Did you know you only have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression with your website design? That is all it takes for a user to decide whether or not they will stay on your site and potentially become a customer or they will close off for a competitor.
We’ve compiled a list of UX/UI trends for 2023 to ensure you make the right first impression.
Simplifying UX/UI
In today’s world, e-commerce goes beyond just your website. Users can shop mid-scroll through TikTok, watching YouTube videos, and even within the metaverse (we’ll get to more on VR later). Ask yourself, what is the one thing that all of these experiences have in common? It’s simplicity. Simplicity in functionality and simplicity in experience.
Users are attracted to these platforms because they’re easy to use and feel familiar. We must apply this tidbit to e-commerce websites to ensure we retain customer attraction.
When building your e-commerce store, you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. It’s fine and encouraged to keep your website simple. The more unique features you have, the more likely users could become alienated and distracted from purchasing.
Now is a good time to do an internal audit of your website and ask yourself the following questions:
- Where are users dropping off?
- What is the conversion rate versus the industry-expected conversion rate?
- Is your website fast and meeting accessibility standards?
- Are we effectively showcasing our products and USPs?
- Can the user make an educated purchase based on the Product Page alone?
Conducting an internal audit will help you understand your user behaviours and key-areas for simplification. If you’re looking for an unbiased website audit, contact Velstar, where our UX designers, SEO managers, and developers can survey your website.
Once you’ve benchmarked your requirements for streamlining, you must receive confirmation from those who will be most affected - your users. This can be done through Usability Testing.
As mentioned in our Five Ways to Optimise Your Product Pages on Shopify blog post, usability testing is one of the most important factors to consider when looking at your website as this is directly related to user behaviours, not just top-level executives who may have a bias towards changes. This will give you a real insight into the problems your users are facing. It also allows you to streamline your pages.
Improved UI Accessibility
Designing with accessibility in mind is something we expect to take priority for UI design in 2023. The design of your website can set the tone and influence the user buying journey, so your page design must be accessible for all users, regardless of impairments.
If this is something you haven’t considered, it’s time to do so, as you’re most likely not catering to a large demographic.
You can make subtle enhancements to ensure your website meets accessibility guidelines. See our How to Make Your eCommerce Site Accessible for more information.
- Ensuring your brand colours meet a contrast ratio. You can use online tools such as WebAIM’s Colour Contrast Ratio Checker to check this.
- Avoid using decorative or handwritten typefaces excessively, as these styles often have complex and ambiguous character designs.
- Follow best practices with the header, navigation, and footer placements. Displaying these in hard-to-find areas can provide more difficulty for those with and without visual impairments.
- Include alt texts on all images.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, we highly recommend reading our How to Make Your eCommerce Site Accessible blog post. Or, get in touch with us to arrange a UX audit where our team will analyse your website for accessibility improvements.
Incorporation of Motion Design
When we think about motion design, many sites and styles that come to mind. For example, Apple’s scrollytelling effect? That little burst animation you see when you like a tweet? Or perhaps a simple hover effect when you’re interacting with buttons.
These are not new features, but they’re becoming more popular. You should consider what motion elements are right for your product and your users.
Not every page of your site needs to have 360 spins, dancing characters, or super fast scrolling effects. You can incorporate motion design through subtle enhancements that guide user attention. These could look like the following:
- Smooth transitions between pages.
- SVG animations for hover states (a bursting heart animation for users adding something to their wishlist).
- Mouse hover transition effects.
- Loading spinners.
Motion design should be treated as the ‘cherry on top’ of an already excellent site, and whilst it can be a game-changer for the user experience, you must think efficiently when incorporating motion design into your website. You should ask yourself if the motion you’re considering will directly benefit the user; if the answer is no, then maybe skip it this time.
Advancements of VR & AR
I’m sure each year you read a “UI trends” blog post, you see call-outs of virtual reality and augmented reality becoming the next big thing. But the reality is, every year, technology is becoming smarter, more mainstream, and more accessible. So it’s no doubt it made it to our 2023 list.
VR and AR technologies are creating new playgrounds for an accelerated user experience bringing UI into the real world.
If you’re in the beauty industry, you will have come across the mind-blowing “Virtual Try On” widgets as seen by the likes of Makeup by Mario and FentyBeauty. These have been championed by beauty-tech pioneers, PerfectCorp, a plug-and-play augmented reality app that allows users to virtually try on makeup products from the comfort of their own home, ensuring more confident purchase decisions.
Virtual try on AR doesn’t stop just in the beauty industry. Poplar Studio offers end-to-end AR virtual commerce solutions that allow you to integrate (almost) any product for augmented reality — jewellery try on, viewing art on your own wall, your new kicks on your feet, the opportunities can be endless.
UX/UI Trends: A Conclusion
If you’ve skimmed through this blog and just wanted the TL:DR conclusion, don't worry. Here’s a quick rundown of the key pieces you should take away:
- Focus on accessibility to create inclusive designs.
- Streamline your design with a focus on information hierarchy.
- Add subtle enhancements of motion to your website.
- VR & AR are here to stay.
These are just a small insight into what to expect for UI design in 2023, and as technologies advance, we will surely see more pop up later in the year. By staying open to new ideas and approaches, you will be prepared to create innovative, conversion-driven websites that meet UX/UI requirements.
