. Big names like EBay, Reebok e-commerce, Stella McCartney, Samsung have incorporated the hidden menus effectively in their e-commerce platforms to take the user experience on their websites to a higher level.

Tile Navigation

“Impress with Tiling”

Tile navigation in matrix theme.

With the visuals bagging most of the user’s attention, the geometric-tiled navigation gained lionization in E-commerce front. Big tiles with minimal text, yet competent enough to deliver relevant information to the users in the first go! The tile navigation ruled the charts throughout the year 2015 and is not going anywhere soon.

The appealing picture-blocks filled with related information, provides a crisp description of the product to the users, and give them a slight idea where clicking the box will lead them. To enhance the user experience, and make the navigation more appealing, the main emphasis is laid on the visual content, which is supported by the complementing text. Clicking on the tiles navigates the users to a different page displaying the detailed view of the product offered.

Video Content

“Let It Buffer”

Nothing could undermine the fact that- “E-commerce industry demands compelling content to lure the profitable leads to convert.” The developers understood that putting quality images to display the products is good and all, but having a video that engages the customers, and promote the products in a more detailed manner can have a huge impact on the overall conversion on the website. The year 2015 witnessed a significant leap from the text to video; & websites very well incorporated the idea in their layout to demonstrate their products.

An appealing video, not just enhances the user interaction, but it also affects the way consumers behave with the brand. When asked few customers, nearly half of them replied that they feel surer about their buying decision after watching product demonstration on the website.

Motion Animation

“Era Of Ani-Motion”

When in doubt, choose “Ani-motion”. Motion & animation both are known for engaging and grabbing the human interest. As a result, developers are experimenting by combining them, and the collaboration is running successfully on hundreds of e-commerce websites like bugaboo, M&S, Apple etc.

The “Ani-motion”, enhances the visual appeal and makes the CTA’s appear more distinguished and alluring to the users. As the animations are now turning more creative, and refined, developers are coming up with the idea to use them in a more subtle manner along with the motion to influence the customers coming to the website.

Material Design

“Say It, Visually”

Material designs are often referred as a form of skeuomorphism, but as the trend is spreading, developers are now becoming aware that they both are not the same. Where skeuomorphism focuses on mimicking the real world, material designs incorporate much natural and real visual that tries to affect the consumer behavior.

Material designs focus on delivering the message to the users using a visual language in a more liberal manner. The designs incorporate the use of card layouts, depth affects, responsive transitions, and motion animation to interact with the users in a language that is visually more interesting, and easy to understand. The minimal text, large images, and proper use of the white space enhance the user experience and convey a relevant message.

“For The Busy-Bees”

The year 2015 welcomed & embraced some of the widely acclaimed web design trends in the e-commerce front. The flat designs ruled the charts and are not leaving the market soon. The full-width background became the new favorite of the website developers throughout the year, and the more is yet to come. The industry embraced the minimalistic approach and the ghost buttons, in order to convey the message clearly without any disruption. The shift from text to the visuals further drove the need of the material designs in the e-commerce websites, to make the user-experience better. All this was supported with the addition of the elements like the hidden menus, video content, motion animations, tile layout, and large size typography to serve the customers better.

Conclusion

The field of e-commerce is dynamic and diversely competitive with your rivals sitting just a click away. The quality products and whole-hearted efforts are not enough; therefore, implying time-to-time modifications in your web design to stay ahead in the race with your rivals is extremely crucial.

Every basic thing from the color to the location of the CTA’s has its own little contribution in affecting the conversion rates on your web store. As a website owner, or a passionate web developer you have to stay updated with latest trends running in the industry if you seek to build a most visited E-store near in future. With the hope that this list of the latest E-commerce web design, trends might have helped you to get some great ideas to improve the appeal of your web store. We take your leave. Thanks for reading!