eCommerce Website Design Trends 2020: How Color Psychology is Vital

Having a well-designed website is incredibly important in regards to your companies success. But design features, capabilities and trends are perpetually evolving and if you don’t stay up to date with the latest eCommerce website design trends, it becomes very easy to fall behind to your competitors. Each year, new concepts and ideas are introduced to capitalise on user patterns and concepts that were once irrelevant can quickly become important. To ensure that customers have the best shopping experience possible on your website, reevaluating or redesigning your eCommerce website every year will help you optimise accordingly.

But this does lead us to some important questions that you’ll need to answer in order to achieve this. Namely, what are the current design trends? What are the design trends for 2020? And with everything changing so quickly, just how do you keep up with design trends?

What Happened Last Year?

Sometimes to see improvements in the future you might have to take a step back and ask: What are the design trends for 2019? This information may still be pertinent as a lot of the features that saw success will still be effective in the new year. Last year saw the rise of videos and animation in the backgrounds of a website’s layout, especially sporting or gym-related companies like Bionic, as a means to instantly display the energy and drive they possess.

On the other hand, KLM incorporated built-in micro-interactions better than almost anybody else while 2019 saw the rise and implementation of chatbots across a huge swathe of websites as way to offer instant communication with potential consumers. Last year also saw more companies place an emphasis on particular colours and the psychology that can be associated with each one.

Why Colour Psychology is Important

So what exactly is colour psychology? Essentially, it’s understanding how colours affect perceptions and behaviours. In marketing and branding, colour psychology is focused on how colours impact consumers’ impressions of a brand and whether or not they persuade consumers to consider specific brands or make a purchase over another.

It’s an important field of study to consider when creating marketing assets, building a new business, or rebranding an existing one. One study even found that up to 90% of snap judgments made about products can be attributed to just their colour alone.

Although, the right colour won’t solve everything. It won’t make people instantly interact with your company because everyone has a different perception of something based on personal preferences, experiences, upbringings and cultural differences. But what is important is that you find the right colour that aligns with your brand’s personality and appeals to your specific audience.

Finding out what is the colour trend for 2020 alongside doing further research into the psychology of colours and the impacts they have can make all the difference when it comes to connecting with people.

Elements to Consider For eCommerce Design in 2020

Alongside colour psychology, there are a number of other key design elements that you will be need to consider in order to succeed in 2020:

• Mobile Efficiency – A huge percentage of online shoppers now prefer using mobile devices to shop. These changes mean one thing: creating e-commerce websites for mobile-first users is only set rise. This means seeing more mobile-friendly features on eCommerce website themes such as long scrolling pages, card-like layouts and more finger-friendly icons.
• Chatbots – As mentioned earlier, chatbots that incorporate artificial intelligence are becoming more and more common. They can answer questions, help with purchase decisions, offering discount codes, and delivering shipping notifications. With more and more users now expecting chatbots as a standard part of user experience, considering them as a part of your overall design should be a priority in 2020.
• Voice Integration – Your goal should be to give visitors a great shopping experience irrespective of the device they are using. With more and more internet searches being done vocally, if you are still not optimised for voice searches, then 2020 should be the year you change that.
• Originality – Custom photography and videos will become more common in 2020 as the reliance on stock imagery should begin to decline. More and more brands are looking to tell their stories, display their products and connect with users in an original way but by using stock imagery it negates the whole concept immediately. To stand out from competitors and display authenticity to customers, 2020 will see the rise of original and custom imagery in relation to website design.

eCommerce Website Design Trends in 2020

So those are some of the elements you will need to consider but let’s now take a look at the main website design trends that are going to take eCommerce by storm in 2020. Here are the main trends you can expect to see a lot of in the coming year:

• Minimalism – Let’s be clear, minimal doesn’t mean boring and empty. You can still utilise bold colours and bright fonts. Minimal means giving your products the platform and the space to take centre stage and shine brightest. Tinker Watchers are a great example of stripping back all the unnecessary design aspects, championing their products and making it easy for customers to interact with them.
• Dark Mode – Dark mode switches the background of a mobile operating system to black, reducing eye strain in some environments, enabling mobile devices to better adjust to ambient lighting conditions. Staying ahead of the curve and thinking about dark mode during the initial design stages as opposed to it being an afterthought will offer a great user experience for people who utilise this function regularly.
• 3D Graphics – With the rise in virtual and augmented reality capabilities, people are increasingly looking for an immersive experience online. This is where utilising 3D graphics can help deliver great UX. Offering smooth and satisfying interactive motion designs can create unique product views for your customers, something The Cool Club achieved in an incredibly brilliant way.
• Being Bold – So the minimalist approach may not be the best one to showcase your company. In that case, going to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and being as bold as possible might be a better decision. More and more companies, Brewdog as an example, go big, go brash and go bold. This works across all devices and can really draw the eye to the places you want it to go. It makes it simple and instantly accessible so expect to see a lot more of this approach in 2020.

Final Thoughts

Understanding techniques and trends that will affect web design in 2020 can be all-important to achieving eCommerce success. By undertaking your website design with care and paying attention to every detail throughout the process, you can create a brand that is recognisable and the resonates deeply with your target audience and customer base. It can seem like a lot to digest initially and staying on top of trends can be a big ask, so partnering with experts, like Appnova, who have industry-leading expertise in regards to designing an eCommerce website for the retail sector can be a great first step to take.