The One Web Approach Is The Way Forward For Ecommerce

According to a report, 90 percent of U.S. customers are expecting a consistent experience across all devices and platforms during their online shopping spree during this year’s Cyber Monday. The report has also predicted that mobile shopping sales will easily surpass last year’s figures.

The above statements mean that e-commerce websites needs a consistent experience across all devices if they are looking to maximize their profits from online sales. In simple words, they need to develop websites that would look and feel same across all devices and platforms, so that customer won’t feel any difficulty in placing orders via their mobile devices.

What is the One Web Approach?

It is evident by people’s response that we’ve moved into an era where responsive and adaptive design techniques rule the web, which is termed One Web approach by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). According to W3C’s, “One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using.”

Adopting One Web approach will make sure that a website delivers a user experience that is consistent across all devices. It will also be future-proofed for the unseen screen sizes and resolutions.

To get a grip of the One Web approach, let’s dig into the two most popular approaches for developing a ‘One Web’ website. There are responsive design and client-side adaptive designs.

Responsive Web Design

This is the most common web design approach used by developers to create a One Web website. In this approach developers creates one flexible design which is displayed across different devices and platforms. This flexible design covers different context, devices and control mechanism. As developers have to cater multiple devices and platforms in one single CSS file, the website load time increases slightly. The best examples of a responsive web design are Medium and Boston Globe’s website.

Adaptive Web Design

In this design approach developers creates multiple designs for different devices and platforms separately. Once the code detects a user’s device and its platform, it displays the design accordingly. For example, if a user visits the website with an iPhone 6, he will be shown a design specifically created for iPhone 6 and iOS. For example, an adaptive design will show retina-quality images only to a retina display while standard definition displays will get lower quality images. It uses JavaScript to enrich websites with advanced functionality and customization.

As this approach asks developers to create different CSS files for different devices and platforms, it means they have to make amendments to each file once there is a change in the design.

Why is the One Web approach the way forward for e-commerce?

As we have discussed earlier, people are expecting to have a consistent user experience across all devices and platforms. One Web is the only way to meet that expectation. It is the cornerstone of almost every solution that tackles the modern day’s diverse and multi-screen world problems. It is said that soon One Web will be acknowledged as the only way to build modern and future-proof e-commerce websites.

It was easy to handle customers when they were placing orders through desktop computers. However, the landscape is changing for e-commerce vendors. In the past, vendors required only one website for a single broad category of computer, modern day gadgets has changed it all. Today, consumers are using laptops, smartphones, and tablets, to browse and shop online. People are connected to the web with almost every electronic device. TVs, cameras, and cars; you name it and it may be connected to the web. So, in order to fit and work effectively on every screen as per customers’ requirements, e-commerce websites must adopt One Web approach.

Wrap Up

It is a tricky question when it comes to choosing the right One Web approach. Responsive or Adaptive, it requires careful consideration of context and returns, customer requirements and available resources. The One Web approach ensures that your e-commerce website portrays flexible user experience patterns for customers across devices and platforms.