Online retailer Kogan has unveiled a new website design and format it says features ‘smart’ features aimed at lowering costs for customers and improving the user experience.

One such feature is SmartShip, a calculator which saves money for consumers by fitting accessories into boxes to reduce shipping costs. For example, the system knows that an HDMI cable can slide into the box of the TV so no extra shipping fee is charged.

Another is recommendations of popular accessories for products (such as cables and wall mounts), with the ability to offer group discounts when purchasing items together:

There are better ways to communicate with the Kogan team (via instant social and live chat) across all pages which let shoppers chat while browsing the latest technology ‘in-store’.

Notifications showing when people around Australia are buying from Kogan, ushering in a new era of transparency in online retail

Kogan says the site offers an advanced filtering and search process that allows customers to locate the exact product they are after much faster.

Goran Stefkovski, Kogan’s director of technology, said the changes would set the standard for the online retail industry.

“The new features we’ve implemented help make Kogan one of the most advanced, feature-rich online stores in the world.

“To build and release this optimised shopping experience, we’ve used intelligence gathered from having a massive e-commerce presence for over six years across hundreds of millions of pageviews.

“We’ll soon be bringing in a beautiful dedicated mobile site, as well as a customer portal to manage purchases and shipping notifications,” he said.

The new Kogan.com is built on a scalable cloud architecture, which means the company can build new features easily and have the scrutiny of thousands of developers managing security of the platform.