Driving forces of e-commerce transformation
Evolving e-commerce patterns to align with changing demands of modern consumers
In the rapidly evolving landscape of online retail, empathizing with younger generations and adapting strategic approach to their distinct characteristics has become crucial. Digital behavior of modern consumers has shifted dramatically in the past years, challenging brands to reshape e-commerce and meet priorities of such demanding users. In this article, we explore how digital natives’ values can be translated into opportunities to build innovative digital experiences, focusing on Fashion industry.
The exponential growth of e-commerce after the pandemic is reaching high levels especially in fashion, that with clothing (51%), shoes (41%) and accessories (30%), is one of the leading industries in online retail (Statista). By 2025, fashion sales will most likely reach 1.2 trillion dollars, but there is still a high cart abandonment rate (70%). This means brands must face the almost unrealistic expectations of modern consumers, understand them deeply and provide something more than a basic digital showcase.
Individuality within Communities: new generations’ paradox
New generations navigate the digital realm every day, constantly getting exposed to large amounts of information and contents. This brought them to the development of a strong critical approach influencing the way they perceive, elaborate things and build values. It is a sort of loop that starts with modern consumers becoming aware of what surrounds them, then deeply discover themselves and what matters to them, to finally make choices that reflect their unique characteristics and individuality. Unlike previous generations, today’s youth is characterized by more self-awareness and a search not only for brands, but experiences that are authentically aligned with personal values.
While the concept of individuality becomes important for people to feel real owners of products and build their recognizable fashion identities, communities extend to complex ecosystems to share common passions and visions. Younger generations actively engage, express themselves and connect with others through online communities, which are perceived as powerful hubs for collective knowledge and experience. The importance of being heard and developing a sense of belonging forces brands to precisely identify all different sub-cultures coexisting in a wider community and incorporate its values to gain credibility.
New drivers for user engagement and satisfaction
Considering Gen-Z consumers’ priorities have changed, influencing the way they evaluate and relate with brands, digital behavior is taking a new direction as well. A study from Masínová and Svandová shows that for e-commerce platforms (especially in fashion), the main factors affecting user satisfaction are product description, product images, assistance, payment options, response time, security and reputation. If we analyze each mentioned element, there is a strong connection with digital natives’ portrait and their evolving expectations.
Detailed information and high-quality photos should clearly communicate product characteristics in order to cover the need for customers to understand, compare items and make aware choices. Quality and functionality of products are for sure relevant, but some key aspects related to brand credibility can’t be ignored:
- Sustainability
78,3% of online buyers expect extreme care for environmental sustainability and 16,7% doesn’t purchase products from brands lacking of related policies. Today only 25,7% of companies can be considered as extremely responsible, but sustainability growing impact is slowly pushing businesses towards change. - Trustability
Providing familiar payment and shipping options, sharing authentic information through full transparency might help developing a solid relationship between brand and customers, based on trust. Since digital natives are less impulsive than previous generations, they check a lot of information before making decisions but generally prefer honesty over perfection. On one hand, brands should communicate accurate details related to their values and initiatives, on the other hand they should provide a review system allowing consumers to share and read feedback. 77% of online shoppers, indeed, expects to find product reviews and reads them before purchasing. - Findability
A website should always be aligned with users’ high expectations and limited attention spans. Seamless navigation, efficient organization of contents, fast response and loading must be prioritized to avoid frustration and consequential abandonment. According to Google, around 60% of customers leave websites that don’t meet their demands promptly and take more than 3 seconds to load pages.
Personalization becomes the main driver and is called “Individualism”
We previously discussed the importance of individuality, as a concept that increasingly affects modern consumers’ behaviour and choices. Digital spaces are indeed more and more expected to be designed with a level of personalization that transcends mere customization. Today’s users seek more than just content based on their preferences; they aspire to navigate crafted solutions reflecting an intimate understanding of their unique habits and needs. 80% of retailers expect web experiences to be extremely personalized, and for the 50% of them, personalization is the main driver to finalize purchase (Microsoft Partners — Swifterm). To capture and retain the attention of such a sophisticated audience, businesses must go beyond one-size-fits-all approach and explore new features and tools for enhanced user engagement. Let’s list some of them:
- Values-based filters
Few brands are facing the growing trend of choosing ideologies, brand visions over products. This brought designers to the integration of filters that show a clear connection between products and personal values, ethical considerations (e.g. vegan, eco-friendly, black owned, genderless, large fit…). - Peer-to-peer recommendation
The use of quizzes and subscription channels allows to collect very specific data related to users’ preferences and makes more accurate recommendations encouraging independent choices, instead of promo or sponsorships. - Personalized loyalty programs
As to establish meaningful connections with customers, built around a sense of exclusivity and belonging, loyalty programs on e-commerce platforms should be perceived as tailored experiences for individual users. By leveraging data analytics and AI-driven algorithms, brands can get insights into customer preferences and craft customized incentives and rewards. - AI shopping assistance
Intelligent AI-tools continue to evolve, utilizing advanced algorithms to analyze user data and requests. Virtual assistants, as AI-powered agents, engage users in real-time conversations, by providing tailored product recommendations, answering queries and offering support through the whole purchase process. - AR & Virtual try on
Virtual try-on features allow users to digitally simulate how items will look and fit through Augmented Reality. This transformative technology can reach a high level of customization by taking into account factors like body type, skin tone, facial features and other unique characteristics increasing confidence in purchasing decisions. - E-Playgrounds
A promising avenue for e-commerce platforms to differentiate themselves is represented by e-playgrounds, which introduce a delightful blend of creativity and interactivity to the online shopping experience. Users can experiment with products’ designs and customized options, sometimes through elements of gamification that elevate the level of engagement.
The blurring boundaries between Social Media and E-commerce
Social Media is rapidly becoming a powerful force shaping the future of retail, offering unparalleled opportunities for brands to invest in such a huge market potential. Since billions of users actively engage on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok and Pinterest, brands have recognized great benefits in leveraging social networks as sales channels. The most popular strategic marketing initiatives use shoppable posts, influencer collaborations and targeted advertisements exposing users to contents of interest and accelerating the “awareness” phase. Brands of all sizes can easily and efficiently capture modern consumers’ attention, thanks to the rapid response and the effective nature of content on social media (e.g. Barbour increased sales by 42% and traffic by 98% since they started using Instagram Shopping). Let’s consider users are currently familiar with “stories” format, which aligns with their expectation to be impressed and get informed in a very short time, otherwise they skip and go to the next content. For this reason, marketing strategies have evolved significantly, leveraging the power of social media to analyze consumer behavior and make extremely tailored recommendations through sophisticated algorithms anticipating and intercepting interests. Social networks are rapidly becoming the main digital showrooms, offering a boundless space for inspiration and engaging consumers through the discovery of brands and products. According to Statista, 74% of consumers trusts and chooses social networks to make purchase decisions, while 56% admits they follow brand accounts to explore products.
The most interesting aspect here is the rise of integrated shopping features and seamless checkout processes, evolving the role of these platforms from mere brand exploration enablers to fully-fledged hubs covering the entire consumer journey, from initial discovery to finalizing transactions. Purchase is still mainly finalized on e-commerce platforms, but social commerce will offer a more consistent, convenient and immersive experience, marking a significant shift in the way people shop in the digital age (Statista — $3.4T by 2028, 28.4% expected annual growth).
Connecting the dots
How might we reimagine an e-commerce digital experience that meets modern consumers’ multifaceted needs?
After investigating modern consumers’ behavior in depth, our UX/UI team mapped key insights and translated them into opportunities to define a new e-commerce experience. “Kynest” is a design concept that simulates how brands’ shopping platforms could evolve into immersive and dynamic environments. We started from the main assumption that the journey from brand awareness to final product purchase often spans a significant length of time, since consumers are constantly exposed to an abundance of contents and generally make informed decisions. Our objective is reducing the steps needed to engage users and guide them through conversion, by bridging the gap between inspiration, information and purchase phases. The result is an innovative digital design that brings few vibrant elements, typically used for social networks’ interfaces, into an e-commerce context, providing an optimized, engaging and personalized experience.
Optimizing exploration through an “inspirational wall” and smart “Filtersearch” patterns
We broke conventional homepage concept and created an immersive wall that dynamically mixes editorial and still life contents, inspired by Instagram search experience. Layout and functioning have been thought to better link e-commerce product discovery with the explorative scroll on social media and build a seamless, consistent shopping journey. The “Filtersearch” feature allows users to define the main search patterns by themselves, in order to access personalized suggestions and tailored contents, instead of interacting with traditional navigation menu.
Offering an extremely personalized flow through a virtual assistant
To meet modern consumers’ expectations of feeling unique through made-to-measure experiences, we designed an innovative “virtual assistant” acting as a personal shopper or dedicated customer service. Users can interact with the AI tool at each stage of the journey to access information and receive more accurate and suitable recommendations.
Merging inspirational contents with informative elements into one consistent layout for product focus
We evolved the conventional product page into a zoomed feed, populated by immersive assets (reels, lifestyle images…) creating an impactful product storytelling. Vertical scroll allows users to easily and quickly explore similar contents, while horizontal scroll shows product gallery views. The innovative integration of a “feature bar” displays all “quick-actions” for users to access detailed information, view suggested products, check color and size options and save items.
Introducing a personal space dedicated to the transition from inspiration to decision making
The “Closet” is a new concept encouraging a more aware decision making process, in which users compare saved items, analyze characteristics and move their favourites to cart. During exploration phase, single or multiple products can be quickly added to closet, which incorporates more advanced features than a traditional wishlist (e.g. virtual try on, editing…). Since closet and cart are located in the same interface environment, users can easily manage items, efficiently switching from consideration to check out and final purchase.
Research and design concept by Dentsu Creative | Linkedin | Dribbble
Authors: Eugenia Carmen Bifulco (UX Specialist), Angelo Sanvito (UI & Interaction Designer)
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