Are you launching a new site? Do you want your website to look great for years to come?
A good design is crucial if you want your website design to still look good years from now. This is why it’s important to make the distinction between design trends and passing fads. Certain fad designs can leave your website looking severely dated later down the line.
Here are 10 different design trends that are sure to be popular throughout the whole year.
1. Speed
If you want people to come to your website, your website needs to be fast. Research has consistently shown that if it takes longer than a few seconds for your page to load, a huge proportion of your audience will simply give up and look elsewhere.
You should always ensure that your website loads very quickly on any kind of device and any browser. If your website loads too slowly, you may need to take some measures to make it load quicker. This might involve simplifying the design.
2. Minimalism
Minimalism involves reducing your design down to the very basics. In a minimalist design, all superfluous elements are removed, leaving you with just the bare essentials.
As technology’s improved, flashy designs are no longer as impressive as they once were. Your design can have more of an impact if it’s simple and to the point.
Minimalism is a great way to make your site look professional. Don’t make the mistake of thinking a minimal design is something easy to do. When you’re working with so few elements, you have to make all of them count.
3. Chatbots
Over the last few years, technology’s evolved to the point that chatbots can intelligently respond to your customers. In the past, chatbots felt very robotic and were very easily confused.
These days, however, a chatbot is capable of having a full-blown conversation. Chatbots are a fantastic way to add a personal touch to your website without having to hire a human being.
4. Sites With Video Backgrounds
Despite recent trends in minimalism, some websites are going in the opposite direction. They’re embedding videos into the background of their homepage.
The challenge here is to have your webpage load quick enough. You want your page to load as quickly as possible.
If a page with a video takes too long to load, a lot of customers will leave the page quickly. If the video loads fast enough, however, it’s likely that customers will stick around to watch it. Videos are naturally much more attention-grabbing than static images.
5. Small Animations
Remember in the 2000s when a lot of pages heavily abused animation? Well, animation is trending again. But this time, people are being a bit more subtle about it.
While it’s very easy to overdo things, when you have subtle animations on your page, it can make your content much more engaging. Animations that are constantly going off are generally a bad idea. But buttons that play a brief animation when they’re clicked are a great way to make your site a bit more fun.
6. Single Page Designs
Traditionally, a website has a homepage and then it also has a number of internal links to other pages.
We’re now seeing innovative website design that uses only a single page. This gives the page a sleek and elegant aesthetic. Plus, it also makes it a lot easier to navigate on a mobile device.
With so many of your potential customers accessing your website using their phones, it never hurts to make your website as mobile-friendly as possible.
7. Design Trends Involving Geometric Shapes
Continuing on with the trend of minimalism, you can expect to see a lot of simple geometric shapes in cutting-edge web design.
Like colors, shapes can evoke certain feelings and emotions. For example, a circle can represent unity or a rectangle could represent stability.
8. Keep Mobile in Mind
In the past, mobile compatibility was an afterthought. The majority of people would be viewing your website on a computer.
These days, however, more people are using the internet on their phones while on the go. A lot of websites will see more mobile visitors than PC ones. This means it now makes sense to put a lot more effort into the mobile version of your site.
9. Flat Design
Flat designs are becoming a web development trend for a variety of reasons. For example, having too many pictures on your site is a sure way to frustrate people who are trying to view it on mobile.
Having a flat design means your site could work well on both mobile and on PC. This can save time and effort. You only need to create one website instead of two.
Furthermore, a flat design also means your site will load a lot faster. Fast loading times are essential if you want your visitors to stick around.
10. Attention-Grabbing Visuals
While a lot of sites are going in a more minimal direction, others are trying to be as flashy as they can in order to grab your attention. For example, some sites are using asymmetrical, broken grid layouts. These can give your website a very striking appearance, which is sure to make an impact when your viewers first set eyes on it.
Even if you’re going for a flashy design, you still need to take it easy. A stunning design still needs to have a cohesive theme in order for it to be effective.
Make Your Website Stand Out
As you can see, there’s no single design trend that’s dominating this year. On one hand, you could go for a sleek and minimal design. But you could also go for something that’s flashy and has a lot of impact. It’s up to you which design trends you wish to follow for 2019.
It’s absolutely essential that you design your site with the mobile market in mind. If your website doesn’t work well on mobile devices, you should consider making a second site specifically for mobile users.
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