Five eCommerce design trends worth watching in 2023

Design trend lists are easy to write and hard to act on. The ones worth your time change how someone shops — not how a homepage looks in a screenshot. Here are five our design team keeps coming back to this year.

Augmented and virtual reality, used for something

AR and VR are hard to avoid at the moment, and most of what you see is a demo rather than a feature. Used properly, they answer the question that stops an online sale: will this actually work, in my house, on me, in this room? Customers can try clothing on virtually, place furniture in their own living room, or explore a product in a simulated space. Less hesitation, fewer returns, more engagement.

We built exactly that for Topps Tiles, where a customer uploads a photograph of their home and finds the tile that matches it. With a range that big, the hard part was never having enough choice.

Less is more, again

Clean, clutter-free layouts are not new. What has changed is the reason for them — this year the focus is squarely on the person using the site. Streamlined navigation, faster loading, a checkout with nothing extra in it. It has been a trend for roughly a decade, which is a decent hint that it is not one.

A greener future

An independent study commissioned by SmartestEnergy found that 81% of people prefer to buy from sustainable sellers. That has pulled sustainability off the "about us" page and into the design itself: recycled materials in packaging, sustainable products given prominence, and a clear account of what the brand is actually doing about its impact.

Our client LeMieux did that with Ecologi. Every purchase from their Earth Collection, made from recycled materials, plants a tree. Expect more green-themed design and messaging this year — and expect shoppers to check whether it means anything.

Mobile first, properly

Mobile-first is not a design preference any more. Our team handles mobile optimisation before anything else, so the experience is responsive from the first breakpoint rather than squeezed into one at the end.

We also build Progressive Web Apps. They behave much like a native app without the upfront cost of building one, and they are quick — which is what matters most to somebody shopping on the move, where a slow page is a closed tab.

Tell them something true

Competition is fierce enough that a good product and a working checkout are the starting line, not the difference. Brands are turning to storytelling — narrative, user-generated content, video — to build a connection worth coming back for.

MyFUJIFILM does this well. Shop-by-occasion milestone collections and customers sharing their own memories on social media mean the brand sits around something people already care about, rather than around the product.

None of these five are technology for its own sake. Each one removes a reason to leave — doubt, clutter, a slow page, a brand nobody feels anything about. That is the only trend that has ever really mattered.