10 Trends Web Designers Should Be on the Lookout for in 2019
Website design does not need to be complicated to be of high quality. Nowadays, many webmasters and web designers tend to put enormous pressure on themselves to over-deliver in this regard, thus making the creative process of designing a website into a chore. Though, if you keep a couple of simple concepts in mind, you’ll find that web page design can be a fun and fulfilling process.
With this in mind, we’ll let you in on the top 10 trends web designers should follow in 2019 and beyond, so let’s get started! Bear in mind there’s no need to incorporate everything from the list below to produce something deserving of people’s attention (rather think of these as a list of ideas and suggestions). After all, if you try to include and emphasise everything, nothing will stand out in the final result.
1. Geometric shapes
Ask any web site design company for advice, and in 9 cases out of 10, they’ll tell you that geometric shapes are the kind of elements that tend to get noticed. Whether it’s putting them in the background or cropping the images and putting them in geometric frames, it’s a nice web design trick which doesn’t require much technical know-how to implement that you can try. Your visitors perceive them as interesting and visually pleasing, so it makes sense to include them in the overall design if they fit in.
In essence, from a website designer’s perspective, there are three approaches you can take. The first option is the symmetrical approach. This is the classic one and the most balanced of them all. To make it work, just make sure that the left side of the composition matches the one on the right.
Next, you get the asymmetrical approach — the exact opposite of the previous one we’ve mentioned. Even though the two halves of the page won’t look exactly alike by taking this route, their ‘visual weight’ will stay the same. This is why this approach works so well. To put it into practice, playing around with textures, shapes, and colours is all it takes.
The last approach is the radial balance. Try to imagine a colour wheel; by equally positioning the elements around a focal point, a web designer can achieve a feel that the different elements are all pointing towards something.
2. Video headers
Including a video on your website will make it much more interesting and engaging. As a matter of fact, people have embraced the trend so much that it’s now considered to be industry standard, and something your web designer should be able to provide.
The only drawback is that adding too many video elements to your website may slow it down and negatively impact the user experience, which is a legitimate concern. Still, that’s nothing that a little bit of tweaking and playing around with the file sizes can’t fix.
Do it wrong, and your website will be clunky and take too long to load. Do it right, however, and you’ll not only provide a user experience to write home about, but also do wonders for your on-site SEO.
The world has gone crazy over dynamic video backgrounds you can overlay with text, images, options, and other elements of website design. Are you a restaurant owner? Get your imagination running and put images of the delicious meals that you serve in your website’s headers or subheaders.
It’s good practice for video files not to exceed 6 MB in size and 10 seconds in length. In case it’s larger than that, consider sacrificing some of the quality in favour of better loading times. Since the file is going to loop on repeat, it will create an impression of ongoing action that’s fresh and dynamic.
3. Minimalism
Remember how we mentioned that the best website design is not necessarily complex? In 2019, minimalism is in full swing once again. Not including too much more than the bare essentials will make your website simple to navigate and functional. At the end of the day, if your visitors aren’t able to find what they’re looking for in a matter of seconds, not even the best website design in the world is going to save you – they’ll navigate away to your competitors.
As we all know, user experience is at the forefront of your brand identity. If you deliver what you’ve promised and the visitors can find it without breaking a sweat, they will stick around long enough to improve your bounce rate and send a positive message to the search engine algorithms. It’s no secret that this specific metric is one of the most important ranking signals, and you’ll get rewarded with better search engine rankings if this aspect of your website gets your web designer’s attention.
4. Mobile-first design
Speaking of search engine algorithms… Not too long ago, Google announced that they will be rewarding the kind of websites that are designed to fit the dimensions of your average smartphone and the ones with short loading times. In fact, getting your web designers to work on this is even more important than the way your website displays on desktop computers, and Google said so too. So in 2019, making sure to take care of this web design aspect of your website will pay off in spades.
The first step towards achieving this is getting rid of unnecessary content. Then, you should see to it that the websites are displaying correctly via the platform you’re using. If you’re a WordPress user, there are certain plug-ins designed to generate mobile-friendly versions of your landing pages without you having to do any extra work.
Finally, any web design company that’s worth its salt will advise you to remove other unnecessary elements. Simply ask yourself this: does the element in question drive the user to make the desired action (purchasing something, subscribing to your email list, and so forth)? If you’ve answered “no”, it might be a good idea to part ways with it.
5. Micro-animations
No web design expert will tell you to transform your website into something that only Hollywood animation specialists could put together. Think in micro terms. Parallax scrolling is a good example of what cleverly chosen micro-animations can do for your website. By playing around with depth and motion perception of your visitors, you can improve your web site design by a great deal.
To demystify this web developer technical term, parallax scrolling is nothing more than programming certain events that unfold when the reader does a specific action or mouses over a specific section of your website. Unlike videos, these web design tricks won’t put additional weight on the loading times of your website. However, don’t think you need to do a lot to spice things up by quite a lot. Sometimes, triggering an animation or changing the colour when a user mouses over a button is all it takes to get the job done and improve your web site design.
6. Typography
It is no time to be limiting yourself to the confines of cookie-cutter fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, and the like. Invest a couple of moments into tweaking this integral part of your website design, and you’ll do a lot to stand out in an unobtrusive way. When your objective is to emphasise something, playing around with contrast goes a long way. As for picking the right font, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution as it depends on the kind of message your brand wants to get across.
From the point of view of a web designer, even something as subtle as bolding certain words in the content section of your website contributes to its readability, attractiveness, and design. After all, the content you’ve put out there has some artistic value in it as well. Some web designers will tell you to use more fonts than one, and that’s fine – as long as you don’t go overboard and try to dress it in 10 different fonts at the same time. However, more than three is pushing it. If you keep the number reasonable, using a different font to make a certain section of your content stand out is a good approach to web design.
7. Rounded corners
The days of seeing websites with rigid corners and elements are long gone. Today, buttons, menus, and even image frames have rounded corners. The change might seem minuscule (and it doesn’t take much effort to implement), but it’s a sure-fire way to get your website design moving in the right direction. In technical terms, there are many ways to do it; either by using HTML or telling your website designers to make things more curvy.
By sticking to the stiff, sharp, and rigid shapes of the past, your visitors may perceive your website to be out of date and your brand out of touch with modern trends. This is certainly not something you can afford to do if you intend to improve your bottom line with a professional website.
8. The classic grid becomes a thing of the past
To re-establish the point we’ve already made above, asymmetry is becoming a much more common strategy used by web designers. Since the old and outdated websites are structured symmetrically and placed in a grid, they all look the same. As we all know, to grab the visitor’s attention, we need to aim towards a breath of fresh air, and not to reheat the old soup we’ve all grown tired of at this point – the same is also true of your custom logo design.
The most clever of website designers implement this by being subtle about it. A small amount of off-balance appearance is all you need to attract eyeballs without appearing messy. Something as subtle as gently overlapping another object may be enough to do the trick. You see, the classic grid lines should be used as a soft guide to your overall web design and not be visible in the polished version.
9. Split-screen
In the past, the websites used to have a central section where one could find the main content. Nowadays, split-screen websites are starting to multiply in numbers, and it’s for a good reason – the users love it. It’s almost like a two-for-one deal. Within the same kind of screen real estate, you can quickly skim over multiple things at once. From the perspective of web design, this acts in a calming manner, because it still maintains a healthy level of focus, but doesn’t keep it in your face all the time. Fashion designers or culinary artists can significantly benefit from applying this web design strategy, just to name a couple of examples.
By splitting the content into two halves, you will let your landing page breathe in a way and avoid cluttering up your web page design. You can have the two sections merge at one point to emphasise something or make the transition more apparent. Typically, you may want to think about doing this when it’s time to push your brand to the front or urge the visitor to go ahead with the purchase.
10. The right splash of colours
The art of web design is the art of finding balance. If, for instance, everything stands out, nothing stands out as a result. Though, by adding some colour to emphasise an element or making a sentence bold, if used sparingly, you create a blazing effect that draws the right kind of attention. Of course, adhering to the psychology of colours is always important, so only do what makes sense in your overall web page design. Always stick to the message you want your brand to convey – there’s a reason why many fast food joints use red (a colour that makes you hungry and triggers a sense of urgency) and that numerous corporate websites heavily rely on using the shades of navy blue (a colour that implies authority).
You can play around with colours to emphasise the elements of your website design you want to draw more attention. For example, if all your menu buttons are green, don’t make the call-to-action button green as well. Use something that will create a stark contrast (orange or red, for example).
So, play around with complementary colours if you want to make something fall to the background, and use contrasting colours if you want something to stand out. In the end, the difference between the best website designs and mediocre ones might be the difference between making a killing online and barely managing to stay afloat.
For more information and advice on the best website design for your business, contact our web design Sydney team.