With around 2 billion websites out there, there are bound to be plenty of sites with stunning designs.
But there are also millions of sites which just make you want to close the tab.
With any site, your goal is to keep them on your site for as long as possible. With the astronomical number of sites out there, the competition for your reader’s attention is tough.
But by staying up to date with the latest design trends will allow you to stay on course with the taste of the masses — while also giving you a way to stray away from the trend to stand out.
So here are some of the hottest web design trends in 2019:
Animations
You’ve probably seen these popping up on more and more sites.
The main attraction is that you’re able to create an interactive experience for your readers. By interacting with your site, they become more familiar with your brand and begin to build a connection.
According to the team at Shen Ko Vitality, adding responsive website elements has helped to increase time on page, noting “we added responsive elements to our home page menu. Not only did this make our site more user friendly but it captured attention and increased time spent on page, both of which are great for SEO and for business.”
Black-and-White Palettes
In the noisy world of online presence, it can be difficult to stand out from the competitors.
Enter black and white.
Colour psychology is an integral part of advertising. With different colours, it is possible to convey a subliminal message to the customer. Black and white stands out in the crowd due to the powerful messages it sends. White being crisp and clean. Black being bold and assertive. Add in a strategically placed pop of brand colour and you’ve got yourself a web design that stands out from your competitors.
The team of health specialists at M.T Medical at stuck to this theme of black and white for their site banner for this very reason, saying “the black and white colour scheme has worked across every medium. The clear contrast shows our professionalism and aesthetic direction. When we work with cosmetics it’s important we create this image, and it all starts with what people see on our site.”.
Utilising Chatbots
As businesses are looking for ways to respond to customer requests faster and with more efficiency. The chatbot has been a major trend.
As artificial intelligence becomes more effective and streamlined, it is possible for businesses to create a positive user experience that leads to higher satisfaction rates.
Along with the ability to interact with the customer as soon as they land on a page, data can be collected that allows for future improvements in quality and satisfaction.
The Sydney SEO team at Search It Local, have revealed how chatbots have increased their number of enquiries, saying that “after adding a Facebook messenger bot to our homepage, visitors are encouraged to send a message whenever they want. When they have to manually find a contact form and fill it out, it creates more friction and decreases the number of leads captured”.
Dimensionality
The nature of technology can often leave a feeling of impersonality and industrialism.
Design elements that bring websites out of the cold and into the hearts of their customers are making a big entrance in 2019.
This means warmer designs, more human elements, and an overall more welcoming environment
Whether it be the fun animations that provide action on a page, subtle and strategically-placed shadows to add a 3rd-dimension to a page, or taking the harsher sharp corners off of buttons and replacing them with rounded edges, the push to be more human is strong.
According to the massage therapists at Kneadwork Massage, adding some fun animations to clickable elements have increased clickthrough rate, noting that “just adding an animation when people hovered their mouse over our blog posts increased our readership. It draws attention and reminds visitors that they can click on it to find out more.”
Emotions are Key
Every design element exists for a specific purpose. If this isn’t the case, the design won’t perform the function that it needs to.
Think about the emotions you want to evoke and make sure your design aligns with it. The health experts at Flex Osteopathy Adelaide evoke emotions of calmness in their design, saying that “making our readers feel good while interacting with our website makes it more likely for them to reach out to us. This is why we use images of nature, relaxation, and people”.
Web design in 2019 has placed a greater importance on the emotional context of brand messaging and how it is portrayed in the digital sphere than it has in previous years. Using emotional messaging and design gives a chance to send a targeted message.
Minimalism
Designing with minimalism in mind has some added benefits that perhaps aren’t the first to jump to mind.
Jennie C. Jones said it so elegantly with her statement, “There is a poetic nature to minimalism that is about striking a balance between full and empty”. Minimalism that strikes that perfect balance can be hard to achieve yet looks completely effortless. With this design style come the benefits of faster loading times, which can lead to smaller bounce rates on page views.
Along with faster loading times, minimal design allows the designer to guide the customer through the site with expertly placed call-to-action buttons. There is no confusion, allowing for a pleasant user experience and therefore, a happy customer.
Nature’s Here
In the past couple of years, the grid was the king in the web design world. The symmetrical layout of squares, rectangles, and triangles allowed for streamlined design. However, the tides have turned and people visiting web pages are looking for a more organic and asymmetrical design.
With the use of more fluid illustrations and asymmetrical layouts, designers can bridge the gap between the industrialism of technology and warmth of our physical world.
Serifs are Back
It’s been customary to use sans-serif fonts when designing, for readability purposes. In 2019 we are seeing a rise in the placement of serif fonts as design accents, to draw the reader’s eye and add contrast.
Video
With the popularity of video content on the rise, web design is embracing this medium and finding ways to incorporate more action in a still web page. By using video you can add extra elements to your page that readers can consume without too much effort. They can just click it and watch, instead of putting in the effort to read a wall of text.
Videos can also be used to build a relationship between you and your potential customers, as it’s a very organic method of communication.
Final thoughts
These are some of the biggest design trends to hit 2019!
As businesses are looking to stand out from the ‘website next door’ and technology is rapidly improving, giving web designers more and more options, it is an amazing time to be a designer.
Gone are the days of the chunky webpage that takes forever to load!
Have we missed any design trends? Comment below!
