In the modern online environment, every retail business needs to offer high-quality web pages. Even if you offer minimal online services, being visible and professional in this space reflects how seriously you take your industry. Consistently offering high quality can also create challenges, however, especially when the requirements to keep customers happy and perfectly catered to are constantly changing.
Cutting-Edge Examples
Before jumping into the two main approaches that a modern website needs to adapt to stay successful, consider the pages that already operate at the top of the game. For key examples, we could turn to Slingo at Paddy Power. This website offers games like Santa King and Slingo Starburst running on the latest HTML5 technologies while also translating its page onto different connecting devices. Whether you’re connecting from a tablet, smartphone, PC, or laptop, all devices work perfectly and scale without issue, which brings us to the first point.
Changing Formfactors
Probably the most influential and under-addressed factors that modern websites overlook are non-standard resolutions and aspect ratios. Most websites are perfectly happy to cater to widescreen computer displays and standard mobile slate-style screens, but anything outside this binary is often underserved. This is especially important when looking at growing display technologies like folding phones and AR headsets.
Folding phones will undoubtedly demonstrate the larger part of this equation, following what Grand View Research calculates as a 13.5% CAGR from 2024 to 2030. With folding and even upcoming trifold phones entering the market, websites require a shift to ensure compatibility with unusual display outputs. This is further exacerbated by AR displays, where users can use whichever arbitrary aspect ratio they choose.
For retail businesses, this means that every website will need to be tested on a wide selection of resolutions and aspect ratios. From 21:9 in high resolution, as reported on the Galaxy Z Fold by Tech Radar to 4:3 in lower resolution as was once typical on CRTs, covering as many options as possible is the best bet for retailers.
Staying on Top of Trends and Security Necessities
Trends and online security necessities are the next challenging parts of online business that many overlook. These can be separated into two key illustrative sections, coding standards and social media platform success.
Changing security standards demonstrates the necessity of staying up-to-date with the latest developments in technologies like SSL. No web page is perfectly secure, and as each new vulnerability is discovered, it will need to be patched. Fortunately, most web hosts will manage the hard work here for you, but not all are created equal. Be sure to check around to see which has the best reputation before joining.
Social media trends can be especially useful if your retail store chases specific online demographics. Younger people will be more likely to use TikTok, for example, while older customers are more likely to operate via Facebook. While you don’t have to be an overly enthusiastic meme king, it can be helpful to at least follow the kinds of humour and ideas that social media displays in your most important demographics.
The job of future-proofing your business for the next generation of online access is never really done. Once you achieve one goal, another will raise its head, but this doesn’t mean you should give up. Stay aware and make consistent efforts, and you’ll avoid falling behind.
