UX Best Practices for NFT Marketplace Design | Expedite Design
Online NFT marketplaces are becoming more and more popular every day. The digital collectibles are backed by blockchain technology which makes them complex and different from the current marketplace items listed in e-stores.
Marketplace- as it sounds is all about buying and selling. Making UI/UX design for NFT platforms can be time-taking since you have to figure out how to merge the complications of the blockchain into a user-friendly platform. Let’s explore some easy ways and tips for designing your own NFT marketplace in this guide.
What You Should Know First?
- What is NFT — NFTs are unique digital assets on blockchain technology that are not interchangeable.
- Why UX is important for blockchain — Blockchain technology is young yet complex. For more people to learn about it subtracting the jargon and complexities, the User Experience needs to be enhanced by being supported by suitable User Interfaces.
- What is NFT Marketplace — NFT marketplaces allow users to buy and sell assets directly without having to know any underlying crypto-complexities.
- Why UX is important for NFTs — User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design are crucial for the success of any company. When applied to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), UI/UX design becomes even more critical.
- What should UI/UX designers do — A successful UI/UX design for an NFT marketplace should provide a user-friendly interface that allows anyone who has an interest in these digital items to purchase one without having to understand blockchain technology or how crypto tokens work.
- For Web3 UX design Mindset and Principles you can check out the following write-ups:
Essential Design Features of the NFT marketplace:
Single-category Market or All-Purpose Market
The first and foremost step would be to determine the type of niche you are fulfilling with your marketplace design. Sticking to the business niche is important prior to design.
- Single-category market (say only Art-based)
- All-Purpose market (Art, Music, Real Estate, sports, collectibles, entertainment, gaming, etc.)
For example, for the multi-categories platform, the first interacting screen should allow the users to browse the categories of their choice.
Whereas, the single-category NFT market would start enlisting the collectibles on their landing page. This should be the first priority for the designer to understand the client’s business and stick to it for implementation. Some examples to speculate business niche importance are:
- Radion is a music-only NFT marketplace. The Radion allows creators to have an e-commerce-like platform where subscribers can buy a number of products or services listed as NFTs.
2. NBA Top Shot is a sport and athleisure NFT marketplace. It is a great choice for basketball fans who are looking to get involved in the world of basketball NFTs.
3. KnownOrigin is another versatile example of a single-category marketplace. It is an art NFT platform. It focuses on offering rare and collectible artworks in timed-released events, known as drops, which enable artists to control the number of copies released.
Welcoming the New Comers
The goal is to welcome all kinds of visitors with an attractive yet simple design. As a designer, we must always remember that new users and technically proficient people will be visiting the same site. To cater to that there must be an inclusion of
- Walkthroughs
- Guidelines
- Pop-out info
- Buttons, features, and menus with descriptions.
A little humor never hurt anybody. Adding something creative, witty, or funny gets users’ attention more quickly and ultimately trust is formed between the user and the platform. As we can witness below in the picture, the word “eat” right next to the word “use” is written in strike-through making it seem hysterical.
Showcase NFTs on the Homepage
The layout should also be uncluttered with no background images or distracting information. Choice of suitable alignment, simple templates or themes, and no-busy backgrounds is the key to perfecting the layout. Having the categories for the all-purpose NFt market can be a challenge, listing down the NFTs in a perfect format should be made possible with alignment, font choice, and image ratio on a page.
The first interactive screen of any platform is its Home Page. Implementing the “aesthetic-usability” feature on this page is preferred. The aesthetic-usability effect refers to users’ tendency to consider attractive products as usable as they look — even if they aren’t actually more effective or efficient.
Provide What Viewers are Looking For
Curating design to enable control for the users is another important design strategy. Making marketplace users feel like they can easily view the NFTs in-purchase and the ones on auctions to bid readily.
In marketplace design, control can be given by providing users with multiple options such as choosing the type of NFTs (Auction, non-auction, new, popular, etc.), setting the pricing range, filtration, and sorting items.
Allow users to search more precisely, by having the option of the filter. This will help in gaining happy visitors. People like to see what they want, using filters they can eliminate the non-required and easily navigate to the point.
Separate dashboards for buyers and sellers
NFT platforms have two primary target audiences — NFT creators and buyers. They want to achieve entirely different tasks, so make sure to design separate and relevant dashboards.
Here is how OpenSea is achieving this feature:
Seller Dashboard for creating NFT
Dashboard for Buyer to buy NFT
What to Hide and What to Highlight
Other than the assets’ listing standards, other important description features that should be highlighted as an NFT description is;
- Different angles
- Visuals
- Owner Details
- Pricing model
- Potential buyers
Displaying detailed information on the NFT’s origin and background (history of all owners).
Allowing users to track their whole transaction history is part of an excellent user experience since NFT traders want to analyze their trading behavior to improve or judge the market while participating in NFT trading. Such a feature can include required data like the total number of NFTs sold, NFTs’ previous price, and so on.
While designing the description page. There should be an open/close description button to allow the type of viewers to look deep into the description or not. Populating information without having the viewers get to engage with the product above can be a little distracting.
Adding Tags for NFT Searching Optimization
Users want to see the exact thing they search for. Tags are the keywords associated with the product that helps the users reach their desired product in an easy and quick manner. Tags make navigation easier and bring exposure to the topics that consumers love. Putting Tags with the NFTs in the marketplace allow the searched category/item to pop right at the top so that the user does not have to spend time searching.
Buying and Selling Design Mechanisms in NFT Marketplace
Buy
The NFT marketplace platform should have a feature that allows users to buy and bid for NFTs listed on the platform. The bidding feature should include a bid expiration date and allow users to view details about the bids’ current status.
Sell
Sellers should have the option to select the type of buying process while minting an NFT or whether one has to transfer the ownership to another person. If he opts for fix price then he will enter the amount that he wants to sell, in case he selects the other option he has to select its metrics which include name, description, time duration, minimum price, and chain (if there are more than one), etc.
Adding Blockchain Network
Adding a Blockchain network is not essential but can be added as an extra feature
With unique requirements in mind, we choose an optimal blockchain framework and implement the blockchain network to base the NFT marketplace but you don’t necessarily operate on a single blockchain. Actually, if you do, your marketplace will face the same limitations as the chosen blockchain network. The resulting interoperability increases marketplace sustainability, optimizes blockchain energy consumption, and expands customer reach for your marketplace.
Integrating the Crypto Wallet & Checking Transaction
Just as a viewer finds the perfect NFT to buy or the NFT creator’s deal is closed they just want a quick route to get the fair transaction. To ensure that users have quick and secure transactions available on the marketplace a crypto wallet on a marketplace is a must. This can be made possible by designing a wallet that supports multiple cryptocurrencies (Also dependent on the development area). Other than the technical metric, it should have a smooth and error-free UX. Adding feedback with each step by a user can enhance the user experience.
Transaction history or activities
Giving access to the users’ actions and transaction history on the marketplace is another viable feature. Buyers can check back and forth the worth/pricing of any digital asset and decide if new transactions they can work on without any errors.
Other Tips that will be helpful
- Focused Navigation
- Perfect Layout
- Creating a listing page for sellers
- User profile with the follower count and links to social media
- Onboarding or “How it works” page
Originally published at https://expeditedesign.com on January 14, 2023.
