It’s no surprise that the ecommerce industry has evolved to a macro level. From its ability to produce to its potential to sell, every aspect of the online shopping platform has adapted to the changing consumer demand. Take any website for instance, from its development, design and content, everything has been given a new meaning and purpose.
In the old days a website was only limited to showing text oriented content with just a couple of pictures hidden at the top or at the bottom. More or less, it was garbage compared to what websites have been designed today.
Which Websites Reach the Top?
The website of the modern era has been the vessel of the ecommerce industry and in the vast ocean of internet competition is inevitable. Without competition websites cannot rank against each other and without a leading clicker the role of search engines such as Google gets diminished. But how do these websites rank? What are the factors that affect their rankings and how well do they do against the changing behaviors of the internet users.
Websites are ranked through certain algorithms that are run by search engines. Every website is judged by its appearance, content and usability, but how these factors affect the person using it is called UX or user experience. The better the UX the higher the rankings and behind every good user experience a web design is at work.
8 Top Web Design Trends Of Dubai
Throughout my experience I have stumbled upon many top ranking clickers that managed to reach up just by enhancing their web design in Dubai. By integrating the latest ecommerce trends and learning the dynamics of consumer behavior, a web designer can mould the perfect cast to create the ideal user experience. In the article we will discuss the 8 dominating factors that define web designing in contrast to the changing trends of the Arab Ecommerce industry.
Upwardly Responsive
Yes, it’s quite everywhere in web designing articles, blogs and forums how much responsive web design means to the 21st century website. With the growing number of people using smart phones and tablets, the need for mobile compatible web designs are HOT! But that’s also the problem. As much as people like to have these gadgets and hardware, they’re still too expensive for majority of the population in the world.
In UAE people have yet to completely transition from home desktop to laptops while others just like having to work on big HD screens. A research conducted by statista.com shows that 46% on online shoppers in UAE still use desktops even though the larger percentage has adopted smart phones with 79% and tablets with 43.7%. According to Hence a website must be upwardly responsive to suffice the needs of the larger screen users who are actively participating in online shopping in the Middle East.
Dynamic Search
Coming from my personal experience having navigation features in your ecommerce website without Dynamic Search is basically a big NOPE! Dynamic search includes autocomplete feature that allows the user to search for their relevant products by entering the first few initials in the search box. The search algorithms within the website platform search for products that start with the initial letters and show the relevant keywords in a drop box.
Most of the websites that I have come across in the UAE already have dynamic search options and even pre-entered text to guide customers into entering their desired keywords. This is considered as one of the top ecommerce web design trend in both UAE and outside UAE. Among the popular websites of UAE, uae.souq.com is the perfect example of a dynamic search.
Mobile Friendly
Mobile friendly websites are the best thing the ecommerce industry has had ever since the invention of smart phones. It redefines convenience and user experience to whole new level when you are able to browse and purchase products on a smaller screen device without compromising any functionality of the original website. The importance of mobile friendly design increased when Google mobile friendliness as ranking signal.
In growing economies such as the UAE, I have absolutely no doubt that everyone must at least have a smart phone just to attend calls. The sizable percentage means that online users are who connect to internet through their mobile devices is at large. The only way to capitalize on these numbers is to facilitate them to shop online by introducing a design that not only spans and fits on the smaller screens, but also maintains all its features and functions.
Card Layout
A lot of websites now use multimedia as their main source of engagement, but what they don’t use is correct way to show them. A website is as good as damned if it lacks to show its content in contrast to the space surrounding it. For a website to appropriately arrange its text, images, and videos on a page, a good layout is in order.
To simplify your page content and show it elegantly to the audience the card layout can be used. Card based design collects the content of the website such as products, images, categories, videos and aligns them on vertically and horizontally next to each other in an orderly format. Take an example uae.souq.com that is partial using card layout on its home page.
CTA
Next up is call to actions. These small tiny triggers are real big deals when it comes to store conversions of your products. They are buttons with text in them that prompts the user into taking action for instance “Buy Now”, “Click Here”,” Download Free” etc are all examples of CTAs.
Their presence in today’s websites are imperative because a website that sells certain products of your interest will never get its conversions through if there is no point of initiation. Call to actions or CTAs are a clever way of engaging the customers and leading them to the checkout page to complete the transaction. UAE’s Cobone.com has used CTAs to increase engagement on their website by introducing CTA button with text such as “Pick of the Day” and “Contact Us” on their home page.
High Resolution Images
Have you ever heard about the saying “Size Matters”? In most cases it’s quite not accurate, but not in this one. When it comes to images you need to be as much exposure as possible, because a good looking image is the USP (unique selling point) of a product. Without the HD quality and different angles, your product cannot compete because without these you cannot show what lacks in your competitor’s products.
Most customers in UAE believe in the power of visual conviction and tend to add images to describe product more than text itself. The topshop.com has a rich archive of HD photographed products and they even threw in Zooming features to get a better view of their merchandise on product pages. Now this is really smart thing to do!
Pop-Ups
Pop-Ups is another great element of modern eCommerce web design Dubai architecture. It’s a graphical display area on the website that can appear when the customer lands on store. Its size, time of appearance and theme can be configured by the admin. Now you might be thinking it’s just a small window that shows irrelevant content, but it can be more than just random advertising if used correctly.
The crazydeals.com has exemplified its application by showing it on the right time and with the right marketing. It shows an elegantly designed Pop-Up theme that offers discount on products by using one of their free features, “QR Code Scanner” and just one the right time, 2 minutes after the customer has entered. The timing is crucial. Too early and the customer will frustrate and abandon, a little too late and the customer will lose interest in the website.
Payment Gateways
Payment Gateways are the channels through which cash flows from the customer to the merchant. With the advancements of past decade, websites are now fully capable executing secure transactions than can send the amount to the store owner within seconds. But how much often are these payment gateways being used, better yet—which ones?
According to a recent research by ShopGo team posted on wamda.com, the Arab world is using quite the number of payment gateways for their daily transactiond. CashU is leading with its network in 17 countries followed by OnceCard in 16, 2Checkout in 15, Skrill in 14 and last but not the least, Paypal in 9.
Conclusion
Without learning the latest trends of a certain region you cannot succeed in winning the competition. With the help of these latest web designing trends of UAE you can not only learn about the customer preferences, but also the leading marketing techniques the top ranking websites are use. Remember, good marketing decisions are based on knowledge, not numbers.
Featured image source: provectus
