Does your website look like it belongs in 2019 or is it stuck in the past?
Regardless of what type of business you have, it’s essential to keep your website looking fresh and modern. And, if it’s been a while since you’ve redesigned your site, then 2019 might be the year to give it an update.
The trick, of course, is knowing which trends and design features will ensure that your site impresses visitors and helps you convert them into paying customers. Here are the most important web design trends for 2019 – and why we think they matter.
Flat Design
Flat design is a new, minimalist trend in web design. Its rise is due largely to the increasing weight that Google and other search engines have placed on loading speed and mobile friendliness.
Flat web design is characterized by:
- Clean, crisp colors
- Simple lines
- User-friendly design
The goal with flat web design is to streamline the user experience by keeping the design elements to a minimum. Think of it as more of a classic digital design that omits bells and whistles in favor of an impactful design that will grab a user’s attention.
Single Page Design
Single page design takes a multi-page website and folds all of the relevant information into a single page that loads new information when triggered by the user’s choices.
The biggest benefit of single page design is that it simplifies SEO and ensures that everything on the page works to move a user deeper into your sales funnel until they’re ready to make a purchase. There are many ways to achieve an effective single page design, including Javascript and Ajax.
You can create a single page that provides choices for the user to make. For example, a responsive page for a karate studio might ask a visitor to choose between classes for children and adults. From there, they could select their primary reasons for wanting to take karate.
Micro Animations
While including a lot of bells and whistles on your site can slow things down, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use a bit of animation to enhance the visitor’s experience.
Micro animations give you the benefits of animation without seriously slowing your site’s loading time.
A micro animation might be simple or complex. Here are a few examples:
- A Submit Form button that changes color when you click it
- A menu that sweeps in from the side when the user reaches a certain section of your content
- A short video that plays when triggered by an action you identify
In other words, a micro animation can enhance the user experience in a way that makes your page more informative and easier to use.
Chatbots
There’s no question that artificial intelligence is here to stay. Some business owners resist it because they’ve watched
Battlestar Galactica one too many times, but the truth is that adding
chatbots to your website can help you provide the best possible customer service to your site’s visitors.
A chatbot is an automated attendant that can greet visitors to your site. It can also do the following things:
- Answer basic customer service questions
- Track orders
- Redirect users to self-service options like password resets
- Suggest products to buy
A well-programmed
chatbot apps for iOS and Android can also triage incoming customer service requests and assign the most complex ones to human agents. That alone can save you time because it frees up your human agents to handle the issues that require their expertise.
Sticky Navigation
Sticky navigation is a web design element that makes it easy for visitors to your site to find important things, such as your menu and opt-in form.
As you might expect, the word “sticky” means that the element in question stays in the same spot on a user’s screen even when they scroll down your page. That makes sticky navigation an especially useful design element for single page sites or long-form sales pages.
It’s important not to overdo it with sticky navigation. To make the most of it, choose one to three things that you think are the most important for your conversion rate and make them sticky. You can add additional items if you need to.
Progress Spectrum
A progress spectrum is a kind of web design that lets users know where they are in a process. It’s most commonly used in
eCommerce checkouts, but it can also be used for new account creation or applications.
Perhaps the most significant benefit of adding a progress spectrum to your website is that it can encourage users to keep going with a process that they’ve started. In other words, it can help to:
- Reduce your bounce rate by minimizing user frustration; and
- Increase your conversi
If you have any multi-step processes on your site, adding progress spectrum design can improve your results.
Augmented Reality
If you have a business in a creative field, you may want to consider adding
augmented reality to your web design in 2019.
Augmented reality is related to virtual reality ( VR) and can be used to help visitors to your site visualize a completed project or experience.
You can use AR to add computer-generated elements to a real-world image like a photograph or video. It may not be a necessary design element for some businesses, but if you want to give your site’s visitors an immersive experience, then AR is worth considering.
Asymmetrical Layout
The traditional school of thought of web design is that your page’s elements should be laid out on a grid. However, with the emergence of flat design and other minimalistic trends, there’s a new sense of experimentation in the creation of asymmetrical designs.
An asymmetrical design can use any shape as a design element. We’ve seen sights with strong diagonal lines, triangles, circles, and even spirals.
The key if you decide to try an asymmetrical design is to keep the lines clean and make sure that you
choose the right colors and fonts to differentiate each element from what surrounds it. You don’t want your design to be confusing, just eye-catching and memorable.
Card Layout
A card layout is exactly what it sounds like. If you have a company that offers a variety of services or multiple categories of products, a card design can help make the options clear to your site’s visitors.
The best way to describe a card layout is that it’s similar to a storyboard for your website. Each card represents a different product or service. When a user clicks on the card for a particular option, they’ll be redirected to more in-depth content.
Like the asymmetrical layout mentioned above, a card layout can be quite effective for a single-page website.
Responsive Design
Responsive design isn’t new, but its importance is on the rise as Google continues to penalize sites that don’t provide an optimal experience for mobile users. Since more searches happen on mobile devices than on computers, their attitude makes sense.
A responsive design is one that will look good regardless of the device used to access it. The layout and menus adapt so that the user has a seamless experience. A good responsive design can also track a user across multiple devices.
The key to achieving a good responsive design is to test it. You can use a tool like
LambdaTest, which allows you to see your site on over 40 devices with a single test.
Conclusion
The new year is almost here. As you look ahead and set goals for 2019, it’s a great time to incorporate some of the trends we’ve covered here to give your website a makeover – and provide your site’s visitors with the best possible experience.
Author Bio
Sameer Panjwani is the Founder & CEO of
Mondovo.com, an online marketing toolset that helps you track your rankings, monitor your site stats, and research your competitors. A man of many talents, Sameer is currently on a mission to help 1 million businesses grow organically through his products and services.
