Search
Selecting a search algorithm for your product search on the site is dependent on the importance of search as a product discovery method on your e-commerce application. If you have few products and are not adding products every day or continuously, having a sophisticated search functionality may actually be a waste of time and resources, on the other hand if you have a large selection of products and you want customers to be able to accurately search for products you should have a sophisticated search engine that can understand customers intent better. Based on your need you can use full text search functionality of your database or use Elasticsearch or Solr.
Search prompts on Amazon
For example a customer searching for a phone should find the phone most relevant to his search. If a customers searching for
- Android phone
- Oppo Phone
- OnePlus 64GB or
- OPPO A92
should get different search results and search results should be closest to what the customer has been searching for.
Layered Monolithic Architecture
If we evaluate the current Layered Architecture for E-Commerce Application, you can see the Benefits and Drawbacks at below :
That means, even we have separate logical layers, it has lots of Drawbacks.
Why eCommerce Technologies Are Driving the Future of Sales
The growing popularity of online retail is directly related to the emergence
of new eCommerce technologies. Online shopping has become more convenient than
ever. As a result, it is not surprising that the eCommerce sector is forecast
to grow by almost
$13 trillion
in the 2022–2027 period.
Discover the global retail eCommerce sales in the chart below:
Insider Intelligence
estimates
that the US B2B eCommerce website sales will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2023
to $2.4 trillion in 2025. Not only online sales but customer demands are
rising as well. The boom in online stores proves this. And that’s from
12 to 24
million eCommerce websites worldwide.
Along with the eCommerce market growth, the
integration of digital and physical experiences will
intensify in 2023. It means customers anticipate innovation not only in online
stores but also in traditional ones. Yet, although buyers are visiting
physical stores, they are now much more comfortable shopping online.
Customers are getting used to the convenient experience of shopping online, so
investing in technology in eCommerce is very promising. Let’s look at
the features and trends already transforming the industry to determine which
technologies are worth the investment.
Read Also: eCommerce Platform Development: Ultimate Guide
Social Commerce
Social networks have long been more than a tool for communication. They open
up new business opportunities like marketing your brand, providing customer
support, and encouraging your clients to shop.
Thus, social commerce is selling goods directly on social networks. This
online retail option offers an entire purchasing experience, from product
discovery to payment.
Statista
predicts that social commerce revenues will reach $2.9 trillion by 2026. It is
approximately five times more than in 2020.
Livestream Commerce
Remember the TV shopping channels?
Livestream commerce
is exactly what you think it is.
It is a video streamed on a commercial platform in which the host shows
viewers different goods in real-time. The audience can easily buy products
directly on the shopping site.
This approach to online retail enables you to present items in all dynamics
and generate client interest by creating urgency with limited-time offers or
limited-quantity products. You may also answer the audience’s questions
regarding the goods in real time.
Read also:
How to Integrate Livestream Commerce into Your Existing Website
Click and Collect or BOPIS
Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), or click-and-collect is another one of
the current trends in e-commerce technology. This commerce involves buying or
reserving a product online and picking it up at a shop or pickup location. For
company owners, click-and-collect means less money spent on delivery and more
people visiting physical stores.
In the United States, 2022 click-and-collect sales were evaluated at $96
billion. By 2025, the figure is
expected to reach $154 billion.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)
Buy now, pay later service is one of the emerging eCommerce tech trends. It
allows customers to purchase the goods in interest-free installments.
Such a service became especially popular during the pandemic, as people needed
alternative funding sources and flexibility. Customers preferred not to use
their credit cards when shopping, so BNPL became an ideal option.
There are different types of BNPL:
- One such type is direct providers of such services as
Afterpay and Klarna. These providers are largely responsible for
BNPL’s popularity. - Another type involves facilitators. These are payment
companies functioning as intermediaries and incorporating their services in
the BNPL infrastructure. The most popular organizations are Mastercard,
Shopify, and Stripe.
Buy now, pay later is gaining popularity; in 2025, it may reach
$680 billion
worldwide.
Read also:
Buy Now, Pay Later App Development
Mobile Shopping
Mobile shopping is not just one of the retail tech trends; it is today’s
reality. Every day, more and more people use smartphones, and the role of
these devices in eCommerce is becoming highly significant. It is because many
consumers make purchases using their phones.
So, if you are engaged in online retail and have not yet created a mobile
application for your store, pay attention to this trend.
Read also:
eCommerce App Development Guide
Progressive Web Apps
A progressive web application is a technology that allows you to create web
applications that look like native mobile applications. Developers use web
technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS when building these solutions.
Retail giants such as Alibaba and Walmart have used PWA to generate more
revenue and increase conversion rates. Yet, progressive web apps are perfectly
suitable for small and medium-sized organizations.
PWA’s primary functions include:
- Application access through the smartphone’s home screen
- Offline application access
- Push notifications
Interestingly, according to the
Statista survey of eCommerce companies, 17% have already invested in PWAs or plan to do so. 28% of businesses still
evaluate their opportunities.
Here are a few benefits of progressive web applications:
Capability to reach a broader audience
The PWA, as previously said, operates on any platform. Android, iOS, Windows,
or macOS are all possible. Instead of creating many app versions, make one
universal progressive web application.
Speed and responsiveness
Read also: 10 Things to Know Before Developing eCommerce Website
AI-Powered Personalizations
Personalization is a critical aspect of increasing business profitability.
About
49%
of consumers are more likely to repeat their purchase if the retailer provides
a personalized shopping experience. Artificial intelligence, which allows you
to personalize your online store, is one of the latest e-commerce technology
trends.
Where you can use artificial intelligence:
AI Content Creation
One of the most prominent eCommerce tech trends for 2023 that we will talk
about is AI-based content creation. We already know that artificial
intelligence helps personalize the shopping experience, but what else can you
do with this innovation?
Ross Beyeler, COO of Trellis Commerce, is convinced that artificial
intelligence will be the component that will bring automation and scale to
content-making and brand marketing.
- Visual design. These are, for example, tools such as
Synthesia or Designs.ai, which use AI to create logos and video content. - Advertising campaigns. AI used by such services as Pencil,
Bannerbear, or EXOD automates the creation, testing, and optimization of
advertising campaigns. - Content marketing. Frase and Jarvis, which use AI
technology, help salespeople create copies of a blog, product, or landing
page.
Softermii’s Experience in eCommerce Technology
Our team is sure that innovation in eCommerce is a great way to reach a new
audience. For example, you can expand your customer base by adding a mobile
application to your online store’s website. We are ready to assist you
in this regard.
Speaking of mobile apps, our company has an
extensive background
in mobile commerce. We acknowledge that the customer experience should be as
smooth as possible.
Our UI/UX designers, in turn, will take care of your online retail platform,
making it clear and simple. We realize all the discomforts that consumers may
experience, so we do everything to keep them from encountering
incomprehensible designs.
Here are some of our prominent cases in the eCommerce field:
Dollar Shave Club
The Softermii development team has created the eCommerce app
Dollar Shave Club. It provides men with
personalized packages and delivery of razor blades, handles, aftershaves, and
other male shaving products.
Challenge
Besides the updated design, our specialists have added several new features to
the application:
Result
The results of our work appeared quickly. The number of people using the app
increased from around 3,900 to over 500,000. Moreover, our team helped the
company get acquired for a billion US dollars.
Esthetic
Our team had to deliver an intuitive app with an effortless 3-step checkout
process. Other challenges included the development of an AI algorithm for
content personalization and multi-warehouse support integration.
Solution
We’ve created a Magento module for the fast and simple design of
application pages. Our experts have also integrated Magento 2 payment 3-step
checkout and developed an AI algorithm that personalizes content according to
buyers’ search queries. We also implemented multi-warehouse support for
faster shipping.
Our team created a scalable and performant eCommerce app that offers
exceptional usability for buyers.
Streamotion
We leveraged the livestream commerce trend and successfully implemented it in
our
Streamotion app.
Our team had to enter the emerging livestream commerce market and build a
mobile app using video broadcasting technologies. We also had to implement
group broadcasts and social features like messaging and feed.
We used our WebRTC-based VidRTC engine to implement live streaming and
broadcasting features, including group broadcasts. Our experts also took care
of text chat, feed, and payment integrations.
Riding the trend wave, Streamotion got considerable achievements. The app had
20,000 installs in just two weeks after launch and gathered about 80 sellers.
Benefits From Improving Retail App eCommerce UX
Despite that’s not an exhaustive list of all possible UX design tips for
ecommerce apps as they are not limited by some number. That’s the field
where you can experiment with new UX features and test their efficiency for
your case. But you as any business owner should get a clear understanding of
the importance of UX in mCommerce.
Increase in the number of users
Our target is to make your visitors feel comfortable while shopping and to
help you earn their trust and build your brand.
Best practices of the e-commerce application design
Learning from the best is an effective way to create something really good. Here we gathered five best e-commerce app designs for your inspiration.
H&M mobile app design
Starbucks mobile app
Amazon mobile app
Groupon mobile app
Wish mobile app
Here you can see the Architecture Design Toolbox that we will use during the article when designing our E-Commerce application:
Functional Requirements — FRs
Basically we are going to design simple e-commerce application and we need to write down business cases that means write down Functional-requirements:
- List products
- Filter products as per brand and categories
- Put products into the shopping cart
- Apply coupon for discounts and see the total cost all for all of the items in shopping cart
- Checkout the shopping cart and create an order
- List my old orders and order items history
Why Is UX Important in E-Commerce?
So, let’s determine why UX is important in e-commerce.
Layered Monolithic Architecture Code Review — E-Commerce App
We are going to code review of e-commerce application which is implemented with .net ecosystem and asp.net and use SQL server for relational databases. This is Asp.Net e-commerce web application I have developed this repository a long time ago but it is still relevant for our topic.
Here you can see 2 GitHub link at below. In the first link we go to GitHub repository page: Code review of Asp.Net e-commerce web application:
Please goto links and examine Readme file. With Second link you can open repository as a project folder view. This is implementation of aspnetrun-basic template on real-world basic e-commerce web application project; You can see the animation we have developed for all FR of our e-commerce application like listing products, add to basket, checkout order and so on.
The idea of this project one project for fastest idea implementations to building modern web applications with latest ASP.NET Core & EF Core technologies. So this is the reason why monolithic architecture still valid in software industry. See Layers:
Data Folder: Includes Entity Framework Core Context and tables in this folder. When new entity created, it should add to context and configure in context. The Infrastructure project depends on Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer and EF.Core related nuget packages, you can check nuget packages of Infrastructure layer. If you want to change your data access layer, it can easily be replaced with a lighter-weight ORM like Dapper.
Repository Folder: Implementation of Core interfaces in this project with Entity Framework Core and other dependencies. Most of your application’s dependence on external resources should be implemented in classes defined in the Infrastructure project. These classes must implement the interfaces defined in Core. If you have a very large project with many dependencies, it may make sense to have more than one Infrastructure project (eg Infrastructure.Data), but in most projects one Infrastructure project that contains folders works well.
Pages UI Folder: Development of UI Logic with implementation. Interfaces drives business requirements and implementations in this layer. The application’s main starting point is the ASP.NET Core web project. This is a classical console application, with a public static void Main method in Program.cs.
Frequently Asked Questions
E-commerce uses innovative technologies in 2022 such as social
commerce, Livestream commerce, BOPIS, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL),
mobile shopping, AI-powered personalizations, AI-content creation,
and much more.
What future eCommerce technology will become Top 1 in 2023?
Social commerce is expected to be the most in-demand e-commerce
technology in 2023. This is due to the fact that every year more and
more purchases on the Internet occur through social networks.
What technology is used in e-commerce websites the most?
For e-commerce websites, the most popular innovation in e-commerce
is the use of progressive web applications. It is this trend that is
now in high demand among eCommerce developers.
What e-commerce trends are most often used by developers when creating
solutions?
Now, most e-commerce development companies often use artificial
intelligence technologies, implement technologies such as BNPL and
develop progressive web applications when creating eCommerce
solutions.
What Is E-Commerce?
- manufacturers and suppliers of goods and/or services can present them on the Internet and process customer orders;
- Buyers (clients) can use standard browsers to browse the catalogs and price lists of the goods and/or services offered and issue orders/requests/inquiries using certain web technologies.
An important component of e-commerce systems are the so-called payment gateways, through which electronic payments are made. In this case, the implementation of the e-commerce solution also involves a bank, with the participation of which the funds are written off and credited.
Architecture Design Flow
Before we design any architecture we will always start from Problem which is Business Problem that drive our design considerations.
Software Architecture: Way of Learning
After that, we have learned Architecture Design Patterns and Principles about Layered Architectures that you can check articles below:
So now, according to our Architecture Design flow at above, We are at Design step. But before design our system We should ask ourselves:
So that means, every time when we design our architecture, We should always start with writing down FRs and NFRs. Also its good to write-down Constraints or Limitations of project, for example cost, time and so on.
Designing the system for cloud
Now that we know the different components that we need to build and deploy we can go about developing the operational architecture of the e-commerce system. We know that we would need a Node.js server, a MySQL Server, Mongo DB, LDAP, Elastisearch, Rabbit MQ, Spark, Kafka, Tableau, LDAP etc. we can start by hosting instances of these application middlwares on Cloud providers like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.
E-Commerce Solution Architecture Based on AWS Platform
E-Commerce Solution Architecture Based on Azure Platform
As you can see to achieve high availability and resilience we would need to host these applications on multiple virtual machines or EC2 instances to achieve high availability. That would be a lot of machines and for those machines we would need a large number of human resources to man those machines for availability, scaling and performance. Needless to say some of these machines would be running at very low capacities initially. Overall this becomes a very expensive proposition.
As you can infer, for all your simple and complex technical requirements you can use the cloud platform components provided by AWS and Azure to run your e-commerce application, and let them manage the operations and running of the infrastructure while you focus on development and strategy. In fact if you repurpose your code to run on AWS Lambda or Azure Function you can host your entire application serverlessly.
7 tips on how to create an e-Commerce app design
Visual hierarchy is a design method of UI content organization. Designers adjust UI components according to the level of their importance and create a hierarchy in the interfaces. The visual hierarchy can be regulated by size, color, style, and other visual differences.
When applying visual hierarchy in design for e-commerce applications, it’s easy to highlight the most important elements influencing conversion and sales rate. For example, you can make an accent on an item photo and a CTA button making them a little bit bigger than other UI components on the screen.
Design for multiple holds
Plan a sales funnel
An effective sales funnel includes several steps:
- Analysis. Comparing a product with other items.
- Engagement. Helping to make a decision via call-to-actions or special offers.
- Purchase. Final step allowing to buy the desired product.
Highlight branding elements
Brand identity plays a big role in businesses, so don’t neglect to show your face in an e-commerce app. The elements of brand identity can be different:
- logo
- mascots
- color palette
- custom font
Make fast checkout
Apply recognition patterns
The human brain is a complex system, and we can’t control many processes. For example, we get used to patterns really fast, and if something changes our brain may often react negatively.
15+ E-Commerce Mobile App UX Design Tips for Improving Sales
Despite your app UX can depend on the industry you’re operating in and
your brand identity, there are some most efficient mobile ecommerce UX best
practices applicable for any shop app design. Let’s walk through each
one:
Start with solid UX concepts then integrated into right UI
In a nutshell, an astonishing design is the result of the well-though
ecommerce UX design development process. But it’s important don’t
miss to implement that handy UX with relevant UI that fulfills the design with
the right colors, elements, shapes, etc.
Color scheme combinations consistency
Check some color combinations sheets like this one below by Adobe and get to
know more about what psychological effect every color has before applying it
in your product design:
Use Thumb-Friendly screen zones for UX/UI design
That is an instance of the interdependence of both UX and UI and the need to,
therefore, concentrate on UI.
Minimalist aesthetic experience compliant with mobile design best practices
Keep in mind that every design element and animated object should serve some
function. Moreover, because of the mobile screen limits, it makes sense to use
animated design objects to serve some dual functions.
Look how this kind of object animation can have a few functions and
don’t overload ecommerce mobile design already overloaded with products
items.
Visible and intuitive ecommerce navigation UX
Thus, the simplicity of use and clear data presentation of account and shop
details will make the shopping experience convenient and also eliminate any
ambiguity in the mind of the visitor.
The same story is with image invert search. You can use the image recognition
technology and show the results in an image search on your app.
E-Commerce filter design
The app should be able to effectively (without many details, but yet
expository) describe the product being sold. Details about the available forms
to choose, the variety of colors, size, and other details should be shown not
breaking the entire mobile UX.
Product image zooming
This is quite a trick and it is surprising that quite a number of brands have
not realized this. Statistics state that over 40% of mobile eCommerce
applications do not support zooming gestures. However, the ability to zoom
pictures will definitely help customers make conclusive decisions as to
purchasing or not. The feature aids proper inspection of the product and
therefore helps dunce curiosity. This suggests therefore that the support of
product image zooming gestures in a mobile eCommerce app is fundamental.
Wishlist or Save features
Providing a “Save” feature for the Shopping Cart makes your
customers shopping UX uninterrupted. You could also create an option to allow
shoppers to receive emails or custom notifications of all their saved items,
there could be reminders as to unfinished purchases at the background of the
mobile device.
Painless Checkout and Payment process UX
Such innovations can totally reduce the need to go to the offline store if you
can wear the clothes virtually and see how it looks or see whether new
furniture will match your room interior checking it with the VR app first.
Add a rating and reviews features
Such features as ratings, reviews, best sellers marks fulfill the entire
ecommerce UX and simplifies customer journey as they help to make a buying
decision.
Step by Step Design Architectures w/ Course
In this course, we’re going to learn how to Design Microservices Architecture with using Design Patterns, Principles and the Best Practices. We will start with designing Monolithic to Event-Driven Microservices step by step and together using the right architecture design patterns and techniques.
Data Warehousing and analytics
Last but not the least for better management you need a system where you can analyze all the data coming in through various systems. You should be able to get a view of all the visitors coming in, time they are spending on the site, things they are buying or abandoning, products that are performing well, the marketing campaigns working and not working, the ads that are performing or not performing etc, analysis of the demographics of the customers and their performance and preferences by demographics. Add to that an analysis of the shipping and handling, and inventory, to understand products in stock, not in stock and the time taken to fulfill an order, so on and so forth.
With all the data collected you should be able to also created Machine Learning models and Artificial Intelligence models to better manage your business and merge this with human experience and expertise to create better advertising, marketing, shipping models.
Simple Data Warehousing & Data Lake Architecte
We can create a warehousing and analytics sub-system using Kafka, Spark, HDFS and if the scale is pretty low using the normal RDBMS like MySQL. For Dashboard and Visualization we can use open source software like Superset or buy something like Qlikview or Tableau.
Adapt Technology Stack — E-Commerce App — Layered Architecture
We will implement possible Technology choices. As you know that we have designed our architecture with applying Layered Architecture and Design principles which is SOLID and SoC principles.
You can see image of “Way of Learning — The Design Flow” of our articles: According to Flow, now its time to Adapting Technology Chooses.
In this step we will Apply Software Tools, Application Frameworks and Databases for our current design. So, I have created 2 different Technology stack, one for Java another for Microsoft .Net ecosystem:
As you can see the image, for Java Technology stack. I have added Tomcat Web Server to deploy our monolithic application into this. And Developing our application with Java Enterprise Edition and created 1 big jar or war file to deploy to our Tomcat web server Application , Java Single WAR Artifact and Tomcat Container. And perform database operations with relational database which is MySQL, or you can pick PostgreSQL or Oracle in here.If we look at the Microsoft .Net ecosystem: tools changed a bit: We use IIS for Web Server for .Net applications. We use Asp.Net as an application framework when developing our layered architecture and we use SQL Server as a relational database for performing database crud operations.
As you can see that we have design and adapt with technology stack for our e-commerce application.
- Identify your products, services, and customers.
- Consider all aspects of the eCommerce development platform and
choose your development team. - Look through eCommerce platform builders comparison and choose
your best match. - Choose the right eCommerce hosting platform.
- Pick a template for your platform.
- Identify needed pages and functionalities.
- Build an informative product page.
- Integrate payment methods and shipping.
- Test the platform, then make it live.
How much does it cost to create an eCommerce app design?
The cost of developing a custom design for e-commerce apps may vary
greatly depending on many factors, including the number of features,
the complexity of the app and design, the number of third-party
integrations, team composition and deadlines.
We estimate that the cost can range from $5,000 to $50,000,
depending on the complexity and needs of your business.
Is it possible to make a UI design for a shopping app without UX?
- Increase brand name and authority
- Profit growth and increasing conversions
How a Retail App Can Help You Improve Your Business
mCommerce, in other words, the application with retail outlet functions is on
the rise even more than ecommerce websites now:
- According to the
Insider Intelligence, mcommerce sales hit $359.32 billion in 2021, an increase of 15.2% over
2020. - By 2025, retail mcommerce sales should more than double to reach $728.28
billion and account for 44.2% of retail ecommerce sales in the US.
Thus, mCommerce is currently the biggest slice of the giant online market.
That means that having your own shopping app isn’t a competitive
advantage anymore, but it’s a must-have for selling your products and
services easily on mobile.
But what is actually the secret of mCommerce success for business sellers?
It’s true that now with the app, owners can enjoy unlimited market coverage
across country borders, and even the shores of continents. They are no longer
limited by their inability to be physically present to a lot of people at the
same time. The shopping app solves that while saving costs on staff for
offline stores. Therefore it means that the company turnover rate should
increase tremendously.
Read also:
How to Build Your Own BNPL App
UX Best Practices for E-Commerce
What’s Next ?
Here you can see the our monolithic architecture evolution. You can see that we have start very basic of architecture with putting only 1 application server and manage all business logic inside of that. After that we will separate client application and continue to apply layered architecture with separating logical layers for UI, Business Logic and Data Access layers. Also we can separate additional logical layers like adding Domain layer and separating Application and Business Layers one more step.
Layered Monolithic Architectures
Simplistic e-commerce application architecture
Based on our business requirements our simple e-commerce application architecture should look like this:
Notifications system
To keep your customers informed about everything that they are doing on your application like what are you doing about the orders, when is it shipped when is it arriving and so on, you need to send a large number of messages to the customer via WhatsApp, SMS/Text, e-mail and in-App, last I counted Amazon sent me 12 messages on different channels for a single order, this is when the order was shipped seamlessly. In case of delays and returns the number of messages increase exponentially. Add to that the need to authenticate the email and phone numbers of the customers again requiring another set of notifications. To cross-sell and up-sell to the customers you need to send a bunch of notifications both in-App and through e-mails, WhatsApp Messages and SMS/Text. This means you need a notification system that is able to send e-mails, WhatsApp Messages, SMS/Text and in-App notifications.
Different Kinds of Notifications
To enable all these notifications you would need to develop a robust and reliable notification system that sends e-mail, SMS/Text, Push Notification and WhatsApp messages, sometimes to the scale of millions of messages in a day (Assuming you become hugely successful).
Who Will Find UX Tips for eCommerce Apps Useful
If you’re thinking about developing an e-commerce app or marketplace,
the first step is to study design tips. Because the main thing that separates
a good idea from a great implementation is weak design. However, if you
already have a functioning e-commerce solution, you might want to consider
redesigning it. As nothing better can make you a leader of your niche than
sustainable and efficient design.
Design Microservice Architecture — E-Commerce App
If we design e-commerce application with Microservice architecture, you can see the image below:
Product microservice can use NoSQL document database Shopping Cart microservice can use NoSQL key-value pair database and Order microservice can use Relational database as per microservice data storage requirements.
Patterns & Principles
Its good to add principles in our picture in order to remember them always. And If we expand our Patterns & Principles, we can see that
- DRY
- KISS
- YAGNI
And also we have learned and added below principles for this chapter;
We are going to consider these principles when design our architecture. So for now we have learned only these items and load our design toolbox with these items. But with continue our course we will discover new architectures, patterns and principles.
According to our design toolbox, now lets design the first version of our e-commerce application with using Layered architecture.
Signup and authentication
After understanding Functional and Non-Functional requirements, now we can see our Design toolbox which includes Architectures, Patterns, Principles and Best Practices that we have learned and will apply on our project. Lets see which architecture styles that we have learned of course we have using Monolithic architecture style but also we will use Layered (N-Layer) architecture in our design.
Because we will still have big application server, we won’t decompose servers now, instead we will separate logical layers into our 1 big application server in order to organize our projects better.