eCommerce is a acronyms of Electronic commerce. eCommerce is defined as the buying and selling of services and products on the internet. It covers a…
Millennials are the most technically sound and first generation of people that’s digitally native across the world today. As per 5W’s Consumer Culture report, Millennials were expected to spend over $1.4 trillion in the year 2020. This figure is likely to increase in coming years too. The Gen Y AKA millennials have emerged as a highly influenced and the most impulsive generation of all time.
It is the most talked-about generation around the world. Be it their entitled behavior or their obsession for Avocados – baby boomers & Gen Xers have a lot to say about them. No matter how controversial this generation is, they play a significant role when it comes to boosting your conversion rate & sales. Businesses must design their websites to resonate and stay in-check with the millennial style. Not considering the demands of Gen Y is like killing your business with your own hands.
Before we get into how to design your eCommerce website for millennials, let’s understand why you should pay attention to them.
Why Pay Attention to Millennial Generation?
Before you start off with designing your website the millennial style, you must know why they are so important for your business?
Currently, millennials are in their prime age, where they are getting ahead in their work and getting high-paying jobs. People that lie in the millennial age group are dominating the market with their exponential spending power. Still here’re a few reasons why you must be paying more attention to millennials while designing your website.
- The millennial generation makes up around 12 million, a quarter of the US’s population according to statista.
- As per one study, millennials in the US spend over $600 billion each year, and each millennial have on average $47,112 expenditures in a year.
- Most millennials have shown trust issues with traditional advertising campaigns of brands. They only trust and consider their friends and family, online reviews, and the value product offers.
The changing purchasing habits and redefining habits of millennials is the reason behind the complete makeover of the online market. And thanks to that traditional website design practices don’t work anymore. A unique, effective, and appealing web designing is what makes them engage with you. So, without further ado, let’s get on with how to design your website in the millennial style.
How to Design Website in the Millennial Style?
Now, that we have established why millennials are so important for the success of your online business, we can move forward with our main topic of the day i.e. website design in the millennial style. Millennials are picky and have cruised through nooks & crannies in their formative years, which helps them pose expertise in the online world.
And to appeal to this online experts/tech-savvy generation, you need to follow the rules laid out by them and make sure that your eCommerce website design matches their standard. So, let’s have a glance at how you should design your website.
1. Must-Have Mobile Responsive Design:
As per 2019’s one research, 93% of the millennials owned a smartphone – the highest among any generation. They use it to perform many online tasks such as shopping, researching, browsing the net & social media, and all sorts of other stuff before buying anything. They have become so accustomed and reliant on their pocket devices. And due to that, they expect websites to have better performance optimized for mobile commerce needs.
And the best way for website owners to do that is by incorporating mobile responsive designs. Not only optimizing your website for Google will give you the best ranking, but optimizing it to fulfill the demand of millennials is worth considering. So, make your website design mobile responsive to appeal to the millennials and also rank better on SERPs.
2. Offer Self-Service for DIYers:
One thing millennials are known for is their natural behavior of being the “in-control” people in all things. Be it a simple Do-It-Yourself (DIY) task or query related to the products/services they want, contacting the customer support team is the last thing they want. Moreover, they absolutely hate the wait time to get on the call with the customer service team.
So, what should you do here to please this “in-control” generation is integrate & offer them self-service on your website. Provide them with FAQS, self-help blogs/articles, discussion forums to share and resolve their problems. Doing so will make your website in-check with the millennial style website design.
3. Reward Your Loyal Millennials:
Millennials are the infamous generation for not being the brand-loyal customers for which their predecessors were known for. The biggest challenge today’s brands face is not gaining their loyalty or approval, but it is how you plan to get it. Because traditional loyalty programs like giving up loyalty points on spending more or “50th, 100th, or 200th customer of the day gets all” don’t work today.
To gain their loyalty and brand approval, you need to incorporate new ways and come up with unique incentive programs that are bound to give them some value. A loyalty program that actually cares about what users need can work wonders to gain the loyalty of your millennial customers. Thus, make sure to include that in your website design
4. Integrate Storytelling to Better Connect:
Almost everyone wants to feel connected with the product or services they are supposed to buy. And millennials are no exception for the same. The best way however to make your millennial customers feel connected is by integrating storytelling in your web designing.
Storytelling may seem like a new buzzword for many entrepreneurs, but it has got so much potential and can help you build the undeniable trust of users. Be it a meaningful image or text/article on your website, they all must convey to them what you want to say about experience, interests, or values.
5. Break the Stereotypes:
Among many others we discussed earlier, millennials are also famous for breaking stereotypes. They are the ones that don’t ask for permission to break the glass ceiling and would appreciate it if you did the same with your website design. Your website design has that potential to convey a powerful message to your millennial customers.
The best way to approach this is to have a good look at your competitors’ website design. Note down what the most common design elements they have integrated – elements that are stereotypical and seem cliché for your industry. Make sure that your designers don’t include such stereotypical and cliché elements while designing your website.
6. Speed Up Performance & Experience:
Performance is the need of the hour and everyone would love a site with a fast load speed that does not drag users’ experience. Most of your users and millennials as well will have a short span of attention that can get diverted to someplace else if your website doesn’t load within 3sec.
So, the question is how do you make your website perform fast & snappy? Well, there are plenty of ways to do so. Make sure that you have chosen the best server hosting service, media files like images/videos are in compressed format, remove or merge JavaScript and CSS files, or find other ways to do so. But make sure that the website is designed in such a way that speeds up the performance and experience of users.
Conclusion
Millennial is the most elusive as well as technology-reliant generation today. They can be hard to understand, yet have simple demands, tech-dependent, smart workers, and many other things. Irrespective of what you think about the millennial generation, it’ll cost a fortune for your business if you ignore their existence. And making your website design standard match with what they demand will ensure they become your lifelong customers. It may seem hard at first to earn their trust, but once you have that, you are bound to not lose it.
Need help with your eCommerce website design or development? M-Connect Solutions can provide you with the most intuitive, responsive, and engaging website designs that guarantee your business’s success and attract the most amount of millennials. Contact us now to kickstart your project with us.
About Hemant Parmar
Hemant Parmar is an eCommerce expert and a keen Magento consultant who specializes in meeting the needs of businesses in the e-commerce space. Years in the eCommerce market make him a perfect choice for sharing his expertise on eCommerce and Magento 2 development. He believes that customers need to be met no matter how challenging it might be.
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