The design of your e-Commerce website is the key characteristic that attracts buyers towards your site and make them buy the product from you. 10 e-commerce design trends along with some tips, that you can utilize to compete in the e-commerce market is discussed below.

1. Design for all devices

As the mobile and internet technology advances, many people are accessing the web from mobile devices and they may be wishing to make an e-commerce transaction through mobile. So the e-commerce site should be designed in such a manner that it must fit in all the devices.

  • Design it figure friendly
  • These should be dynamic
  • Payment processing must support all platforms
  • Develop mobile apps

The mobile app offered by e-bay is shown below

2. Light weight design

E-commerce websites are rich content website because images and graphics are the greatest way to draw customers to the site. Adding more images and graphics to the e-commerce website may result in an increase in the page load time. So the pages should be designed in such a manner that it must require only minimal time to load even though it contain rich graphic.

  • Use flat design (Example Windows 7 Design)
  • Show simple animation if the content is taking more time to load. (Below is animation used by pepperfry.com)

3. All in one’ page

Many of the web users prefer to find all the data on a single page and they fed of going to all the pages through link to get more info. So your e-commerce site should be designed in such a manner that users must get more information from a single page itself.

  • Use infinite scrolling instead of next button or page number
  • Use mouse over feature to display more info about a product instead  of going to the product page.   

Quick view feature offered by http://www.fabfurnish.com/

  • Use add to cart, add to favourite and buy now button under each product thumbnail info.

4. Use photographs to highlight your offers

The special offer like discount sales, free deliver and cash on deliver offered by your e-commerce website must be highlighted using large images.

  • Use attractive pictures
  • Display on the home page itself
  • Load the picture as soon as the page loaded

Here Flipkart is highlighting its offers in home page.

5. Use photo navigation

Text based navigation is the traditional type of navigation and latest design trend is to use photo based navigation so that the user can quickly find what he was looking for.

  • Use attractive fonts
  • Use attractive and simple photos
  • Highlight discount and offers in photo itself

6. Includes chat support

Visitors of the e-commerce website may wish to know more details about the delivery method or about the product that listed on the website, or they may need assistance to set order. Offering live chat method is another latest e-commerce design trend.

  • Try to include live chat in a small pop up window rather than embedding the page.
  • Highlight it using attractive colours.

Live chat feature offered by http://www.housefull.co.in/

7. Well defined shopping cart

Shopping cart is the final decision (whether to buy or not) making a point in the e-commerce website, so the design of shopping cart should be done in such a way that it is well defined. Given below are some tips.

  • Use continue shopping button in the shopping cart
  • Use thumbnail images while displaying each item in the shopping cart
  • Display security and quality marks in the shopping cart
  • Offer anonymous checkout.

8. Social media integration is really stellar

Social media integration is an essential function of an e-commerce website, because they offer you zero investment advertisement.

  • Place social media icons on top or bottom of each page of your website.
  • Display social media icons in product page so that user can share the info about the item in his social network.

9. Advanced personalization

Displaying custom list of product or ‘recommended for you’ items inside a page or pop up window is another attractive design trend in e-commerce website.

  • Use past purchase history to create recommended list
  • Use past search history to create recommended list

10. Rich content

Picture slides and product video are another attractive design trend in e-commerce website.

  • Use videos of product review.
  • Display TV commercials of the product.