It’s hard to believe that we are nearing the end of another decade. Time flies, and so does web design. Gone are the days of designing for desktop; now mobile optimisation is in the driving seat. In the past mobile websites had to be toned down as devices weren’t capable. That’s all changed. As mobile devices improve web design and functionality improved as well. Let’s see what web design trends are popular in 2019.
1. More Video
By 2022, online videos will make up 82% of all internet traffic. With that in mind, marketers are taking advantage with 81% of business using video as a marketing technique. Video can provide benefits to your business in different ways:
- Entertainment: Video that simply brings people to your website or social media page to watch the videos you produce.
- Product Functionality: Show customers what your products look like, how they in use, and the benefits live in action.
- Display Your Services: What better way to prove yourself and services than show a customer how you work, what you can do, and what the finished job will look like?
- Customer Testimonials: Customer reviews do a fantastic job of proving what you offer is perfect. That can be stepped up a notch with video testimonials. This way people hear your review straight from the horse’s mouth
2. Purposeful Animations and Micro-Interactions
Animations and micro-interactions are becoming even more prominent. They help fulfil the user experience to offer more than the standard website design. Websites will often use video animation as opposed to imagery in their website heroes. It’s another way of making the site appealing, individual and provide an experience for the customer.
Drone Services have a quality website hero, which gives you an idea of how their work looks live in action the moment you arrive on their website.
3. Bright and Vibrant Designs
Punchy colours are back in business, whether it be bright backgrounds or too colourful menu overlays. For a while, soft monotone designs were the fashion, but as is with fashion, it moves and now people high contrast and vibrant colours are in. A good thing about colour is once you have a strategy it’s easy to deploy across all your designs and channels.
Lucky B do a great job of using a flat full-page pink website design to emphasise their offering and allow imagery to stand off the page.
4. Natural and Organic Shapes
Paired nicely with flat, colourful designs comes natural and organic shapes. They help to break up the page and offer an element of fresh energy to the website, helping to break up that old age grid design. Billy Shiel’s Boat Trips does a superb job of including a wave design into their website hero. It helps break up the layout, remove the solid straight line that would be there otherwise and give you a feel for riding the waves.
5. Use of Serifs
All designers will know the rule that Serifs are for print and Sans work best for copy. Another thing we all know is that rules are there to be broken.
While Sans is pretty much always going to be the go-to for copy, lots of companies are using Serif-style fonts in their banners, and callouts. Serifs are there to be eye-catching and decorative, perfect for adding emphasis to your web design.
Take Mad-Communications, a Newcastle based PR company, that offer copywriting services. They use a copywriter style font which plays on the services they provide and incorporate nicely into the design.
Final Thoughts
Trends come and go. What’s important is that you don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Just because a trend is in doesn’t mean you MUST adopt it. Choose design techniques that suit your brand, leave an impact and can work in years to come.
Need a hand in designing your website to promote your products or services best? Contact Sleeky to see how we can help.
