Website Design Trends 2019 – Stay Competitive!
The Website Design scene is evolving. No matter if you are a designer or a business owner, if you want to stay competitive, you need to follow the latest trends. Otherwise, your website will soon become outdated.
What’s more, having an out-of-date website can cost you a lot more than quality website design does. Especially if you consider that a staggering 46.1% of all website visitors treat website design as the top criteria when deciding whether the company is credible or not. So, what’s going to be hot in 2019?
1. Lightweight but Beautiful
Long gone are the time when your site could weight 20MB and load for ages. Depending on your industry, the number of your mobile visitors will most likely keep increasing. Considering that for every second your website visitors have to wait for your site to load your conversion rate decreases by 7% (on average), having a site that is fast will be a lot more important than what you put on it. As long as it’s eye-catching and memorable – speed alone won’t be enough, either.
The good news is, if you optimize it properly, you don’t have to get rid of too many elements. Although if you are in e-commerce or any other niche where customers need to make a quick decision, we would avoid videos and other fancy, distracting features. And what if you really want to add that video? At least add a neat play button so that it doesn’t slow page loading (critical on mobile).
2. Website Design Will Focus on Increasing Conversions
Chats (including robochats), conversion alerts, social proof… and any other elements that can help you increase your conversion rate. No matter what your business is, the competition is fierce. A fancy looking website won’t help your business if it won’t bring in sales and have a positive impact on user experience and the process of building a relationship.
Of course, you shouldn’t overdo these elements either – that’s why the best designers will work with CRO specialists to provide your business with a competitive edge.
3. More Elements Will Become Shoppable
On their quest to improve your sales and help you present your offer website designers will need to implement solutions that will make your website stand out – which equals making it even more interactive and memorable. One of such elements that will become mainstream in 2019 are “shoppable images”.
They allow you to present information about your products and add purchase buttons right on the product image – without obscuring it in any way or negatively affecting customer experience. And, even more importantly, if implemented correctly, they can skyrocket your click through rate and, as a result, your sales.
4. Copywriting Will Be as Important as Ever
Many website designers fail to focus on adjusting their design to the copy – and yet it’s the latter that’s created with the goal of persuading your audience to take action. To reduce their cost per acquisition, more and more businesses will switch from adjusting their web copy to website design to doing it the other way around – where website designers create landing pages based on the copywriter’s idea.
Naturally, that doesn’t mean you should focus just on copywriting – most people prefer to read something beautifully designed than something plain, so make sure that your copywriter and designer work together. It’s crucial that your site conveys what your offer is about right away – everyone has less time than ever to try to guess what you want to sell them.
5. Personalized, Separate Landing Pages and Dynamic Text
2019 will be a very busy year for website designers who create landing pages – mainly because more entrepreneurs are aware of the importance of creating separate landing pages that suit the marketing campaign and its goals.
Long gone are the days when you could just drive AdWords or Facebook traffic to the main page of your website and enjoy the profits. Customers can go to your competitor in a click of a button – that’s why your presented offer should be exactly what they are looking for at that particular moment.
This is also why many websites will implement dynamic text replacement that changes web copy depending on where your visitors come from, who they are, or how far they are in their buyer’s journey.
6. Animation – But Done the Smart Way!
So far in this article, we’ve been pretty against fancy design or any distracting elements on your website. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the technology in your favor. While ill-planned UX effects can hurt your website, funny, interesting animations can help your business a lot.
This is especially true if your animations align with your brand, present your offer in an eye-catching way and make your visitors smile as they see them. The goal is to get the attention without distracting from the main goal of your site.
In fact, we believe that animations will become so prevalent, that they will go far beyond the homepage, and will be used to evoke emotions and increase conversions in pop-ups, slide-ins, and many other marketing elements on your site.
7. Illustrations or High-Quality Images
The general increase in the quality of images used across professional websites has been clearly visible over the past few years already. 2019 with see the proceeding “death” of low-quality, out-of-place and ridiculous stock photos.
Instead, companies will try to leverage high-quality, realistic images and custom-designed illustrations to strengthen their brand and grab the attention of their visitors. And many of those that will be using faces or photos of real people, will use that of their customers or employees, instead of those of random online stock photo characters.
By using unique, never-seen-before graphics, you instantly make the brand stand out, what makes it a lot more memorable and trustworthy. Check out our branding section to see a few examples of how we used these principles in practice.
8. Breaking the Website Design Rules
While this trend hasn’t been discussed as widely as the other ones, at Brandwill, we believe the next big thing will be to go against the crowd and break the unspoken rules of website design. As Homam Alojail, our Agency Creative and Managing Director puts it:
“I believe that with the constantly rising numbers of businesses advertising online, website designers, and with them, their clients, will need to break the rules and look for new ways of differentiating the offer. Only then will they be able to catch the attention of impatient visitors who are constantly overloaded with information.”
These are not the only trends that will shape the website design space throughout the 2019 and beyond. But we believe that, considering the ever-growing competition in almost any industry possible, the two things every business owner should focus on is creating a strong, memorable brand and increasing conversion rates. The rules can be bent, as long as the result is beneficial to the business.
By helping your visitors remember your site and building trust as early as possible, you increase the chance that they’ll share your brand with their friends and colleagues. And by boosting your conversion rates, you can effectively lower your cost per acquisition of new customers, what’s essential if you want to increase your profits and keep growing your business in the highly competitive environment. Ready to take your website design to the next level? Find out what we can do for you and let’s get in touch!