How to Prepare for 2021 with Innovative eCommerce Website Design

The eCommerce sector saw unprecedented growth in 2020. According to eMarketer, businesses enjoyed 32.4 percent growth year-over-year in 2020. This growth trend isn’t going away anytime soon as the pandemic’s effects are expected to carry over well into 2021. With more shoppers turning to eCommerce, an enormous opportunity awaits your business to enjoy massive growth in the coming year. So, is your business ready to meet the demands of 2021?

As we head into 2021, experts predict even more success for the eCommerce industry, which is predicted to be as much as 50 percent. With consumers continuing to primarily shop online, your priority as an eCommerce business owner before the end of the year should be to prepare your website to give consumers a reason to stay and shop.

This is where eCommerce website design comes in.

A website designed with the user in mind accomplishes three very important things:

1.  It captures the attention of the consumer by leaving a good first impression.
2.  It makes the user want to stay and enjoy good user experience (UX).
3.  It leaves a lasting impression that makes the user want to return.

The function of eCommerce web design isn’t just to make your business website pretty. It optimizes your website, so it captures the attention of your intended audience and compels them to convert.

Make eCommerce website design a critical part of your digital marketing strategy in 2021. In this blog, we discuss:

•  B2B eCommerce trends that emerged this year that are expected to carry over to 2021
•  How your business can thrive in 2021 with eCommerce web development
•  Questions to ask yourself to know if you’re ready to perform eCommerce web development yourself or hire an eCommerce website design company

A Look at 2020: eCommerce Trends That Emerged This Year

The year 2020 was eventful and buyer behavior changed considerably. A few trends in eCommerce web development emerged as brands adapted to the sudden shift.

One of the biggest B2B eCommerce trends this year was the adoption of omnichannel marketing strategies for online businesses. As buyers began to populate multiple online platforms, brands adapted by meeting buyers wherever they were on the internet.

As eCommerce brands received an influx of visitors, business owners saw an opportunity to grow their conversions and improve customer retention by improving the customer shopping experience. This meant creating a personalized shopping experience by leveraging product recommendations, helpful guides and a personal shopping assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Brands also leveraged the power of non-static images to aid in product visualization. They used a combination of 3D images, explainer videos and augmented reality (AR) to aid shoppers in visualizing items they wanted to buy.

So, what did all of these eCommerce trends that emerged in 2020 all have in common? They all aimed to improve the user experience while shopping online. And with Google set on making UX a major ranking signal in 2021, these trends are expected to expand even further in the coming years.

In the next section, our eCommerce web design company will show you how you can take advantage of these b2b eCommerce trends to stay competitive in 2021.

How to Stay Competitive in 2021 With eCommerce Web Design

The year 2021 promises to be a big one for online shopping as consumers will continue to look to eCommerce platforms as their primary shopping platform – even when the pandemic is no longer dictating our actions. Take advantage of this trend and remain competitive in the new year. We’ll show you how using a three-step approach: attract, convert and retain.

Attract

Google recently announced that Core Web Vitals, along with existing UX-related page signals, are set to become ranking signals in May 2021. This is a very important update for business owners and webmasters because it changes the way Google ranks web pages and will most assuredly affect page rankings.

The upcoming Google Core Web Vitals update brings to light one of the biggest trends of the decade: building a customer-centric business that prioritizes user experiences. That is why it is incredibly important to optimize your website for UX through custom eCommerce website design.

To build a resilient eCommerce business in 2021, you have to make sure your lead generation efforts remain effective. That means making sure your website is optimized to attract the customers you want and to remain accessible to everyone on the internet. Here are a few ways you can do so:

1.  Prepare your website for the upcoming Core Web Vitals update. Thrive’s Thea Serrano shares some actionable steps on how you can prepare your website for 2021 in this comprehensive guide.
2.  Ensure your website is more accessible and usable for everyone on the internet by making it ADA-compliant. Follow this online guide from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative for eCommerce website design companies and other businesses on how to make your website compliant.
3.  Don’t alienate potential customers using mobile devices by limiting web development to desktop. Build a mobile-responsive website using custom eCommerce website design.

Building a resilient eCommerce business in 2021 is all about adapting. For you to attract your ideal customers, you must adapt your web properties to the changes all around you to keep your lead generation strategies effective.

Convert

Generating enough leads for your business is half the battle. You also have to turn site visitors into actual paying customers so you can generate sales. With the amount of traffic you’ve been generating through customer eCommerce website design, you now have plenty of opportunities to generate conversions.

The key to converting visitors is to give your customers what they want and need – even if they don’t know they need it. This means leveraging innovative eCommerce ideas to elevate the UX across your site. Here are some ways you can do just that:

1.  Create a personalized shopping experience by offering product recommendations according to their preferences and similar products.
2.  Incorporate chatbots to serve as personal shopping assistants.
3.  Streamline the checkout process and avoid too many redirects for quicker sale completion.
4.  Improve page experience signals such as mobile friendliness, page load speed, page security and limit page interstitials.
5.  Add high-quality, non-static images and/or video to improve product visualization.
6.  Leverage your good online reputation such as client testimonials and positive reviews as social proof.

You can also boost the conversion rate of your eCommerce store with the help of an eCommerce website design company like Thrive.

Retain

The most important part of building a resilient eCommerce business in 2021 isn’t your lead generation strategy but your customer retention strategy. Here’s why:

•  It costs five times more in marketing expenses to try and acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
•  According to one eCommerce website design company, loyal customers are also five times more likely to make a repeat purchase.
•  Retaining five percent of your customers translates to as much as 95 percent more profit.

So instead of focusing all of your efforts on lead generation, take more time to implement a customer-centric strategy aimed at customer retention. Here are some aspects you should focus on for your customer retention strategy:

1.  Ensure that your website has a clean layout.
2.  Make navigation easier by making your menu bar visible, offering related product recommendations and keeping the nav bar simple.
3.  Highlight your brand values in your content.
4.  Incorporate high-quality visuals.
5.  Add easy payment options and avoid redirects if possible.
6.  Implement a returns policy.
7.  Establish relationships through excellent customer service.

See a theme here? Building a resilient business in 2021 is all about customer experience. By providing your customer with a pleasurable shopping experience, you are able to attract customer attention, invite them to convert and encourage them to be loyal to you.

When to DIY and When to Hire an eCommerce Web Design Company

Now let’s talk about how to build the resources you need for your eCommerce business. Today, you don’t necessarily need eCommerce web design companies when you can do it yourself. Using such platforms as Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce, or web builders such as Wix, Webflow and Squarespace, you can easily build an eCommerce website for your business. But do take note that simply building a website and building an effective, hard-working website are two different things.

In reality, building an effective eCommerce website is no easy feat. There are so many things you have to take into account that doing it yourself might just be counterproductive.

Are you still unsure if custom eCommerce web design services are for you? Here are three simple questions to ask yourself to ascertain if you can do it yourself or if you need to hire eCommerce website design companies to make your vision come to life:

1.  Do I have the required skills or design experience?

Building any website is easier now than ever before. You don’t even need design skills, knowledge or prior design experience to make it happen now using free web builders you can find online.

But an eCommerce website isn’t just “any other website.” It is a complex machine that integrates features such as product management, lead generation, payment processing, product logistics and customer service, among many others. There are so many things at play that technical skills and design experience should be considered mandatory.

Some of the most essential skills that you will need to build an effective eCommerce website include:

•  Front-end web development
•  Back-end web development
•  UI/UX design
•  Search engine optimization (SEO)
•  Product management

On the other side of the spectrum, when you work with eCommerce website design companies, you gain access to a team of industry experts whose members specialize in some of the necessary skills. They offer eCommerce website design services with the help of their in-house experts to produce a high-performing eCommerce website in a professional capacity.

2.  Do I have access to the right tools?

As mentioned above, the internet today provides access to all sorts of tools that can help you build your own eCommerce website. You can even find all the information you need to start a website. A quick Google search will tell you that all you need to start an eCommerce website are:

•  Domain
•  Business model
•  Website builder
•  Professional template
•  High-quality content
•  Payment processing system
•  Shipping service integration
•  Customer relationship management (CRM) software

You can find all the software you need on the internet. However, there are two glaring issues here:

1.  All the free tools are either bad, limited or difficult to use while the best tools are incredibly pricey.
2.  You will still need the help of an expert to seamlessly integrate all of these tools in one website.

It’s easier to find eCommerce web development services to take care of everything and make sure everything from your content to the checkout process are seamlessly integrated.

3.  Do I have time?

The world of eCommerce will become even more competitive in 2021. To get a leg up on your competitors, it is paramount that you launch your eCommerce website as early as possible. Taking care of everything by yourself would take an extraordinary amount of time and effort on your end. Is this an investment you can make?

Meanwhile, eCommerce web design services offered by a team of experts will make sure your website is completed on schedule so you don’t have to worry about anything.

Conclusion

Global eCommerce sales grew by about 40 percent to $31.19 billion in 2020 due to the surge in usage brought about by the global pandemic. This number isn’t likely to slow down as consumers have now come to enjoy the convenience brought by shopping online. In fact, the demand for eCommerce is expected to grow even higher in 2021. In this blog, we shared with you how you can leverage the power of superior UX to grow your eCommerce business.

Our eCommerce web design company also showed you three questions you can ask yourself to see if you’re ready to build a professional website for your eCommerce business. Based on the questions above, are you ready to build an eCommerce website yourself? Or will you be needing eCommerce website design services?

Having a professional website that elevates UX through innovative website design is a surefire way to build a resilient business in 2021. Make it a priority using Thrive’s eCommerce website design services. Our digital marketing agency offers custom eCommerce web design services to make sure your primary conversion tool is at its best to fast track your post-pandemic recovery process.

Thrive is one of the top eCommerce web design companies in the industry today. Our custom eCommerce web design services focus on elevating user experience to help you attract, convert and retain customers the right way. We keep track of search engine algorithm changes to keep your website optimized and give you a competitive edge. Above all, our eCommerce web development services help you build a professional eCommerce website that integrates all the tools you need to run your business efficiently and effectively.

Work with one of the best eCommerce web design companies in the industry today. Do you already have a website? Our eCommerce web development services also include design review and audit services to help you find gaps to bring your website up to code and optimized.

Give us a call today at 866-908-4748 or fill out this form to schedule a free consultation.