11 trends in webdesign for e-commerce websites in 2022

Whatever the field, the concept, the sector, it is important to renew oneself and to be on the lookout for new trends.

Staying up to date and fashionable is a real challenge for merchants who are faced with large companies at the cutting edge of technology and with almost infinite resources to update and renew themselves.

Trends follow evolving standards over shorter and shorter periods.

A retrospective to become aware of it

E-commerce web design trends before 2015...

• We note that the menus were, in an overwhelming majority, exposed and fixed. This is due to the lack of mobile-friendly sites.
• Having a mobile version of your e-commerce store was a competitive advantage. Few companies were aware of the increase in online searches and purchase via smartphones and tablets.
• The emergence of social commerce is taking place in 2014 but this concept is still far from the stage of maturity. It's about putting things in place to increase sales via social networks and other social sharing and recommendations tools.
• Appearance of "finger friendly" interfaces. Companies are realizing the growing number of users on mobile and are rethinking the customer experience to make them pleasant and optimized for touch use.
• New fonts appear around 2013/2014. The use of a business-specific font is exploding and starting to become an integral part of branding.

E-commerce web design trends in 2015...

• Awareness of the importance of experiential marketing and the predominance of the customer experience in digital strategies.
• The responsive design is essential to face the competition.
• Infinite scrolling is growing, the advent of mobile-optimized sites is creating a "one page site" trend where everything is infinite scrolling rather than sections that are considered tedious for the user experience.
• The flat design is a must for its sober, uncluttered, and pleasant side.
• The stores tell the story of the products not through raw text but through images and videos.
• Menus are starting to be hidden on an increasing number of sites, minimizing the amount of information on the screen. This is in line with the flat design trend.
• It is the trend of the transparent buttons.

E-commerce web design trends in 2016-2017...

• User interface (UI) models are becoming common. E-commerce sites are standardizing and adopting similar "codes" to promote intuitive navigation.
• To avoid this standardization and to differentiate themselves, e-commerce sites are starting to customize the interface to make it unique.
• The responsive design expands and considers high-resolution devices such as televisions that are now also used for navigation.
• Animations are increasingly used for e-commerce : animated buttons, interactive scrolling and item zoomed on mouse-over, etc.
• The fonts are getting larger and larger, as are the backgrounds.
• The material design, minimalist with geometric shapes (often rectangular) colored, develops thanks to its introduction by Google. Its is in fact a metaphor of paper and ink from digital material.
• The use of cards, as part of the material design, is becoming widespread.
• Call-to-actions are oversized to facilitate their use and encourage their use.
• In 2017, it's also the return of color gradients.

E-commerce web design trends in 2018-2019...

• Sliders and carousels are disappearing due to their low interactions and click rate.
• Voice commands and instant messaging are becoming an integral part of the store design.
• Rise of social selling : use of social networks in the search for new customers, the stores give the possibility to your network of friends to consult it easily. It is also during this year that we see more and more the possibility to consult a product seen on a publication, a story on the online store.
• It is the trend of the asymmetry in the design of e-commerce sites.

E-commerce web design trends in 2020...

• The year "oversize", everything is big, fonts, images, buttons, etc.
• Immersive and interactive 3D elements such as almost abstract 3D illustrations of products, etc.
• The imperfect design had its charm, the objective being to give personality to the store thanks to the designs that are chilling for perfectionists.
• The product images are animated and interactive. For example, the mannequins rotate on themselves.
• The dark mode is conquering the world of online stores too. At a time when smartphone users with the little green robot are grumbling because the blue social network has forgotten them for their dark mode, e-retailers have understood the importance of the trend. The idea was to give the user the opportunity to choose whether or not to activate this mode.
• Imperfections that add personality. This is the year when, for example, we see more and more hand-drawn elements appearing on the sites.
• Shadows and layers are added to the flat design to add depth and highlight the elements on which the user's eye is supposed to rest. Floating elements create that same depth.
• The mixture of photography and graphic design is developing, we see photos of muses in color with graphic and polygonal elements that convey the brand image to perfection.
• The bright and vivid colors come to shake up the flat design. Despite this, the navigation is still minimalist.

E-commerce web design trends in 2021...

• In the wake of 2020, dark mode is the big trend.
• The use of elegantly contrasted typefaces in keeping with the industry plays an important role.
• The bright, vibrant colors transition almost instinctively to pastel colors with an 80's feel.
• Augmented reality is increasingly being integrated into online stores for item testing.
• The hidden menu, aka "burger" menu, slides to the bottom of the screen and loses its meaning as it fits in an increasing number of stores by being at the bottom of the screen as icons.

In short, what has changed?

Well, we can clearly see that the responsive design continues and develops, adapting to new devices.
The colors and visuals evolve and follow trends like clothing fashion that follows a retroactivity.
Personalisation and humanization continue to increase. New technologies are making their appearance and artificial intelligence allows the customer experience to evolve and gives rise to an increasingly individualized interface.

11 trends in e-commerce web design that will boost your sales

1. Vertical menus

This is another trend that is born from the use of mobile devices for navigation. Horizontal menus necessarily fit on narrow devices, even though they are getting wider. Mix this with the return of the fixed menu trend and you get a vertical menu.

2. An original layout

Trends improve your sales. So does being unique. Being original and having a well-defined and visible brand image on an online store is a must in 2022.

3. Awakening the senses

After personalization, emotion and humanization, it's time for the senses. A key trend for 2022 is to try to awaken one or more of your user's senses through words or images that provoke a powerful sensory memory that they will associate with a positive emotion provoked by their browsing on your store.

4. The ecological business

Be careful, we are not talking about greenwashing, no ecological approach, no ecological business web design. If the activity is concerned, it is important, in 2022, to integrate visual elements to the web design that will support this essential societal axis. The idea would be, for exemple, to create or use a logo to mention this approach where it is appropriate to do so.

5. Inclusion and non-gender

2022 is the year of tolerance, acceptance and inclusion. The general tendency to consider everyone including minorities and groups sometimes persecuted or not considered enough also extends to e-commerce web design by systematically avoiding pink for girls and blue for boys, for example.

6. Sobriety at its best

More and more web designers are adopting and will adopt this year backgrounds without the current classic photos. The use of graphic layouts, typography and colors is replacing the standards.

7. Interaction... typography!

Yes, even the fonts become interactive and react, for example, to the passage of the mouse.

8. Collages and abstract illustrations

After a tendency to replace text with images, we replace images with text. But the images have not revealed all their game. Collages of illustrations are more and more present, have this retro effect in vogue and allow to illustrate the site of several images in a single composition. This mix of shapes, patterns, colors and photos blends into the site, bringing a tactile feel and a clean visual, despite everything.
For the abstract, it is more sophisticated and authentic.

9. The gradations

Gradients are well known and are making a comeback since 2017. Nevertheless, adding grain will give it a whole new look with texture and a natural look.

10. Minimalist design and glassmorphism

These are two modern trends, but they are very distinct and different.
In terms of minimalism, the use of simple lines to delimit the "zones" of the website and abstract illustrations composed only of lines are in vogue.

Glassmorphism, wich is on the rise, is an effect that combines transparency, blur and movement to give a consistency similar to that of glass of crystal. It is one of the most promising trends.

11. The explicit segmenting of the store

The contents are well divided by zones delimited by very different colors and almost rough separating elements to contrast the whole.

You have in hand 11 keys to surf on the wave of future trends of this year that promises to be rich in web design.

It's up to you to choose the one(s) that will open the door to your success.