6 Fashion and Retail Website Trends of 2017
Fashion brands are often experimenting and implementing the latest trends in design and commerce. Brands strive to voice their unique personality and create an immersive experience for their shopper.
Here are 6 key trends we observed in fashion and retail:
- XL Screen Layouts
- Personalized Homepage
- Videos, Everywhere
- Evolved Product Listing Pages
- Dynamic Search
- Shop the Look and Runway
1. XL Screen Layouts
Based on reported screen resolution trend for 2016, desktop users with resolutions above 1366px account for about 84% of users. We see a steady increase in screen resolution sizes (18% above 1920px, 2% increase since 2015) and decrease in smaller screen resolution sizes (16% below 1280px, 3% decrease since 2015).
Following suit with these trends, popular responsive frameworks like Foundation and Bootstrap are increasing the maximum width of their templates and brands are developing their websites to accommodate larger screen sizes.
Layouts will all be full-screen and outside whitespace gutters will be a thing of the past.
2. Personalized Homepage
Segmenting customers to the appropriate shops is critical. Brands are departing from the generic homepage to directing their customers to the appropriate brand and gender homepage.
Both Burberry and Pull & Bear display the generic homepage only for initial visits. Any subsequent visits will land customers directly on the gender pages (male or female) depending on data they have been able to attribute to the customer. What may seem like an innocuous personalized homepage for the customer is actually a critical step in leading the customer down the shopping funnel.
In the future, we will begin to see more personalized and customized pages.
Take a look at these brand homepages. What do you see on your first visit? Your second visit?
3. Videos, Everywhere
Internet speeds are increasing, browser capabilities are improving and the ability to capture high quality video is simpler than ever.
Fashion brands utilize video to enhance brand storytelling, provide additional product detail and drive further engagement with product further than static imagery alone. We see a popular trend in videos appearing on the homepage, product listing pages and product detail pages to guide the customer down the shopping funnel.
Videos will integrate itself as an alternative to static imagery in more places around the website.
4. Evolved Product Listing Pages
Product listing pages are evolving from a transactional launchpad into a more immersive product collection experience.
With larger viewports, brands have an opportunity to expand the product grid. By pushing the filter facets and attributes above the product grid, product tiles now larger, exposing additional product details and microinteraction moments.
We see a departure from paginated product grids to long-scroll, lazy loading product listing pages. In place of pagination controls, brands are welcoming customers to play with the product grid by introducing imagery and product grid controls.
Hover states now reveal additional transactional functions and product detail that was previously reserved for the quickview lightbox.
Inline with a previous Baymard Institute study, brands are departing from the use of quickview lightboxes and opting to send the customer directly to the product detail page.
We also begin to see very interesting ways of engaging with our traditional filter facts and attributes. BB Dakota utilizes a full-screen hover takeover to provide contextual information on lifestyle categories.
Product listing pages will be a key storytelling and transactional intersection for customer’s shopping funnel. We will see more interesting ways to consume products in the grid and lifestyle attributes for customers to filter products.
5. Dynamic Search
Following suit with Google’s dynamic search, brands are leveraging predictive and auto search to speed up their customer’s path to product.
Search grow even more powerful with machine learning and additional customer data. Recommendations and guidance will be powered real-time.
6. Shop the Look and Runway
Fashion brands inspire customers to discover new products based on editorialized looks from influencers and curators.
Even advertisers are jumping on this trend. Both Google and Instagram are introducing ways for brands to introduce shopping by looks.
Shop the Runway has been a hot commodity for brands and leveraging it to introduce new products has been key.
As we integrate Shop the Look and Shop the Runway into the shopping funnel, we see many potential areas of growth and exploration.
Shop the look will be dynamic and recommendations will be driven based off customer data to provide the most relevant looks. Meanwhile, brands will welcome customers to shop the runway real-time through live video feeds of their runway shows.
Thoughts on the future of fashion websites?
Let me know in your comments!
