15 Shopify Website Trends For 2022

The ecommerce market is growing at an exceptional rate. Direct-to-consumer competition is rising, and companies of all sizes need to find ways of staying ahead of the curve. For many brands, the answer is building the right brand image and experience, through an effective website and store.

According to the Shopify “Future of Ecommerce” report, advancements in the technology landscape and the growth of available marketplaces means the industry will grow by around $11 trillion by 2025. Brand building, through a beautiful store, strong digital experience, and convenient shopping experience could be the key to claiming your piece of this growing space. 

To help ensure you’re prepared to capture the attention of the right target audience in 2022 and beyond, here are the trends you should look out for: 

User Experience Trends

Let’s start by focusing on the trends influencing user experience. 

When you build the perfect Shopify website, there are a number of steps you can take to improve user experience, from ensuring the theme you choose is attractive and easy to navigate, to making your site mobile responsive. To stay ahead of the curve with UX in 2022, you’ll need to adapt your Shopify development strategy to consider things like:

1. Faster & simpler sites: With the introduction of Hydrogen, Shopify’s headless offering - we will see many more websites that follow a highly streamlined path to purchase. The headless infrastructure coupled with simpler UX journeys will also mean much faster websites.  
2. Integrations: Integrations with social media channels are becoming increasingly important for modern ecommerce brands, particularly as “social selling” concepts grow more common. Customers will want to see a close connection between a company’s website and its social media pages. The same clients will also want to be able purchase products on both environments, making it crucial to consider your checkout process.
3. Live shopping: Live shopping is another common trend emerging in the UX environment, requiring developers to implement additional tools for video and live streaming content into stores. According to Shopify, the number of app installs for live-stream selling grew by 61% in the first 9 months of 2021 alone. 
4. Personalization: Customers are looking for shopping experiences more specific to their needs. This means personalisation is becoming a more relevant part of every Shopify store. Whether it’s dynamic advertising, or specialist suggestions on your product pages based on the products your customers have purchased before, look for ways to customize. Successful personalization programs are proven to increase revenue by up to 20%. 
5. Updated navigation: Your customers are browsing Shopify stores in a range of environments today, but they’re mostly going to be active on smart phones. Make sure the navigation capabilities of your store reflect the swiping, tapping, and other common activities your customers are used to on a smartphone.
6. Checkout: Checkout experiences need to be simpler than ever in today’s fast-paced world of digital purchasing. With that in mind, it’s worth looking for ways to ensure customers can enter as few details as possible into your checkout to purchase an item. Guest checkout features, or the ability to checkout with information plucked from an Amazon integration could be particularly useful. 

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Design and Aesthetic Trends

Design trends are likely to be particularly important for Shopify developers working on the next generation of attractive themes for their customers. Remember, around 94% of the first impressions customers make about your website and company are based on a site’s design. 

Some of the most significant design and aesthetic trends we’re seeing in 2022 include:

7. Cleaner, simpler layouts: In a world defined by mobile browsing, customers don’t have time to sort through cluttered pages full of complex information. Pages packed with widgets and various other components are becoming less common. Alternatively, plenty of white space and minimalist elements are growing increasingly compelling. 
8. Softer color palettes: While the exact colors used on a Shopify theme will depend on the brand identity a developer or designer wants to convey; paler and more natural colors are becoming more appealing. Comforting and softer colors seem to have a more relaxing effect on customers at a time of global turmoil. 
9. Better responsivity: Custom breakpoints and more sophisticated approaches to responsive design are allowing Shopify developers to get more creative with custom responsivity. This ensures users can have a more powerful experience on every platform. It also means you can adjust the customer experience according to where your customer might be browsing from.
10. Scrolling transformation: Scrolling animations are an excellent way to capture your audience’s attention and draw them into your website. Common on top-tier technology sites, these animations are excellent for bringing life to a website experience in an environment where we’re growing increasingly accustomed to things like 360-degree video and XR. 
11. Extended reality and 3D: The rise of extended reality innovations means Shopify developers may need to experiment with more of these tools in their own theme designs. For instance, being able to implement 360-degree videos into your product galleries and provide users with in-depth insights into the anatomy of a product can improve sales, and boost brand equity with more immersive experiences.

Brand Building Trends

Shopify’s reports into the latest trends of the ecommerce industry demonstrate that a strong brand is one of the most important things any business leader can have. Developing a strong brand means delivering an exceptional customer experience, as well as highlighting the unique selling points of the company throughout the Shopify website. 

Here are some of the brand-building trends we’re likely to see in future Shopify websites:

12. Transparency: In an era where customers are looking for more honesty and credibility from the brands they buy from, transparency is more crucial than ever. Today’s customers would rather replace unnecessary animations and widgets with videos showcasing a brand story or quick and easy-to-access information about delivery prices. 
13. Content creation: The blog is likely to be one of the most important tools on any ecommerce website going forward. Customers are looking to learn from the brands they trust, and develop stronger connections through the consumption of content. Going forward, companies will need to build more content than ever before to overcome the issue of third-party cookies being phased out. Building long-term relationships through articles, videos, and other forms of content will be key to long-term growth. 
14. Improved customer support: Developing a strong brand isn’t just about applying a company’s logo to every page of their store. Companies can also define themselves by the experiences they can give their target audience. Shopify developers can help in this regard, by implementing everything from intelligent bots to live-chat tools into ecommerce stores, ready to assist customers with every part of the purchasing journey. 
15. Community growth: The rise of NFTs and the changing nature of the web has pushed companies to think more carefully about the value of communities. Today’s businesses thrive based on the support and advocacy given to them by consumers. As such, developers will need to be prepared to build more community experiences into their websites. This could include designing forums, or membership sign-up options for customers. Novel is already enabling this. 

Adopting Shopify Website Trends in 2022

We’re living in a world where evolving technology is allowing customers all over the world to enjoy more powerful multimedia shopping experiences. With Shopify, modern developers can build the kind of immersive experiences customers are looking for, capable of driving long-term growth for brands, and boosting a company’s reputation. 

If you have what it takes to stay ahead of the trends when it comes to developing Shopify stores, why not see whether you can transform your career by becoming a Shopify expert? 

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