The eCommerce landscape is changing constantly these days. Building an eCommerce site is no longer an option but a necessity. With the pandemic accelerating online purchases, the competition is becoming fierce. If you are a retailer who has relied on offline sales until now, it is vital for you to build an eCommerce website in 2022.
But if everyone else is selling online, then how can you stand out from the rest? Businesses are trying innovative strategies to enhance customer experiences and keep abreast of the competition. To build an online store in 2022, you need to keep up with these growing and upcoming trends.
You don’t want to have the vague-looking storefront that no one wants to browse through. So here are the five most recent eCommerce website-building trends you can follow to ensure higher engagement and sales.
Augmented Reality Takes Center Stage
Augmented Reality (AR) is an immersive technology used by some major websites. But in 2022, it will become mainstream in eCommerce websites due to the growing demand for improved remote customer experience.
Customer experience has become the most significant brand differentiator, and AR can help with that. With these immersive technologies, you can allow users to try your products before purchasing them. Suppose you have an online clothing store. Most of the returns for an eCommerce clothing store come due to a lack of an option to try them before purchasing.
Everything from the color to size to how the cloth looks on the customer is confirmed after the delivery. It impairs customer satisfaction and increases the number of returns, impacting your costs, revenue, and brand image.
AR can change all this by enabling the customers to virtually try before buying. Whether it is clothes, a shoe, or furniture, AR can create a life-like 3D simulation of how the product will look and feel when used. Ikea is a great example of this, using AR to enable users to test the products in real-time with the help of Apple’s ARKit technology.
Chatbots Will Become the New Salesmen
Physical stores have salespeople to answer customer queries. That’s also possible through the customer support team online. But connecting with a customer support agent is not always a quick or pleasant experience for customers. Some don’t like to call an agent, and the turnaround time becomes an issue at times.
Chatbots can become the personal salespeople that your customers want. Whether it is solving an issue or providing product information, chatbots can handle everything with little to no human intervention. With the help of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, chatbots can understand human language to understand a query and reply.
The best thing about chatbots is that they can handle almost all queries. And if something complicated comes up, they can quickly escalate the conversation to a human who can then assist the customers. Hence, incorporating chatbots is one thing you should not miss out on when building an eCommerce website.
Creative Micro Animations Will Appeal to Senses
More and more websites will feature creative micro animations in 2022 to help customers view the finest details seamlessly.
If you don’t have the resources for AR, micro animations are your best alternative. They can help create stunning animated backgrounds to grow engagement, especially through hover effects. For instance, whenever a customer hovers over a product, you can show details of the product or similar products with the help of animations.
You can also set the mood for customers to buy a product. Suppose you have a water body image in the background. When the user hovers over the image, you can play the sound and waves effect to enhance the interface.
Voice-Powered Interfaces Will Be Ubiquitous
Using a voice user interface can create a hassle-free experience for customers. You can think of it as providing a personal assistant to the users. Whenever someone wants to find a product or ask a query, a simple conversation with the assistant can do the job.
According to a Microsoft report, 72% of respondents use digital assistants. With the help of AI technology, you can implement this in your website to facilitate hands-free shopping.
The feature is best used for purchasing everyday items. For instance, a customer can communicate with the digital assistant to buy regular groceries without navigating to the page and manually adding the details.
The Era of Phygital Stores Will Emerge
Although online shopping is on the rise, some customers prefer in-store purchases. Hence, when you build an eCommerce website, you cannot ignore these customers. That is why many sellers are moving to the “phygital” retail concept.
Phygital means blending physical and digital stores. It enables customers to look for the product, stock availability, price, and placement before heading to the store to buy the item. This will eliminate the hassle of shopping in the crowd, finding an item in the physical store, and waiting in a queue for payments.
A prominent and easily relatable example is Amazon Go, stores which automatically bill and charge customers to eliminate waiting in the checkout lines. Hence, if you have multiple retail stores, introducing the phygital concept in your eCommerce website can help satisfy every customer who prefers online shopping and even those who don’t.
Conclusion
If you are planning to build an eCommerce website in 2022, incorporating these recently popular trends will help scale your online businesses. While each trend can help you significantly, using them as complementary can yield the best results.
For instance, if you use AR and a voice-user interface, you can give your users a complete hands-free shopping experience. Now that you know the most recent trends, it’s time to start building your online store.
