When you are ready to make the jump to an online presence with a web page or an eCommerce platform for your business, you may be wondering what the key components that make a great site are. If your company already has a webpage, you might feel that it could use an overhaul or an update to include today's style trends and features. First impressions count. In 2022, many consumers will make instant decisions and often time-based on your home page environment. True, most consumers decide whether to continue on your page or leave in under 15 seconds. Talk about a short elevator pitch!
As technology rapidly changes and consumers become more tech-savvy, you want to give them a stunning experience that embraces their customer journey and delivers your brand experience, tone, and voice. To create a site that includes today's trends and functionalities, you will need to find an expert web design and development team. If you want to start a new website or refresh an old one, read on to learn more about what makes a great site and the top design trends for 2022. You will also learn more about why you may want to build a complete eCommerce platform and where you can find expert web development teams.
Table of Contents:
- What Makes a Great Site in 2022?
- eCommerce Marketplace Solutions
- 2022 Website Design Trends
- Hiring Your Tech Team
What Makes a Great Site in 2022?
When you are ready to jump to an online presence, an eCommerce platform for your business, you may be wondering the key components that make a great site. You want to put your best foot forward. First impressions count.
As technology rapidly changes and consumers become more tech-savvy, you want to give them a stunning experience that embraces their customer journey and delivers your brand experience, tone, and voice. To create a site that includes today's trends and functionalities, you will need to find an expert web design and development team.
Many functions are easily integrated to make a great website. Top user features can include straightforward, focused design, great content, searchability, and communication. Businesses come in all sizes, but whether you are a home-based business or a top-level corporation, your consumers expect a great site. When you work with a professional web development team, they can work with you to learn more about what types of functions would work best for your site. There are a few hot features in new websites that you may want to include:
- Personalized Content: This is one of the top focus areas for many new websites this year. When you work with your development team, they can help you focus on your audience's demands. Web design should have the ability to communicate trust, draw in the consumer, deliver desired results, and build an ongoing customer relationship. When you can provide content that is specifically geared toward your consumer's interests and behaviors – you bring in the desired returns.
- Smart Content Load: The top factor in website success is user experience. Many sites can be slow and bogged down with heavy graphics or integrated apps. Remember the 15-second guideline above? A solution for this and still delivering all the content is to use intelligent content loading. It has been commonly used on social media platforms. If you work with your tech team to incorporate smart content loading, you can dramatically increase your site speeds. The central concept of intelligent content loading is only loading what your user needs to see. Many shoppers experience this feature as products only load as you scroll down further.
- Brightness Toggles: You might have this feature on a few sites you use now. Facebook and Twitter offer both light and dark modes. This is one way you can give some control over the user. Let them decide. Make it easy to switch settings to allow the user to choose. This feature is an enhancement to your content; it doesn't distract. Part of making this work is to ensure that your color palettes don't impact visibility. It's an easy option to make the user feel in control.
- Home Pages Stories: An artistic design element that is coming in hot for 2022 are full-screen video stories or unique homepages that share a cinema-style feature. Deliver the story behind your latest product by using video elements, slow-motion effects, and vignettes. Bring sound in to tell your history or describe the human aspect behind a new design. Pull users into your narrative, and you will have a consumer that shares your story.
- Big Easy-to-Entice Buttons: This new trend answers a usability issue, and it works. Your audience wants your site to be user-friendly and effortless. Incorporating larger buttons for options improves responsive design, which easily conforms to various screen sizes. For those using mobile options, clicking on a choice isn't easy. This trend works well with minimalist design which is also trending.
- Minimalism: Think minimalist design elements with modern, clean, bold lines. When you consider a site like this, you may envision a simplistic design with a lot of white space. This type of design enhances usability and makes your content easy to read. However, the elite companies and top designers have been taking this to another level by incorporating color schemes into this minimalist space.
- Realistic Chat Bots: When you consider that your customers want to interact with you and your brand with ease, you need to give them better ways to communicate with you. AI chatbots are nearly an essential feature in new web development designs. Customers want to interact, solve problems and get answers – on their own time. As your AI chatbot interacts with your consumers, you can design them to help push leads through the sales funnel. They can also handle some returns and automate other internal workflow processes.
eCommerce Marketplace Solutions
If you are starting a new business and are looking to build a website, it helps to realize upfront that successful online companies use an eCommerce marketplace solution. Even as a small start-up, an eCommerce platform makes sense. These platforms can scale your business as it grows. They can also help automate many other business processes like inventory management. Some of the top eCommerce platforms available as a SaaS include:
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Volusion
- BigCommerce
- Magento
It is possible to build an entirely custom site, but using one of these platforms is critical if you want real scalability. One of the main challenges in using these platforms is their limitations. Each platform has its plusses and pitfalls. When you choose your web development team – make sure they are experts in these platforms and can add the additional coding required to give you the custom features you want or need.
2022 Website Design Trends
In 2022, there have been a fantastic number of design trends to build into your site, giving it a contemporary, fresh feeling. Top web designers have been creating entire sites as works of art. Some designers are focusing on developing fully interactive showpieces. There are also some hot trends in delightful and sales-funneling one-page mini-sites.
When it comes to these digital fashion trends, it has come to the attention of many designers that as our clothing fashions ebb and flow, borrowing from yesterday – so do trends in website design. For 2022, when you consider things like colors and fonts, think of the late 90s. This was when the web was fresh and available to everyone. As the looming health crisis has pushed many to spend time online looking for excitement, the flair for creativity in web design elements emerged. Many designers can manage contemporary sites using no-code tools and deliver them faster than before. No-code is great for streamlining the development process, but it's great to know that your tech team can handle any custom coding required.
Check out these top design trends for this year:
- One-Page Websites: One-page websites have been increasing in popularity. These sites effectively handle a more focused subject, such as work portfolios or used in A/B testing. Many top professionals will create a one-page site to present their resumes more easily when job hunting.
- Locals Only – Place Sites: A trending design element that brings a sense of place to a site is done by using content-focused or photographs of local areas. A creative idea, as many users browse sites without realizing where the store is located. When you use local images, you enhance your story and brand. In addition, you bring your audience in a little closer, giving them a more significant connection to where your business is located. Think global, share local.
- Art Deco: Art deco trends have been seen everywhere – calling us back to the 1920s in the 2020s. It is still a vital design element for 2022. Art deco combines modern design with natural elements. Think bold lines, beautiful logos, expressive fonts, ornate borders, and architectural illustrations.
- Large Type: A fresh, simple, and bold design trend that is popular for 2022 is using unusual-sized, large typography. Words themselves become the visual. This technique can be used effectively on various sites and with impact.
- Glassmorphism: This design trend is hot for 2022. Glassmorphism combines transparency, movement, and blur to create elements that visually appear glass-like. This effect can give an edgy 3D feel to your design.
Hiring Your Tech Team
You have many options when you start to build your online business presence. First, you can do it yourself. Many of these eCommerce platforms have fairly easy-to-learn design solutions, and for some small businesses, this may be a perfect choice.
If you are looking to sell many products, track inventory, automate emails, and other workflow processes within your website, it is better to have a professional, expertly-trained tech team that can handle all the different aspects of creating your online marketplace. Successful online marketplaces are built with top design elements and the latest functionalities. DataCose builds websites, minimum viable products, one-page sites, and complete eCommerce platform solutions. Our Tech Team in a Box delivers an entire team of elite designers, developers, coders, project managers, and SEO specialists.
Please fill out the form below and contact us for a no-obligation review of your business needs. DataCose delivers future-forward, jaw-dropping web design with integrated workflow automation.