There are some interesting shake-ups on the horizon for ecommerce: Experiential shopping, Virt-ical worlds, Au naturale models.

We’re starting to see signs of them already — many of them spurred on thanks to the events of 2020. Below, we’re going to explore what’s going on with these new ecommerce trends and technologies and take a look at a bunch of sites that are setting really cool examples for each.

1. Experiential Shopping

With many stores, either closed to in-person shopping during the pandemic or their capacities severely limited, online shopping and BOPIS became much more attractive options for consumers.

That said, buying something like a pair of jeans or a new pair of glasses is much different than the pack of toilet paper someone’s bought for years. There are just some things you have to try to know if you’re going to like it and make sure it fits.

Augmented reality and other immersive shopping tools are bringing those “try-on” capabilities to people’s homes.

There are a number of technologies built specifically for this purpose:

Obsess is a particularly noteworthy one. It’s an ecommerce platform that enables retailers to build virtually immersive shopping experiences. Charlotte Tilbury is one such retailer that is taking advantage of it.

At the end of 2020, Obsess announced that it had received $3.4 million in seed funding, so expect to see more Obsess-powered ecommerce sites and apps.

ByondXR is another platform that empowers brands to design immersive experiences for online shoppers:

Retailers like Lancome, Procter & Gamble, and Calvin Klein have used ByondXR’s immersive commerce technology.

Another option is offered by Matterport:

This technology is interesting as you’re not just creating a virtual store. You can also design a 3D model of a brick-and-mortar shop that in-store shoppers can use to get in and out quickly.

2. Virt-ical Worlds

There’s a new trend brewing, and we see it most commonly on websites for fresh and youthful brands. I wouldn’t say it’s nostalgic design, per se, though there are certainly some elements reminiscent of the bold, in-your-face style of the web in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.

No, I think what we see here is a creative reimagining of our world.

With so many people having spent time in their homes and with their faces glued to screens, there’s been a blurring between our VIRTual and physICAL worlds. This new web design trend is one I’m going to call the Virt-ical World. While parts of these sites look like the websites we’ve designed in years past, there are motion, color, and sizing elements that feel more like a trippy virtual simulation.

Let’s look at some examples.

Starface is a company that creates acne-fighting products.

This is one of the more experimental designs in this set of examples. Still, it’s one that shows us how far the boundaries can be pushed without totally compromising the online shopping experience.

Billie is another company having fun with this trend. I’d say this is on the opposite end of the spectrum.

For the most part, this ecommerce site looks similar to other small retailer sites. However, the fun, candy-colored palette, the bobbing products, and the color shifts add a somewhat surreal element to the design.

Catching THEO is another ecommerce brand playing around with this Virt-ical World.

See what I mean by this style feeling somewhat nostalgic? Thankfully, this site commits to today’s good, clean, responsive design while only using some of the more fun and quirky elements from the past.

Au Naturale Models

When I talk about au naturale models, I’m really referring to the makeup-less faces, relaxed hairstyles, and casual apparel that we’re seeing ecommerce models don these days.

I think it’s safe to say we have the pandemic to thank for this. And it’s not just because many of us took a more casual approach to getting dressed during the week. It’s also because the pandemic wiped away the glitz and glamour from many of our lives.

I don’t know about you, but it was kind of nice seeing fewer Instagram influencers flaunting their luxurious lifestyles and more real people rocking their matching pajama sets. I think brands have sensed this change in mood over the last year, and they’re now putting forward their own simple and casual styles for us to connect to.

There are tons of ecommerce websites we’re seeing this on in 2021.

Here’s Dove‘s homepage, where they specifically call attention to the lack of digital distortion in the photo:

Thinx also uses more natural and realistic-looking models to show off its undergarment products:

Madison Reed takes a unique approach with this trend:

While the hair color brand does a great job of using diverse models around the site, it also has this scrolling bar showing off its customers’ very natural and real faces.

Wrap-Up

It feels like ecommerce trends and technologies are changing at a rapid pace these days. To help you stay on top of what’s new in ecommerce, stay tuned to this blog for more interesting news and changes to the landscape.

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The post What’s New in Ecommerce, February 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Google’s Next Big Chrome Update Will Rewrite the Rules of the Web

10 Best Alternatives to Google Analytics in 2021

Gamification in UX Design: Designing Fun Experiences for Serious

UI Design Trends for Web and Mobile We Start 2021 With

Getting The Most Out Of Git

Appreciating the Unsung Heroes of WordPress

Simple CSS Line Hover Animations for Links

How to Kill a Unicorn

Animating a CSS Gradient Border

Color Spark – A Color Scheme Plugin for Figma

QuickLens – Inspect the UI Like a Pro

6 Important WordPress Gutenberg Updates to Be Aware Of

23 Exciting New Tools for Designers, February 2021

A UX Guide to Optimize Conversions

13 UX Tips That Will Improve Your Website’s SEO

Don’t Offer a Free Plan

The 25 Best Single Page Web Designs

Illustration Kit – Premium Open Source Illustrations Updated Daily

DesignOps: Just a New Buzzword?

Bilgge – a Privacy-paranoid Free Service for your Notes and Secrets

How to Deal With Designers in 10 Easy Steps

Website Optimization Checklist: Your Go-To Guide to SEO

JavaScript Minification Benchmarks

Framer is Dead · A Love Letter to my Prototyping Tool of Choice

The Differences in Web Hosting (Go with the Happy Path)

Pixelplace.io – One Giant Pixel Canvas That Anyone Can Draw On

Source

The post Popular Design News of the Week: February 8, 2021 – February 14, 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Asko Nõmm reached a breaking point with front end:

I want to have a personal life and not have to spend my nights reading up on some new flavour of *.js in fear that if I don’t I would soon be made irrelevant. I don’t want to learn nor use a million different tools. I don’t want to know a bit about everything and a lot about nothing.

Thus, I don’t want to do front-end development anymore. The joy is gone.

They literally spun up this blog to say that, but money-where-mouth-is:

I’ve given in my resignation at my current place of employment and will be seeking an exclusively back-end role for my next adventure

I have some doubts that back end is 100% better in regards to technology churn, but fair enough, I don’t hear about it as much. Front-end dissatisfaction is awfully high. I don’t go a day without hearing someone complain broadly about the state of front end.

Remy Sharp addressed this in The web didn’t change; you did:

If you didn’t gather off the bat from the title, the problem with developing front end projects isn’t that it’s harder or more complicated, it’s that you made it harder and more complicated.

Minor pushback there: a lot of people don’t get any choice in the technologies they are tasked with.

Remy’s point is that literally any simplicity that you hold nostalgia for on the web is still there and there is nothing stopping you from using it. Other than, ya know, if your client or boss prevents that.

Mark (last name appears intentionally not-on-the-internet) says that just HTML is a perfectly fine building tool:

Despite increasing leniency on frameworks being the only way to build for the web, hand-written HTML never disappeared and I feel is still a perfectly suitable way to build a personal website.

Remember Steren Giannini said recently they build websites with HTML alone and zero build process. And Terence Eden praised HTML for its unreasonable effectiveness:

Are you developing public services? Or a system that people might access when they’re in desperate need of help? Plain HTML works. A small bit of simple CSS will make look decent. JavaScript is probably unnecessary – but can be used to progressively enhance stuff. Add alt text to images so people paying per MB can understand what the images are for (and, you know, accessibility).

It’s nice to think that you can build an important website, avoid any sort of wild complexity, and have it do its job without any harm, with HTML.

Personally, I don’t harbor any ill will toward the front-end ecosystem at the moment. I’m aware that I can step backward from complexity if I have to, and that I can lean into complexity when it buys me things (speed, features, DX, etc) and know what it costs me (and users) and why.

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In this week’s roundup, WebKit’s prefixed autofill becomes a standard, the pointer cursor is for more than just links, and browsers are jumping on board to delay videos set to autoplay until they’re in view… plus more! Let’s jump right into it.

CSS ::-webkit-autofill has become a standard feature

Chrome, Safari, and pretty much every other modern web browser except Firefox (more on that later) have supported the CSS :-webkit-autofill pseudo-class for many years. This selector matches form fields that have been autofilled by the browser. Websites can use this feature to style autofilled fields in CSS (with some limitations) and detect such fields in JavaScript.

let autofilled = document.querySelectorAll(":-webkit-autofill");

There currently does not exist a standard autocomplete or autofill event that would fire when the browser autofills a form field, but you can listen to the input event on the web form and then check if any of its fields match the :-webkit-autofill selector.

The HTML Standard has now standardized this feature by adding :autofill (and :-webkit-autofill as an alias) to the list of pseudo-classes that match HTML elements. This pseudo-class will also be added to the CSS Selectors module.

The :autofill and :-webkit-autofill pseudo-classes must match elements that have been autofilled by the user agent. These pseudo-classes must stop matching if the user edits the autofilled field.

Following standardization, both pseudo-classes have been implemented in Firefox and are expected to ship in Firefox 86 later this month.

You can use CSS Grid to define spacing in buttons and links

In the article “Let’s Bring Spacer GIFs Back!” Josh W. Comeau argues for using a “spacer” element instead of a simple CSS margin to define the spacing between the icon and text of a button component.

In our home-button example, should the margin go on the back-arrow, or the text? It doesn’t feel to me like either element should “own” the space. It’s a distinct layout concern.

CSS Grid is an alternative to such spacer elements. For example, the “Link to issue” link in CSS-Tricks’s newsletter section contains two non-breaking spaces ( ) to increase the spacing between the emoji character and text, but the link could instead be turned into a simple grid layout to gain finer control over the spacing via the gap property.

Websites agree that the pointer cursor is not just for links

The CSS Basic User Interface module defines the CSS cursor property, which allows websites to change the type of cursor that is displayed when the user hovers specific elements. The specification has the following to say about the property’s pointer value:

The cursor is a pointer that indicates a link. … User agents must apply cursor: pointer to hyperlinks. … Authors should use pointer on links and may use on other interactive elements.

Accordingly, browsers display the pointer cursor (rendered as a hand) on links and the default cursor (rendered as an arrow) on buttons. However, most websites (including Wikipedia) don’t agree with this default style and apply cursor: pointer to other interactive elements, such as buttons and checkboxes, as well.

Another interactive element for which it makes sense to use the pointer cursor is the

element (the “toggle button” for opening and closing the parent

element).

CodePen Embed Fallback

Browsers delay autoplay until the video comes into view

Compared to modern video formats, animated GIF images are up to “twice as expensive in energy use.” For that reason, browsers have relaxed their video autoplay policies (some time ago) to encourage websites to switch from GIFs to silent or muted videos.

<!-- a basic re-implementation of a GIF using <video> -->
<video autoplay loop muted playsinline src="meme.mp4"></video>

If you’re using , don’t worry about pausing such videos when they’re no longer visible in the viewport (e.g., using an Intersection Observer). All major browsers (except Firefox) already perform this optimization by default:

elements will only begin playing when visible on-screen such as when they are scrolled into the viewport, made visible through CSS, and inserted into the DOM.

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(via Zach Leatherman)

Chrome introduces three new @font-face descriptors

Different browsers and operating systems sometimes use different font metrics even when rendering the same font. These differences affect the vertical position of text, which is especially noticeable on large headings.

Similarly, the different font metrics of a web font and its fallback font can cause a layout shift when the fonts are swapped during page load.

To help websites avoid layout shift and create interoperable text layouts, Chrome recently added the following three new CSS @font-face descriptors for overriding the font’s default metrics:

• ascent-override (ascent is the height above the baseline)
• descent-override (descent is the depth below the baseline)
• line-gap-override

@font-face {
  font-family: Roboto;
  /* Merriweather Sans has 125.875px ascent 
   * and 35px descent at 128px font size.
   */
  ascent-override: calc(125.875 / 128 * 100%);
  descent-override: calc(35 / 128 * 100%);
  src: local(Roboto-Regular);
}

The following video shows how overriding the ascent and descent metrics of the fallback font (Roboto) to match the same metrics of the web font (Merriweather Sans) can avoid layout shift when swapping between these two fonts.

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The post Weekly Platform News: WebKit autofill, Using Cursor Pointer, Delaying Autoplay Videos appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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Bruce Lawson with the tip of the day, warning against the use of pointer-events: none on forms labels. We know that pointer-events is used to change how elements respond to click, tap, hover, and active states. But it apparently borks form labels, squashing their active hit target size to something small and tough to interact with. Bruce includes examples in his post.

That’s not the striking part of the post though. It’s that the issue was pinned to an implementation of Material Design’s floating labels component. Bruce fortunately had pointer events expert Patrick Lauke’s ear, who pointed (get it?) out the issue.

aha, now i remember when i first saw a few weeks ago – testing something based on material design for web https://t.co/YkEKXkU0To pic.twitter.com/31S74X1i4R

— patrick h. lauke #toryScum #clapForFlagWankers (@patrick_h_lauke) February 5, 2021

That isn’t a dig at frameworks. It’s just the reality of things. Front-end developers gotta be aware, and that includes awareness of third-party code.

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Joy Heron bought a cool domain name and published an article there:

Luckily, with modern HTML and CSS, we can create responsive and accessible web apps with relative ease. In my years of doing software development, I have learned some HTML and CSS tips and tricks, and I want to present these in this post. This list is not exhaustive, but these are tried and true patterns that I frequently use in different projects.

Sure, it’s a collection of tips and tricks, but it’s a great one that covers modern best practices across HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If someone asked me what they should read if they missed out on the last, say, three years of front-end and wanted to remind themselves of the important stuff, I’d send them this.

I like the casual use of a massive shape-outside in the header.

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Components are great, aren’t they? They are these reusable sources of truth that you can use to build rock-solid front-ends without duplicating code.

You know what else is super cool? Headless content management! Headless content management system (CMS) products offer a content editing experience while freeing that content in the form of data that can be ported, well, to any API-consuming front-end UI. You can structure your content however you’d like (depending on the product), and pull that content into your front-end applications.

Using these two things together — a distributed CMS solution with component-based front-end applications — is a core tenet of the Jamstack.

But, while components and headless CMSs are great on their own, it can be difficult to get them to play nicely together. I‘m not saying it‘s difficult to hook one up to the other. In a lot of cases, it’s actually quite painless. But, to craft a system of components that is reusable and consistent, and to have that system maintain parity with a well-designed CMS experience is a difficult thing to achieve. It’s that win-win combo of being able to freely write content and then have that content structured into predictable components that makes headless content management so appealing.

Achieving parity between a CMS and front-end components

My favorite demonstrating this complexity is a simple component: a button. Let‘s say we’re working with React to build components and our button looks like this:

<Button to="/">Go Home</Button>

In the lovely land of React, that means the component has two props (i.e. properties, attributes, arguments, etc.) — to and children. children is a React thing that holds all the content within the opening and closing tags, which is “Go Home” in this case.)

If we’re going to enable users in the content editor to add buttons to the site, we want a system for them that makes it easy to understand how their actions in the CMS affect what appears on screen in the front-end app. But we also want our developer(s) to work productively with component properties that make sense to them and within the framework they’re working (i.e. React in our example).

How do we do that?

We could…

…use fields in the CMS that match the components’ properties, though I’ve had little success with this approach. to and children don‘t make much sense to content editors trying to build a button. Believe me, I‘ve tried. I‘ve tried with beginners and experienced editors alike. I‘ve tried helper text. It doesn’t matter. It’s confusing.

What makes more sense is using words editors are more likely to understand, like label or text for children and url for to.

But then we’d be out of sync with our code.

Or what if we…

…masked attributes in the CMS. Most headless CMS solutions enable you to have a different value for the label of the field than the name that is used when delivering content via an API.

We could label our fields Label and URL, but use children and to as the names. We could. But we probably shouldn’t. Remember what Ian Malcolm said?

On the surface, masking attributes makes sense. It’s a separation of concerns. The editors see something that makes them happy and productive, and the developers work with the names that make sense to them. I like it, but only in theory. In practice, it confuses developers. Debugging a content editor issue often requires digging through extra layers (i.e. time) to find the relationship between labels and field names.

Or why not …

…change the properties. Wouldn’t it be easier for developers to be flexible? They’re the ones designing the system, after all.

Yes, that’s true. But if you follow that rule exclusively, it’s inevitable that you’re going to run into some issue along the way. You’ll likely end up fighting against the framework, or props will just feel goofy.

In our example, using label and url as props for a button works totally fine for data that originates from the CMS. But that also means that any time our developers want to use a button within the code, it looks like this:

<Button label="Go Home" url="/" />

That may seem okay on the surface, but it significantly limits the power of the button. Let’s say I want to support some other feature, like adding an icon within the label. I’m going to need some additional logic or another property for it. If I would have used React’s children approach instead, it would have just worked (likely after some custom styling support).

Okay, so… what do we do?

Introducing transformers

The best approach I’ve found is to separately optimize the editor and developer experiences. Craft a CMS experience that is catered to the editors. Build a codebase that is easy for developers to navigate, understand, and enhance.

The result is that the two experiences will not be in parity with one another. We need some set of utilities to transform the data from the CMS structure into something that can be used by the front-end, regardless of the framework and tooling you’re using.

I call these utilities transformers. (Aren’t I so good at naming things!?) Transformers are responsible for consuming data from your CMS and transforming it into a shape that can be easily consumed by your components.

While I‘ve found that transforming data is the smoothest means to get great experiences in both the CMS and the codebase, I don‘t have an obvious solution for how (or perhaps where) those transformations should happen. I‘ve used three different approaches, all of which have their pros and cons. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Alongside components

One approach is to put transformers right alongside the components they are serving. This is the approach I typically take in organizing component-based projects — to keep related files close to one another.

That means that I often have a directory for every component with a predictable set of files. The index.js acts as the controller for the component. It is responsible for importing and exporting all other relevant files. That makes it trivial to wrap the component with some logic-based behavior. In other words, it could transform properties of the component before rendering it. Here’s what that might look like for our button example:

import React from "react"

import Component from "./component"
import transform from "./transformer"

const Button = props => <Component {...transform(props)} />

export default Button

The transform.js file might look like this:

export default input => {
  return {
    ...input,
    children: input.children || input.label,
    to: input.to || input.url
  }
}

In this example, if to and children were properties sent to the component, it works just fine! But if label and url were used instead, they are transformed to children and to. That means the

component (component.js) only has to worry about using children and to.

const Button = ({ children, to }) => <a href={to}>{children}</a>

I personally love this approach. It keeps the logic tightly coupled with the component. The biggest downside I‘ve found thus far is that it’s a large number of files and transforms, when the entire dataset for any given page could be transformed earlier in the stack, which would be…

2. At the top of the funnel

The data has to be pulled into the application via some mechanism. Developers use this mechanism to retrieve as much data for the current page or view as possible. Often, the fewer number of queries/requests a page is required to make, the better its performance.

In other words, that mechanism often exists near the top of the funnel (or stack), as opposed to each component pulling its own data in dynamically. (When that’s necessary, I use adapters.)

The mechanism that retrieves the page data could also be responsible for transforming all the data for the given page before it renders any of its components.

In theory, this is a better approach than the first one. It decreases the amount of work the browser has to do, which should improve the front-end performance. That means the server has to do more work, but that’s often a better choice.

In practice, though, this is a lot of work. Data structures can be big, complex, and interwoven. It can take a heck of a lot of work to transform everything into the right format at the top of the funnel, and then pass the transformed data down to components. It’s also more difficult to test because of the potential complexity and variation of the giant data blob retrieved at the top of the stack. With the first approach, testing the transformer logic for the button is trivial. With this approach, you’d want to account for transforming button data anywhere that it might appear in the retrieved data object.

But, if you can pull it off, this is generally the better approach.

3. The middleman engine

The third and final (and magical) approach is to do all this work somewhere else. In this case, we could build an engine (i.e. a small application) that would do the transformations for us, and then make the content available for the application to consume.

This is likely even more work than the second approach. And it has added cost and maintenance in running an additional application, which takes more effort to ensure it is rock solid.

The major upside to this approach is that we could build this as an abstracted engine. In other words, any time we bring in data to any front-end application, it goes through this middleman engine. That means if we have two projects that use the same CMS or data source, our work is cut down significantly for the second project.

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If you aren‘t doing any of this today and want to start, my advice is to treat these approaches like stepping stones. They grow in complexity and maintenance and power as the application grows. Start with the first approach and see how far that gets you. Then, if you feel like you could benefit from a jump to the second, do it! And if you’re feeling like living dangerously, go for the third!

In the end, what matters most is crafting an experience that both your editors and your developers understand and enjoy. If you can do that, you win!

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Nils Binder talks about a technique for spacing between two elements. Picture a header on a large screen with a logo in the upper left and nav in the upper right. Then a small screen, when they can no longer be on the same “row” and need to wrap, they don’t just wrap but are centered.

A video explains better:

My mind goes: I’d just find the exact pixel value for the breakpoint I want this to happen and then write a media query that re-styles things to do that.

But… media queries are only for the entire browser window width. While that probably works in a case like this because it’s a full-site kinda concern, I get the desire to not have to write media queries. Nils’ idea borrow concepts from Heydon’s Holy Albatross to make this work without any media queries at all. So, you could use this on a smaller-scope component where you need to adjust the breaking point at a certain size that has nothing to do with the size of the browser window.

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The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant restrictions on movement and physical interaction have led to increased demand for online shopping.

With people restricted from leaving their houses unnecessarily, it has become imperative for brick and mortar businesses that want to survive to take their operations online.

However, transitioning a brick and mortar business into eCommerce is not a matter of simply starting a website and listing your products on the website. To successfully transition a brick and mortar business into eCommerce, you’ll need to approach the process strategically.

If you own a brick and mortar business and are looking to take your operations online, here are the things you need to do in order to make your transition successful:

1. Adjust Your Business Plan Accordingly

Once you transition your brick and mortar business into eCommerce, your business is going to experience several changes.

First, your target market might change. For instance, let’s say your biggest customer segment was older people who enjoy going down to the block to purchase things in person.

Once you move online, however, your biggest customer segment might change to a younger demographic who are more comfortable with making purchases over the internet.

In addition, as a brick and mortar store, you probably only served the market within your city. Once you transition into eCommerce, however, you’ll have customers from all over the country, and sometimes, from outside the country. You have to know how to handle these customers and meet their needs.

Second, your customer needs and preferences will also change once you transition into eCommerce. Your customers will now be looking for things like fast delivery, a favorable return policy, and so on. These are things you didn’t have to deal with when running a brick and mortar business.

The switch to eCommerce will also make new options available to you, such as dropshipping, allowing you to save money on things like inventory costs and storage space. With such changes, you might find your business switching to a totally new business model.

Your budget allocation will also change. You will find yourself spending more on things like website maintenance and improvement, order fulfillment, digital marketing, and so on, and less on things like rent and staffing.

With all these changes, you might find that your original business plan no longer makes sense. Therefore, you will need to make adjustments to your business plan to ensure it is aligned with these changes.

2. Perform An Audit Of Your Product Range

After moving your operations online, you might discover that it might not be possible to offer all the products you had in your brick and mortar store on your online store.

For instance, you might discover that the costs of shipping some products might make these products too expensive for your customers, making it impossible for you to offer these products at profitable prices.

You might also discover that some of the products you sold in your brick and mortar store have restrictions that prohibit them from being sold over the internet.

For instance, in states like Utah, Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, and Alaska, there are restrictions prohibiting the sale of alcohol over the internet. If you have a brick and mortar liquor store in these states, you won’t be able to transition your business into eCommerce, unless you change your products.

Sometimes, it might just not make sense to sell some products online. For instance, if you have some impulse buy products that you would normally place near the checkout counter in your brick and mortar business, it might not make sense selling some of them online.

Due to all these considerations, before transitioning your brick and mortar business to eCommerce, you need to perform an audit of your product range and see which of them can be successfully sold online. In some cases, you might have to change your product offerings in order to make your shift to eCommerce successful.

3. Choose A Suitable Ecommerce Platform

Before you can start offering your products online, you will need to choose a suitable eCommerce platform that you are going to use to create your online store. The good thing is that there are several great eCommerce platforms that you can use to build your store.

Generally, there are two kinds of eCommerce platforms. The first one is SaaS-based platforms. These are done-for-you platforms that allow you to set up your online store within a couple of hours. Examples include BigCommerce and Shopify.

These make the process of setting up your shop quite simple, allowing just about anyone to build an online store, even with minimal technical skills.

The second type is open-source platforms. These require more technical skills to set up. On the flip side, however, they give you more customization options and allow you to set up a unique online store that meets all your requirements. Examples include WooCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop.

The most suitable eCommerce platform for you will depend on your unique needs. Some of the things you should consider when choosing an eCommerce platform include:

• The size of your online store and the number of products you intend to have on offer
• Whether you have plans to scale your business
• The functionalities you want on your online store and the kind of shopping experience you want to offer
• Your technical know-how and whether you’ll maintain your site by yourself or outsource the maintenance
• Ease of use
• Your budget
• The kind of analytics and reporting supported by the platform

Aside from choosing a suitable eCommerce platform, you’ll also need to invest in the right eCommerce automation tools that will make it easier for you to run your eCommerce business more effectively.

4. Think About Shipping And Fulfillment

With a brick and mortar business, order fulfillment is easy. The customer pays for a product, you bag it for them and hand it over to them, since they’re buying in person.

Once you transition to eCommerce, however, you’ll have to think about how products will get to your customers, who are making the purchase from home. Remember, the effectiveness of your shipping and fulfillment process affects their customer experience, and therefore, you want to make sure that it is as effective as possible.

When it comes to shipping and fulfillment, you have two options. The first one is to handle shipping by yourself. This means that you will be in charge of packaging products, dealing with couriers, sending out notifications to your customers, tracking the order, and so on.

The second option is to have a third-party handle shipping for you. With this approach, after an order has been made, you just need to deliver the product to the third-party service provider. The shipping service provider will handle the rest for you and make sure that your product gets to your customers on time.

5. Choose A Payment Method

Since you’re going to be selling your products over the internet, you’ll also need to figure out how you’ll collect payments over the internet. To do this, you’ll need to set up a payment method on your online store.

You need to be very careful when it comes to choosing a payment method for your online store. Your chosen payment method affects your site’s shopping experience, and therefore, if you choose the wrong payment method, this could lead to decreased conversions on your online store.

Actually, reports show that most shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to issues relating to the provided payment method. 21% abandon their cart because the checkout process is too long and complicated, 17% due to lack of trust in the payment method provided, and 6% because their preferred payment method is not supported.

To avoid negatively affecting your eCommerce conversion rate, you should keep the following in mind:

• Make sure your chosen payment method is safe and secure.
• Ensure that your chosen payment method offers a simple, fast, and smooth checkout experience. A long, complicated process will lead to cart abandonment.
• Make sure that your chosen payment method allows checkout from different kinds of devices.
• Go for a payment method that offers support for the most common payment channels, including credit and debit cards, bank transfers, PayPal, Google and Apple pay, and so on.

6. Adjust Your Marketing Plan

The marketing strategy that worked for your brick and mortar business won’t cut it once you transition into eCommerce. Therefore, you’ll need to update your marketing plan to make it better suited to a business that is purely online.

Once you transition to eCommerce, you’ll need to put greater focus into digital marketing strategies like content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, PPC marketing, search engine optimization, and so on.

Here, you’ll need to get creative if you want to stay ahead of your competition. Your focus should be on building a community around your brand and getting repeat sales from this community and turning them into brand ambassadors, rather than relying on one-time sales.

You’ll also have to invest in website monitoring tools and services to help you track the performance of your eCommerce business and identify opportunities for optimization and improvement.

Wrapping Up

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues holding the world hostage, most brick and mortar businesses have been forced to transition into eCommerce. If you want your transition into eCommerce to be successful, however, you will need to do it tactfully.

In this article, we have provided you with 6 key tips that will help you make a successful and seamless transition into eCommerce and ensure that your business continues thriving, even as the world continues navigating these uncertain times.

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Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash

The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant restrictions on movement and physical interaction have led to increased demand for online shopping.

With people restricted from leaving their houses unnecessarily, it has become imperative for brick and mortar businesses that want to survive to take their operations online.

However, transitioning a brick and mortar business into eCommerce is not a matter of simply starting a website and listing your products on the website. To successfully transition a brick and mortar business into eCommerce, you’ll need to approach the process strategically.

If you own a brick and mortar business and are looking to take your operations online, here are the things you need to do in order to make your transition successful:

1. Adjust Your Business Plan Accordingly

Once you transition your brick and mortar business into eCommerce, your business is going to experience several changes.

First, your target market might change. For instance, let’s say your biggest customer segment was older people who enjoy going down to the block to purchase things in person.

Once you move online, however, your biggest customer segment might change to a younger demographic who are more comfortable with making purchases over the internet.

In addition, as a brick and mortar store, you probably only served the market within your city. Once you transition into eCommerce, however, you’ll have customers from all over the country, and sometimes, from outside the country. You have to know how to handle these customers and meet their needs.

Second, your customer needs and preferences will also change once you transition into eCommerce. Your customers will now be looking for things like fast delivery, a favorable return policy, and so on. These are things you didn’t have to deal with when running a brick and mortar business.

The switch to eCommerce will also make new options available to you, such as dropshipping, allowing you to save money on things like inventory costs and storage space. With such changes, you might find your business switching to a totally new business model.

Your budget allocation will also change. You will find yourself spending more on things like website maintenance and improvement, order fulfillment, digital marketing, and so on, and less on things like rent and staffing.

With all these changes, you might find that your original business plan no longer makes sense. Therefore, you will need to make adjustments to your business plan to ensure it is aligned with these changes.

2. Perform An Audit Of Your Product Range

After moving your operations online, you might discover that it might not be possible to offer all the products you had in your brick and mortar store on your online store.

For instance, you might discover that the costs of shipping some products might make these products too expensive for your customers, making it impossible for you to offer these products at profitable prices.

You might also discover that some of the products you sold in your brick and mortar store have restrictions that prohibit them from being sold over the internet.

For instance, in states like Utah, Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, and Alaska, there are restrictions prohibiting the sale of alcohol over the internet. If you have a brick and mortar liquor store in these states, you won’t be able to transition your business into eCommerce, unless you change your products.

Sometimes, it might just not make sense to sell some products online. For instance, if you have some impulse buy products that you would normally place near the checkout counter in your brick and mortar business, it might not make sense selling some of them online.

Due to all these considerations, before transitioning your brick and mortar business to eCommerce, you need to perform an audit of your product range and see which of them can be successfully sold online. In some cases, you might have to change your product offerings in order to make your shift to eCommerce successful.

3. Choose A Suitable Ecommerce Platform

Before you can start offering your products online, you will need to choose a suitable eCommerce platform that you are going to use to create your online store. The good thing is that there are several great eCommerce platforms that you can use to build your store.

Generally, there are two kinds of eCommerce platforms. The first one is SaaS-based platforms. These are done-for-you platforms that allow you to set up your online store within a couple of hours. Examples include BigCommerce and Shopify.

These make the process of setting up your shop quite simple, allowing just about anyone to build an online store, even with minimal technical skills.

The second type is open-source platforms. These require more technical skills to set up. On the flip side, however, they give you more customization options and allow you to set up a unique online store that meets all your requirements. Examples include WooCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop.

The most suitable eCommerce platform for you will depend on your unique needs. Some of the things you should consider when choosing an eCommerce platform include:

• The size of your online store and the number of products you intend to have on offer
• Whether you have plans to scale your business
• The functionalities you want on your online store and the kind of shopping experience you want to offer
• Your technical know-how and whether you’ll maintain your site by yourself or outsource the maintenance
• Ease of use
• Your budget
• The kind of analytics and reporting supported by the platform

Aside from choosing a suitable eCommerce platform, you’ll also need to invest in the right eCommerce automation tools that will make it easier for you to run your eCommerce business more effectively.

4. Think About Shipping And Fulfillment

With a brick and mortar business, order fulfillment is easy. The customer pays for a product, you bag it for them and hand it over to them, since they’re buying in person.

Once you transition to eCommerce, however, you’ll have to think about how products will get to your customers, who are making the purchase from home. Remember, the effectiveness of your shipping and fulfillment process affects their customer experience, and therefore, you want to make sure that it is as effective as possible.

When it comes to shipping and fulfillment, you have two options. The first one is to handle shipping by yourself. This means that you will be in charge of packaging products, dealing with couriers, sending out notifications to your customers, tracking the order, and so on.

The second option is to have a third-party handle shipping for you. With this approach, after an order has been made, you just need to deliver the product to the third-party service provider. The shipping service provider will handle the rest for you and make sure that your product gets to your customers on time.

5. Choose A Payment Method

Since you’re going to be selling your products over the internet, you’ll also need to figure out how you’ll collect payments over the internet. To do this, you’ll need to set up a payment method on your online store.

You need to be very careful when it comes to choosing a payment method for your online store. Your chosen payment method affects your site’s shopping experience, and therefore, if you choose the wrong payment method, this could lead to decreased conversions on your online store.

Actually, reports show that most shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to issues relating to the provided payment method. 21% abandon their cart because the checkout process is too long and complicated, 17% due to lack of trust in the payment method provided, and 6% because their preferred payment method is not supported.

To avoid negatively affecting your eCommerce conversion rate, you should keep the following in mind:

• Make sure your chosen payment method is safe and secure.
• Ensure that your chosen payment method offers a simple, fast, and smooth checkout experience. A long, complicated process will lead to cart abandonment.
• Make sure that your chosen payment method allows checkout from different kinds of devices.
• Go for a payment method that offers support for the most common payment channels, including credit and debit cards, bank transfers, PayPal, Google and Apple pay, and so on.

6. Adjust Your Marketing Plan

The marketing strategy that worked for your brick and mortar business won’t cut it once you transition into eCommerce. Therefore, you’ll need to update your marketing plan to make it better suited to a business that is purely online.

Once you transition to eCommerce, you’ll need to put greater focus into digital marketing strategies like content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, PPC marketing, search engine optimization, and so on.

Here, you’ll need to get creative if you want to stay ahead of your competition. Your focus should be on building a community around your brand and getting repeat sales from this community and turning them into brand ambassadors, rather than relying on one-time sales.

You’ll also have to invest in website monitoring tools and services to help you track the performance of your eCommerce business and identify opportunities for optimization and improvement.

Wrapping Up

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues holding the world hostage, most brick and mortar businesses have been forced to transition into eCommerce. If you want your transition into eCommerce to be successful, however, you will need to do it tactfully.

In this article, we have provided you with 6 key tips that will help you make a successful and seamless transition into eCommerce and ensure that your business continues thriving, even as the world continues navigating these uncertain times.

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Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash