7 Ways To Improve Your Ecommerce Designs In 2020

In this blog, we’ll walk you through designs that will make the most impact for your ecommerce business in 2020, with a focus on ecommerce designs.

Optimize For Mobile 

You’ve probably heard this in more places than you can count by now. But in case you’re not acting on it, we’re going to repeat it once more. You have to optimize your ecommerce designs for mobile!

On Shopify alone, this past Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend over 1 million merchants across 175+ countries sold more than $2.9 Billion. That’s up from 2018 when they sold over $1.8 Billion. And 69% of those sales were on phones or tablets,

According to EasyShip, mobile sales are anticipated to make up nearly 43% of all US online retail in 2020. This projection represents a worldwide trend that increasingly favours mobile purchases. It’s no surprise. Consumers spend an extraordinary amount of time on their mobile devices. The savviest of ecommerce businesses tailor their marketing to this. Mobile devices are not only used by consumers to make purchases. They’re also the place where consumers are discovering products and services and reading reviews and testimonies that are influencing their actions.

Customize Your Product Pages

Shoppers love seeing products customized to their preferences. The ability to purchase items that are made just so, that no one else will have, appeals across ages. AI is playing a huge role in this, as more brands roll out options to simulate trying on products on their sites.

Even if you don’t have the means of doing this there are other ways you can engage your customers. You can design your product pages incorporating mockups and images of product variations. This will help your shoppers imagine how they’ll use the product in their day-to-day routines.

And as more and more customers are bypassing the home page and landing directly on product pages, Big Commerce also recommends that a well-designed product page does these things*:

• Uses triggers to convince browsers to add to cart
• Directs consumer attention to the add to cart button
• Fully explains both the product and the company
• Builds trust in the product and company, often through social proof (like testimonials)
• Upsells or resells to increase the average order value (AOV)

*…without appearing too cluttered and overwhelming shoppers with information.

Consider The Dark Side

We’re talking about Dark Mode here. In UI it’s a trend that has been gaining strength. In early 2019 both Apple and Google rolled out dark mode and designers began cranking out dark mode versions of their apps and websites.

Dark Mode can reduce strain on the eyes while delivering modern looks that make design elements stand out. Dark themes also happen to save power as black pixels on mobile devices are turned off.

While it’s a trend that’s making waves in UI, you may want to consider it for other types of creatives that you use as part of your ecommerce designs.

Shoppable Content

Shoppable content, aka content that allows you to add products to your cart or to navigate to a product page, has been around for a few years. On Instagram, the feature was launched in the US in 2016 and expanded to the UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain in early 2018 allowing consumers to go from “post to purchase” more easily. Pinterest also rolled out shoppable content in 2018, with “Shop The Look” which allows businesses to upload product pins that can allow consumers to see up to date pricing information and make purchases.

The success of shoppable content to convert depends very much so on the quality of the product images used. A Weebly study even found that 75% of ecommerce shoppers, ages 16 to 55, say product pictures are very influential, with 22% of online product returns being required as the product looked different than pictured.

Whereas customers can look and feel the products they’re purchasing in brick and mortar stores, they rely on high-quality product images to help them make decisions online. This is where design can play a role. Take the time to touch up your product images, remove shadows and edit the background. This will help shoppers experience and desire your product so that they are more inclined to make a purchase.

Exclusive Experiences

Not necessarily a 2020 trend, but content that makes your customers feel like they’re part of an exclusive audience can drive up conversions and increase brand loyalty.

A key channel for this is email. From designing attractive sign-up forms on your site to build your email list, to sending out well-designed emails.

You can then give those who sign up for emails access to offers and products that no one else will have. These can include the opportunity to pre-order new products, offers on limited edition products and exclusive discounts.

Like many other shifts, mobile has meant an increase in email opens. To optimize your emails to easily collapse for mobile, be sure to focus on including text copy, images and a layout that drives action in ways that are to the point. You’re going to redirect your customers to another page where you can provide more details. So, in your emails less is more. Just focus on intriguing your customers with their exclusive offer(s).

Think Less, Do More With Minimalism

With consumers accessing content through a wide range of devices, including wearables, making navigation simpler is key. At the same time, accessibility is also an important element to consider in your designs. That’s not necessarily a 2020 thing but it is something important to consider. By not factoring in accessibility into your content, you run the risk of missing out on entire segments of customers. The Web Accessibility Initiatives provides guidelines on how you can make your content more accessible.

Less content and points of friction to navigation also mean good things for your designs. You can use large scale text, imagery (including photography and illustrations), videos and even icons to make more of an impact and help tell your brand’s story clearly. A perk with this shift to large size content is that it will make an impact on any screen size. But only if you are making a few elements your focal points. Too many big elements and you’ll have the opposite of your intended effect.

Design For Voice Searches

Voice search has skyrocketed in popularity, thanks to Alexa and Google. In 2020 it’s anticipated that 30% of all web searches will happen via voice search. It’s important to take note of this as it’s going to affect your SEO, searchability and how you engage with your customers.

You’ll want to make sure that your content is written in a way that mimics how your customers make inquiries. And that your content considers different scenarios in which someone is going to need information about your products.

For the most part, when someone uses voice to search for information, they’re smack dab in the middle of doing something. They don’t want to deal with all the filtering they would need to with a text search. They want specific answers to specific questions. So be sure to do some deep dives into your customers’ buyer journeys to figure out the kind of content that will be most useful to them. And design accordingly.

New Year, New Marketing

As you roll out your marketing for 2020, keep in mind the words of VP of Commerce Platform & Product at Adobe, Jason Woosley: “Before they ever consume your products, they consume your experiences.”

And when you make those experiences shoppable for your customers, you reduce the number of clicks between “Ooh, I want that!” and “I just bought that.” 😉