In today’s digital landscape, an outdated website can cost you visitors and conversions. To stay competitive, your web design must align with current trends that prioritize user experience, accessibility, and engagement. Here are the key web design trends you should implement to enhance your site’s performance and appeal.
If you want to learn more about modern websites or if you want to find out what web design trends you should consider when creating your website’s design, then take a look below. Gone are the days of constant annoying pop-ups and harsh color palettes, but the nostalgia for some ideas is coming back to.
It’s safe to say that page speed is one of the easiest ways out there to enhance your website. Page speed isn’t just a web design trend, it’s a web design necessity. Do not ignore this common approach when creating a new web design or launching an update for your site. Having a fast page load speed is one of the best ways to ensure that your website visitors don’t end up abandoning your site in favor of your competition.
In fact, according to Imperva Incapsula, 7% of consumers said the page had to load immediately, or they would leave and not return. 20% say less than 3 seconds of load time is acceptable. 35% said they’d wait no more than 5 seconds. Want to boost your page load speed? Condense your CSS grid layout, compress images and condense HTML where possible. A lazy load is not going to increase conversion rates or keep the user’s attention. So, ensuring the pages are loading thoroughly and quickly guarantees a better user experience.
With more people conducting searches using smartphones and tablets, speedy interaction is critical to engaging your audience and holding their attention longer. Moreover, it helps your website satisfy the algorithms used by Google and other search engines to achieve a consistently high ranking in organic search results.
Website accessibility is now more critical than ever. Not only is it good for your company’s image, but you have to make sure that your site and web pages are accessible if you want to meet the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Color and light contrast, gradients and specific colors, readability, mouse-only navigation, video captions, and text alternatives are all elements for consideration when making your website ADA compliant. If you have a WordPress site, then you can easily adopt plugins to help with this. A web designer will usually take care of things like this for you if you tell them how important having an accessible web design is to your company and audience. This is one of the top design trends for websites right now.
But these aren’t the only ways to ensure your website is on-trend. Nearly everyone has a mobile device. And it is no surprise that smartphones dominate the market. Information pulled from Google Analytics’ Benchmarking feature, which provides aggregated industry data from companies that share their data, shows that in 2020, based on 30.2 Trillion Visits, mobile had a 39% higher volume than desktop. Now, granted, the bounce rate was higher (desktop 47.69% compared to mobile 52.11%, and the average time spent on the site was lower (desktop 351.54 seconds vs. 160.13 seconds).
It is nice to have the desktop version of your website, but remember that smartphones are in everyone’s hands almost all the time. Make sure your site is mobile friendly, plus there is a probability that you could reach new potential customers with people in a gathering sharing your site with others within the group.
A strong trend in web design is simplicity. In design theory, form follows function. But in the world of website design, the user experience defines the website design and its function. Users of your website, and indeed all websites, have made it clear they want to find the important information they’re looking for right way. If your web design is not simple or it’s confusing, your bounce rate will be high, which can affect your position with search engines. Remember, you don’t have to have the most glamorous website. As long as the style you have chosen presents the information front and center, then you have achieved what the customer came for. Some website styles use white space, with clear calls-to-action and navigation.
Want to make your web design simpler? Consider minimizing your color scheme, limiting the options on your home page, having clear call-to-action buttons, and keeping your navigation clean and fluid. These are some key ways to ensure that you follow the current design trends that will help you stand out to new website visitors. If you want more information, check out our Color Theory blog for more ideas.
Having custom illustrations is one of the latest web design trends out there right now. Web design trends might be changing all the time, but this one is going to stick around. A lot of web designers will stress how important it is for you to have quality illustrations on your home page. The great thing about incorporating custom illustrations into your website is that it gives your web design a modern appearance and it also makes your pages appear unique. In the same boat as the custom illustrations are small animations.
We have seen this web design trend more and more in recent years. When you move your mouse around the page, there could be little interactive bubbles or organic shapes trailing behind the mouse. Or maybe there is some interaction between a background graphic that gets bigger or maybe turns. This can engage the user and create visual interest and is an easy way to take something and manipulate it to make it your own. Even if users are browsing in dark mode, you can still make sure that your page looks great, by simply adopting trends in graphic and micro interaction such as this into your web design.
Stock photo content is now a thing of the past. Latest web design trends have shown time and time again that GIFs, graphics, and illustrated characters are the way forward. The great thing about GIFs is how they capture a user’s attention to keep them on your page for longer, and in the world of marketing, this is a good thing. Micro-interactions are one of the latest web design trends for another good reason too. It offers a good UX and it’s a fantastic way for you to make your site stand out. Make sure you look into smart content loading as well as implementing cursor-triggered animations if you want to increase your user engagement and create a unique experience.
There are also ways to have animated cursors. Say you own a greenhouse, your cursor could be a plant, and when you hover over a plant it turns into a watering can. This interaction can help to keep users’ attention as well, which in turn adds to time on a site.
Another of the latest web design trends is micro animation, which is very similar to GIFs. It would be best if you tried to use micro animations on your home page, CTAs, and more. As has been mentioned, one of the great things about animations is that they work well even if someone is in dark mode. Also, animation loops help to attract attention and add interest and consistency to your website. It is also one of the top web design trends because people love visual content.
While animation is a great way to keep visitors engaged, it can also have the exact opposite effect if it is overdone. Incorporating too many animations can lead to your site being bogged down and running much too slowly. Poor load time can negatively impact the user’s experience and your search rankings. This runs the risk of creating the same experience for the user we referenced earlier about load times. It is the last thing you need if you are incorporating the latest web design trends to increase sales and get ahead of your competition. When using custom graphics, try and make sure that your creative team utilizes personalized content and negative space.
Remember a few years ago when 3D was making a comeback? It didn’t take off like everyone thought it would. However, it’s coming back again – sort of – with the use of parallax scrolling. When your customer scrolls down, the foreground scrolls at normal speed, whereas the photos, graphics, images or general content in the background slows down to scroll at a different speed. This technique adds depth, and the best part is that you get that 3D effect without needing the 3D glasses. Since you would implement this design aspect, you can assume that your customers will stay longer on your site.
People like fresh, attractive new things that are inventive. The best part is that you can use multiple layouts with this design. If you want a clean contemporary look with few to no textures, it can be done with this. Do a very light color against the white background that will slowly scroll down.
What everyone wants when they have a business is to be successful. Business owners want to make sure that they have enough customers buying items and services or getting the information they came to their website for. More and more websites are being made daily with new technology and features that your site may not have. To make certain you’re incorporating the latest web design trends and most appropriate web design features that will make you happy, and also ensure you get increased traffic and customer engagement, contact the web design experts at The Social Firm.
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