Ecommerce website trends for 2019
According to Statista, e-commerce websites have sold items for 2.8 trillion US dollars in 2018 and in 2019 the revenue of online retailers worldwide is expected to be 3.4 trillion dollars.
It is not a surprise why there is such a hype around the ecommerce industry. But where big money is, the strong competition appears. You have to have a strong website to get a piece of that sweet pie, so follow the trends below and beat your competitors.
Ecommerce Technology Trends for 2019
Mobile-first approach
As more people use their phones for web browsing, your website should not just have an adaptive design, but mobile-first approach. Mobile-first means that you think about a mobile version of your website at the beginning of the website development as it is more challenging to design mobile experience than a desktop one.
According to Forrester mobile purchases will value for $175.4 billion in retail sales by 2022, that’s why you should start transforming now.
First of all, you should check your UI and UX states when visiting your website from a mobile phone. Is browsing experience seamless and is it easy to make purchases from mobile?
Secondly, you consider using some technology to enhance your mobile experience:
- AMP (accelerated mobile pages). This technology insanely reduces page load time, making browsing experience fast and smooth. For example, WompMobile and Google found that clients who used AMP have seen an increase in conversion rates by 105% and a decrease in bounce rates by 31%.
- PWA (progressive web applications). Basically, this technology means converting your website into the mobile app, without coding an actual application. PWA is a website that can be accessed from the home screen with app-like experience. According to Lancome statistics, after the implementation of PWA, they noticed a 17% increase in conversions, 53% increase in mobile sessions due to app-like experience and 12% increase in recovered carts with a help of push notifications.
High website performance
With an increase in mobile traffic, there is a need to enhance website speed. Modern website should load under 3 seconds, to satisfy a user. You can check the performance of your website with a help of such tools as GTMetrix, PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom.
There are some common and quite easy solutions to enhance website performance:
- Code minification to reduce code weight.
- Webpage caching to fastly load what was loaded before.
- Images optimization. Kraken.io and JPEGmini are ones of the most effective tools to do it. Moreover, consider using WebP image format;
- CDN services that send the data from the server the nearest to the user. That decreases data delivery time;
- GZip compression. GZip can reduce file sizes up to 10 times.
Consider your website speed as a top priority for 2019.
Easier Checkouts
SaleCycle reports a 75.60% average abandonment cart rate. This number mostly depends on the user experience. Imagine that the user made an emotional decision to buy something on your website and it faces a long form that has to be filled. That process gives a lot of time to overthink the decision. That is why you should optimize your checkout page for the users to make a purchase as fast as it can be.
There are some tips on how to enhance your checkout process:
- One page checkout
- Autofill fields
- Use only necessary fields
- Don’t force registration
Below is a great example of a simple and effective checkout page:
Credit: The Iconic
In 2019 make your customers’ purchase experience easier.
Personalization
Customers expect their experience to be personalized. They want your website to know who they are and what do they desire.
There are some ideas of website personalization:
- Greeting of a first-time visitor
- Up-sells, cross-sells and product recommendations
- Sizes, language, and currency based on the user’s location
- Abandoned card emails and push notifications
High-quality personalization is achieved with a help of AI and machine learning. In 2019, we are going to see the development of those technologies which will provide advanced personalized customer experience on and outside the website, including ads and email marketing.
Chatbots
Chatbots are a big trend nowadays because they provide better customer experience and can replace a big support team. Chatbots are mostly used in support, but people can get suggestions of products and make a purchase through bots too.
Moreover, with an implementation of AI, it becomes as advanced, as a dialog with a real person, which can remember your preferences. Users don’t have to wait for their queue to get an answer from a consultant, they get an answer instantly, that increases customer satisfaction.
HubSpot research reports that 71% of people would like to use a chat to get customer’s assistance and most of them do it because they want their problems to be solved ASAP.
As an example of chat-bot implementation, H&M has a chatbot, which helps customers to build an outfit and purchase it right there.
In 2019 consider implementing live chat with a chatbot to save time for you and your customers.
Advanced Product Filtering
Advanced product filtering helps your users find exactly what they are looking for. Filters can include category, size, color, availability, price, etc.
The Iconic is a good example of the rich product filtering:
When implementing such rich filtering, keep in mind that it should be well-designed and options have to accord. Thankfully, there are some tools to implement an advanced product search:
They use machine learning and neural networks to provide customers with advanced search results in seconds.
Automation
With the coming of digital transformation, a lot of industries implement automation to enhance their business operations and ecommerce is one of the leading industries where automation plays a huge role.
Automation is used to remove as much human as possible from inventory management, production, delivery services, marketing and sales.
Automation gives your business an opportunity to operate with minimum human resources, improve customer experience, increase conversion rate and free-up valuable time.
We can consider Shopify Plus as an example of a great automation solution that provides such opportunities as:
- Automatically reorder inventory and even pay invoices.
- Identify, tag, and segment customers
- Unpublish out-of-stock products and notify a team about that via email, Slack or Messenger.
Automation also includes Email marketing automation with a help of such tools as Drip.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is booming this year, opening new opportunities for customers and merchants. Customers can see how items will fit their room or try on clothes. This results in higher conversion rates and fewer returns.
AR is filling the gap between physical and online shopping, transforming the way we shop online.
Shopify AR app brings AR implementation closer to merchants.
IKEA Place allows ‘putting’ real-sized furniture into your space.
Omni-channel eCommerce
Omni-channel is a part of the retail digital transformation, which means delivering a seamless shopping experience across different channels like a website, offline store, Amazon, or Facebook marketplace.
In the modern digital world, there are a lot of places where a user can make a purchase and you should be in every possible place, connecting all the independent channels into one ecosystem.
The most popular omni-channel eCommerce example is when customers can purchase an item online and then pick it up in an offline store.
Payment Options
Nowadays, there is a variety of online payment methods available to consumers including cryptocurrency, digital wallets Apple Pay or Google Pay and solutions like Afterpay or ZipPay that allow paying later. Every shopper has its own preferences and you should consider all the possible payment options to create the smoothest shopping experience.
Convenient and fast payment methods that don’t require long forms to be filled up can increase conversions by more than 20%. In addition, Bigcommerce reports, that mobile wallets can increase mobile conversions up to 3 times.
So to stay competitive in 2019 include various payment options for your customers.
Subscription Services
The subscription model is on hype now and it’s not surprising, considering the McKinsey stats that over the past five years the subscription ecommerce market was growing by more than 100% every year and the largest retailers made over $2.6 billion in sales.
Such a business model is convenient for both customers and retailers. Consumers know that their beloved product will be there when they need it and business can predict and plan its revenue.
The subscription model doesn’t exclude the usual product distribution approach, but it can become an addition to your business, opening new opportunities for you and your customers in 2019.
Voice Commerce
Voice interfaces are changing the whole digital environment by transforming the ways we interact with devices. It is predicted that by 2020, voice shopping in the U.S. will total $40 billion in sales. Luckily, it became easier to implement voice technology with a help of tools like Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API.
Example of shopping on eBay through Google Assistant
Image search
Image search is another interesting technology, advancing the search experience. This can be useful if your store has a rich catalog of various items and users have an image of what they want. Tools like Visenze can help to implement this search function in your website.
Ecommerce Design Trends for 2019
With advancements and changes in technologies, design changes too. Interfaces become more convenient and responsive, enhancing user experience. Let’s look at what we can expect from 2019 in terms of design.
Depth & Shadow
The trend of creative usage of shadows and parallax emerged back in 2018. This technique makes elements to pop up and be noticeable. It is good to use such an approach with CTAs and important content. Moreover, it just makes the website more interactive and alive.
Micro-interactions
Credit: Arthur Arapov
Micro-interactions are tiny animations of small elements like buttons, forms, icons, etc. Such details are important as they provide a user with instant feedback about action and increase engagement. They will add life to your website and make the user experience more pleasant.
3D objects
The three-dimensional effect becomes another big trend in web design. It gives a user an ability to feel a product and see it from different perspectives. In some cases, a user can interact with graphic elements with a help of such technologies as Three.js, or it’s just a static image with shadow or video. Apart from providing visual information, such technique adds depth to the user interface.
Credit: Matjaz Valentar
Creative layouts
In 2019, grid becomes more broken and layout more asymmetrical and creative. This opens new opportunities to designers and drives them to think out of the box.
But it’s important not to forget about user experience when using your creativity.
Material Design
Material design is a visual language with specific rules and guidelines to help designers create the best user experience.
The main reason why to use material design is its versatility and adaptivity to different operating systems and screens.
Minimalism
Cluttered, overloaded websites are hard to browse and frighten every visitor. Make sure your ecommerce website has a clear layout and enough air.
A minimalistic approach will help users easily find what they are looking for and focus their attention on the products.
Final Thoughts
Web technologies and design are constantly developing and we should follow the changes as they improve customer experience. Implementing some of the abovementioned trends can be challenging, but we are ready to help you with that. Our professional programmers and designers can upgrade your ecommerce website for you to overtake competitors. Send us a message.
