Web design has been recognized as one of the most powerful elements of a digital marketing strategy because it constitutes a great part of the customer experience. In fact, any company trading the e-commerce waters has to continuously invest in the website if they want to reach long-term success.
Why is this so? It’s simple – new web design trends constantly keep emerging. And these new trends offer a better customer experience, which eventually has an impact on the bottom line. Let’s see the most beneficial web design and customer experience trends in terms of delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Ease of Use
Have you ever heard of the KISS principle in web design? It stands for “Keep it Simple, Stupid.” This means that a great website is not a synonym for a flashy website encumbered with media, menus, and links.
These websites are hard to use and ultimately they bring the conversion rates down. We can look at the KISS as a web design trend aiming to make customers happy.
The simpler the better. This is why you can see a lot of successful e-commerce websites that are rather simple. But navigating through them, finding products, and going through descriptions is straight forward.
If you pursue this course of action, you will also be able to play the card of familiarity, as online customers are already accustomed to simple easy-to-navigate websites. If you have a WordPress website, we suggest you check out how to choose a WordPress theme.
More Space Reserved For Additional Info
Once you go for a minimalistic design, you will have a lot of freed up space on your website. This is where the next trend in web design falls in nicely. We are talking about impressing customers with professionalism.
Don’t forget that you are selling online, and customers don’t have the physical shop to judge you buy. Instead, they use your website.
You have to ensure your customers that you are worth their time and money. To do this, you will have to add a culture page to your website. This is where you will talk about your company, share your values, traditions, and so on.
The social proof section should be added as well to instill trust in your leads. Additionally, you should upload some high-quality photos and add them to your About Us page.
Beautiful Design
Beautiful design is a must. And as you know, the overall look is the first thing you notice about web design. If you want to impress the customers in an instant, you will have to incorporate the latest web design trends in your website.
There is one that you absolutely have to address – responsive design. The number of mobile shoppers is increasing and having a website that isn’t optimized for mobile will cause you to lose many potential sales.
So what makes a beautiful design these days? Parallax scrolling definitely does. It keeps websites visitors engaged. To add more to the visual experience of your website talk with your designers about the use of big typography, “hero” images, and well-timed pop-ups.
If you have a blog section, make sure your articles look beautiful as well. Add relevant images and make the text as scannable as possible.
Personality
Web designers and e-commerce businesses are struggling to add personality to their online shops. Something that will help the customers relate with the business and be able to communicate in real time just as in brick and mortar shops.
While the live chat offers this to some extent, long ques and unavailability in different time zones are still some of the major problems.
This is something a brand new trend can fix. Have you heard about speech bot before? These are advanced versions of chatbots that have been upgraded to have a voice. Adding this type of interactivity and using AI-driven software will allow you to engage customers in real time, make shopping easier with a hands-free experience.
If you want to leverage this cutting-edge technology, you should definitely check SnatchBot, as it is the only free chatbot building platform with a speech bot.
Lightning-fast Loading Times
Optimizing website loading speed is one of the few trends that constantly keeps emerging. This is quite understandable once you learn that website loading speed is one of the major SEO factors and that modern online shoppers have a very short attention span.
Besides, many new shoppers use their mobile data when shopping. Given that not everyone has 4G it’s important to deliver fast loading time so that you can capture all the leads despite the internet connection they use.
There are a number of ways to significantly improve the loading times of your website:
- Minify JavaScript and CSS files
- Optimize image sizes
- Use a content distribution network (CDN)
- Leverage white space to reduce data load demand
- Don’t use auto-play on media files
- Reduce the number of redirects
These are all the major trends in web design that will improve the user experience and, in return, make your customers happy. If you don’t know whether you should integrate a speech bot first or simplify your web page layout, we suggest you consult your marketing and web dev team.
Always make sure to pursue changes that bring you closer to your business goals.
