UX Best Practices for NFT Marketplace Design

Online NFT marketplaces are becoming more and more popular every day. The digital collectibles are backed by blockchain technology which makes them complex and different from the current marketplace items listed in e-stores.

Marketplace- as it sounds is all about buying and selling. Making UI/UX design for NFT platforms can be time-taking since you have to figure out how to merge the complications of the blockchain into a user-friendly platform. Let’s explore some easy ways and tips for designing your own NFT marketplace in this guide.

What You Should Know First?

What is NFT – NFTs are unique digital assets on blockchain technology that are not interchangeable.
Why UX is important for blockchain – Blockchain technology is young yet complex. For more people to learn about it subtracting the jargon and complexities, the User Experience needs to be enhanced by being supported by suitable User Interfaces.
What is NFT Marketplace – NFT marketplaces allow users to buy and sell assets directly without having to know any underlying crypto-complexities.
Why UX is important for NFTs – User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design are crucial for the success of any company. When applied to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), UI/UX design becomes even more critical.
What should UI/UX designers do – A successful UI/UX design for an NFT marketplace should provide a user-friendly interface that allows anyone who has an interest in these digital items to purchase one without having to understand blockchain technology or how crypto tokens work.
For Web3 UX design Mindset and Principles you can check out the following write-ups:

Web3 Mindset for UX Designers

Web3 Design Principles

Essential Design Features of the NFT marketplace:

Single-category Market or All-Purpose Market

The first and foremost step would be to determine the type of niche you are fulfilling with your marketplace design. Sticking to the business niche is important prior to design.

Single-category market (say only Art-based)
All-Purpose market (Art, Music, Real Estate, sports, collectibles, entertainment, gaming, etc.)

For example, for the multi-categories platform, the first interacting screen should allow the users to browse the categories of their choice.

Whereas, the single-category NFT market would start enlisting the collectibles on their landing page. This should be the first priority for the designer to understand the client’s business and stick to it for implementation. Some examples to speculate business niche importance are:

Radion is a music-only NFT marketplace. The Radion allows creators to have an e-commerce-like platform where subscribers can buy a number of products or services listed as NFTs.

NBA Top Shot is a sport and athleisure NFT marketplace. It is a great choice for basketball fans who are looking to get involved in the world of basketball NFTs.

KnownOrigin is another versatile example of a single-category marketplace. It is an art NFT platform. It focuses on offering rare and collectible artworks in timed-released events, known as drops, which enable artists to control the number of copies released.

Welcoming the New Comers

The goal is to welcome all kinds of visitors with an attractive yet simple design. As a designer, we must always remember that new users and technically proficient people will be visiting the same site. To cater to that there must be an inclusion of

Walkthroughs
Guidelines
Pop-out info
Buttons, features, and menus with descriptions.

A little humor never hurt anybody. Adding something creative, witty, or funny gets users’ attention more quickly and ultimately trust is formed between the user and the platform. As we can witness below in the picture, the word “eat” right next to the word “use” is written in strike-through making it seem hysterical.

Showcase NFTs on the Homepage

The layout should also be uncluttered with no background images or distracting information. Choice of suitable alignment, simple templates or themes, and no-busy backgrounds is the key to perfecting the layout. Having the categories for the all-purpose NFt market can be a challenge, listing down the NFTs in a perfect format should be made possible with alignment, font choice, and image ratio on a page.

The first interactive screen of any platform is its Home Page. Implementing the “aesthetic-usability” feature on this page is preferred. The aesthetic-usability effect refers to users’ tendency to consider attractive products as usable as they look — even if they aren’t actually more effective or efficient.

Provide What Viewers are Looking For

Curating design to enable control for the users is another important design strategy. Making marketplace users feel like they can easily view the NFTs in-purchase and the ones on auctions to bid readily.

In marketplace design, control can be given by providing users with multiple options such as choosing the type of NFTs (Auction, non-auction, new, popular, etc.), setting the pricing range, filtration, and sorting items.

Allow users to search more precisely, by having the option of the filter. This will help in gaining happy visitors. People like to see what they want, using filters they can eliminate the non-required and easily navigate to the point.

Separate dashboards for buyers and sellers

NFT platforms have two primary target audiences — NFT creators and buyers. They want to achieve entirely different tasks, so make sure to design separate and relevant dashboards.

Here is how OpenSea is achieving this feature:

Seller Dashboard for creating NFT

Dashboard for Buyer to buy NFT

What to Hide and What to Highlight

Other than the assets’ listing standards, other important description features that should be highlighted as an NFT description is;

Different angles
Visuals
Owner Details
Pricing model
Potential buyers

Displaying detailed information on the NFT’s origin and background (history of all owners).

Allowing users to track their whole transaction history is part of an excellent user experience since NFT traders want to analyze their trading behavior to improve or judge the market while participating in NFT trading. Such a feature can include required data like the total number of NFTs sold, NFTs’ previous price, and so on.

While designing the description page. There should be an open/close description button to allow the type of viewers to look deep into the description or not. Populating information without having the viewers get to engage with the product above can be a little distracting.

Adding Tags for NFT Searching Optimization

Users want to see the exact thing they search for. Tags are the keywords associated with the product that helps the users reach their desired product in an easy and quick manner. Tags make navigation easier and bring exposure to the topics that consumers love. Putting Tags with the NFTs in the marketplace allow the searched category/item to pop right at the top so that the user does not have to spend time searching.

Buying and Selling Design Mechanisms in NFT Marketplace

Buy

The NFT marketplace platform should have a feature that allows users to buy and bid for NFTs listed on the platform. The bidding feature should include a bid expiration date and allow users to view details about the bids’ current status.

Sell

Sellers should have the option to select the type of buying process while minting an NFT or whether one has to transfer the ownership to another person. If he opts for fix price then he will enter the amount that he wants to sell, in case he selects the other option he has to select its metrics which include name, description, time duration, minimum price, and chain (if there are more than one), etc.

Adding Blockchain Network

Adding a Blockchain network is not essential but can be added as an extra feature

With unique requirements in mind, we choose an optimal blockchain framework and implement the blockchain network to base the NFT marketplace but you don’t necessarily operate on a single blockchain. Actually, if you do, your marketplace will face the same limitations as the chosen blockchain network. The resulting interoperability increases marketplace sustainability, optimizes blockchain energy consumption, and expands customer reach for your marketplace.

Integrating the Crypto Wallet & Checking Transaction

Just as a viewer finds the perfect NFT to buy or the NFT creator’s deal is closed they just want a quick route to get the fair transaction. To ensure that users have quick and secure transactions available on the marketplace a crypto wallet on a marketplace is a must. This can be made possible by designing a wallet that supports multiple crypto currency (Also dependent on the development area). Other than the technical metric, it should have a smooth and error-free UX. Adding feedback with each step by a user can enhance the user experience.

Transaction history or activities

Giving access to the users’ actions and transaction history on the marketplace is another viable feature. Buyers can check back and forth the worth/pricing of any digital asset and decide if new transactions they can work on without any errors.

Other Tips that will be helpful

Focused Navigation
Perfect Layout
Creating a listing page for sellers
User profile with the follower count and links to social media
Onboarding or “How it works” page

Blockchain Gaming Redefining The Gaming Industry

Blockchain gaming has taken the industry by storm with tech and cryptocurrencies. The gaming industry has always thrived and enjoyed massive growth. In the last few years, it has risen exponentially with the advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Virtual Reality (VR). Despite the evolution and growth, the industry has decided to add more advanced technology – the blockchain!

Blockchain has revolutionized several industries, and the gaming industry is one of them. This breakthrough technology is changing the way games will be created and played. Apart from the progress, the pandemic has also enabled this technology to grow at an exponential level. It is, in fact, due to people resorting to gaming on the lockdown days.

In this article, we will look at how blockchain gaming is redefining the gaming industry by making it more immersive and secure. We will also look at how this industry will be the first real use case of blockchain technology.

Blockchain Gaming and the Role of NFT

So, what exactly is blockchain gaming? Technically, a blockchain is a transparent unalterable chain of data blocks on a network. On top of that, it is decentralized, hence there is no central control. Instead, the digital assets in the blockchain are controlled by users. These digital assets are also called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and are like Cryptocurrency coins. It is a fantastic invention for gamers who can freely move their virtual assets from one game to another.

So NFT, like cryptocurrency, is not only transferable in the game, but also outside of the game. If we consider a scenario of RPG games such as Final Fantasy, the NFTs could be a sword, shield, costumes, or anything else.

Digital Scarcity of Assets

In RPG games, some of the legendary items are available in limited quantities for players. The players can only purchase it by paying a hefty amount, and only the premium players can keep those items. Similarly, in blockchain-powered games, some digital assets are scarce, and not easily available to every player. Thus, it follows the aspect of digital scarcity in a distributed ledger to maintain the decentralized marketplace.

Ownership of In-Game Assets

An NFT owner, in blockchain games, always remains the owner even if the game stops working. It is because the asset can be transferred from one ledger to another, from one game to another, and can also be kept in the wallets. Blockchain-powered games utilize smart contracts to handle transactions. It transfers the assets into a players’ account. Thus, the ownership of the item cannot be replaced.

Liquid Gold

The bottom line of blockchain gaming is liquidity. Liquidity is the capability of a digital asset or crypto coin to be converted into cash or any other coin. Since gamers are already accustomed to the concept of tokenization, liquidity allows them to implement a distributed ledger game very easily. Also, the assets can be traded with real-life currency as well. Since the items can be exchanged in-game as well as in the real world, it is best to keep the transactions on the blockchain to keep track.

Security in the Gaming Market

With the power of decentralization in blockchain and encryption measures, hackers find it impossible to hack the crypto server. This gives an advantage to game developers to develop blockchain-based games that cannot be damaged by intruders. They need a secure and safe environment to develop, launch and monetize games in a secure market.

Improved Payment Methods

Security and privacy are top features of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies. In the gaming industry, there have been numerous payment fraud incidents, security breaches, and multiple incidents. With blockchain-based games, crypto tokens can be used to make smooth payments, thus making the payment possibilities secure for gamers.

Single Gaming Profiles

Most RPG games require users to register and create their profiles on games if they wish to play games and access gaming features. However, with crypto-based games, users can have one integrated RPG account that can be used to access and play multiple games. This single RPG profile will not only improve user experience but also make games more accessible.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that blockchain with its cryptocurrency offers a multitude of features to game players and game developers. This technology is revolutionizing the RPG industry despite its infancy and slow progress. With the rapid development, the crypto-based RPG business will help the gaming industry by making it more enjoyable and smooth, while keeping the hackers out of the domain.