Web Design
This year marks the end of a decade full of drastic shifts. If you look back to the beginning of the decade you find flash-based websites with blocky shapes. Keypress navigation was considered cool and innovative. Some designers packed multiple columns on a page just because they could. Web design trends in 2019 show mostly drastic shifts, with a few returns to the way things were.
At the beginning of the decade, infographics were just barely beginning to be a thing. Experimentation with transparency and opacity was in the beginning stages. Designers advised other designers to use a high impact, high-resolution large image at the start of every page. And, they said, don’t be afraid to use serif fonts.
If your web design dates back to 2010, it’s past time for a redesign. Web design trends in 2019 look vastly different because technology has evolved and people have too. Let’s take a look at what’s fresh as we finish this decade and head into the next.
Web Design Trends in 2019 Mean Rich Color Schemes
We love minimalism. We believe everything on your website should be there for a purpose. Web design trends in 2019 pare away the non-essentials and highlight what matters most with super-saturated color.
For a minute designers leaned toward black and white, monochromatic looks. It was moody and dramatic. White was clean, black was stark, brooding and gritty. For some brands, it worked. Other brands were neither brooding nor gritty, so it lacked pizzaz.
In our article What Photography Style is Best for Your Website, we talked about how people associate black and white photography with newspaper articles. Sometimes black and white feels more grue or legitimate, especially with photography. It has its place. However, color is also incredibly powerful.
Click through the pages on our website and you’ll see our commitment to bold color schemes. With every site we design, an incredible amount of research and thought goes into how we can best use color to convey a brand’s values, tone and products or services.
Gradients Are Huge
Web design trends in 2019 include multi-tonal gradients to infuse pages with brand colors, highlight a page’s focal point, emphasize text or create a mood. They can be a subtle color change you barely notice or a dramatic shift from one side of the screen to the other. It’s a simple effect, but check out how the shading on this block draws the eye toward the button.
Bright Color Palettes
When the trend was toward black and white, every once in a while you’d see a pop of color. Now pages are saturated with bold intensity. Instead of gritty and brooding, the feel is lighthearted and energetic.
The best web design companies know how to use color for a purpose. With this website, for example, we wanted to communicate visitors could expect their homes to be fresh, bright and clean once they hired our client. The color scheme creates that feel, but it also directs them toward that cheerful green button. When they press the button, they’re one step closer to a fresh, clean home.
The key to making bright color work is to use it sparingly and with purpose. We use it in headers and calls to action, on buttons, in blocks to unify areas and to encourage scrolling or engagement.
Design for Mobile
If you’re researching web design trends in 2019, the reason could be you’re thinking of a website redesign. Mobile first design is the only strategy that will get you the traffic and results you’re looking for.
Think about the way you access online information now compared to your approach even five years ago. When you need information or have a choice to make, it’s almost instinctive to reach for your phone. The people looking for you online do the same.
In 2019, Statista says 63.4 percent of people online access websites using their cell phones. They’re not sitting at a desk in front of a widescreen. They’re holding your website in their hands in the grocery store, the car, the bathroom and at the airport. Make it easier by doing the following:
- Make content your focal point. Eliminate unnecessary elements. They’re looking for information, your web design should help them find it.
- Prioritize speed. People have even less patience when they’re in line at the checkout than they do on their laptop. Milliseconds count.
- Think about thumbs. Can users access buttons and hyperlinks without squinting, even if they have big thumbs?
Design should start with the people visiting your website, but they’re not the only reason to design for mobile. Google uses your site’s mobile version for indexing and ranking on search engine results. That means if you have content on your desktop site that doesn’t show up on mobile, it might not get indexed.
*See also 6 Reasons a Bad Website Will Cost You in 2019.
Even More Content
We invest time and money in creating articles like this because it’s what people are looking for. They want to know about things like web design trends in 2019 and how to get better results from their digital marketing investment. Your customers are looking for information on what you do and sell throughout the buying journey.
We’re voracious information consumers. We want easy-to-process information and lots of it. Your customers want video because it’s entertaining and simple to understand. They don’t have to work hard to digest it. They also want written content because they can skim parts they don’t care about and really drill down on what matters most to them.
Search engines love content too. Google keeps evolving, which is why keyword stuffing doesn’t work anymore. When bots and people view your content, they’re looking to find what it’s really about. Provide the very best, most in-depth information on your topic. Make it unique, concise and fresh.
Subtle Delight
Let’s go back to Flash-based websites for a minute, because they’re a great example of how much things have changed. Flash is an Adobe-owned technology web designers used for animations, auto-play sound effects and photo carousels that scrolled spastically on their own.
They’re no longer a good idea because they’re slow to load and search engines can’t read them. Also, people don’t want everything on your page to blink, rotate, strobe, bounce and blare at them. However, they do still want to engage with what they’re holding.
Web design trends in 2019 involve delighting the user with subtle motion effects, parallax scrolling or animation used judiciously to enhance understanding.
Micro-Interactions or Micro-Animations
People want to engage, then they want feedback. One way to provide that is through micro-interactions or micro-animations. They’re exactly what they sound like – tiny moments where there’s a reaction and a reaction. You experience them every day without even realizing it, and they impact your behavior.
Think about when you send a text message, then you see an indicator the other person is typing a reply. You have an action, then a reaction, now you’re waiting. It’s like in a conversation when one person takes a breath to say something and the other pauses attentively.
They’ve been around for a while, but web design trends in 2019 involve using them more intentionally. They keep users from getting bored because they provide quick visual feedback. Examples are buttons that raise and fill with color when pressed or a notification that goes away when users attend to it.
As with everything else, use micro-interactions only when there’s a purpose. Otherwise, they distract visitors from reaching their goals (and yours).
Endearing, Engaging Chatbots
For a while now you’ve seen the little bubble or avatar that pops up on one corner of the screen and offers to help. At first, users weren’t sure what to do with them. They wondered if there was an actual person there, and if they would respond. If there was only artificial intelligence, users didn’t trust they would get the answer they were looking for.
Now chatbots have developed the ability to understand complex sentences and unstructured data. Somewhere along the way users decided it was less important whether or not they were interacting with a human as long as they got the information they needed.
Web design trends in 2019 often use a chatbot to respond immediately and encourage interaction. The most successful chatbots mimic human interactions and use casual language. The right avatar can communicate you’re friendly, authoritative and trustworthy.
A chatbot turns your website into a 24/7 helpdesk. It’s like having a website greeter available around the clock. Plus, chatbots don’t get bent out of shape when users are rude or frustrating.
Beautiful Diversity
People don’t just want to know about your business. They want to know where they fit. Web design trends in 2019 recognize the internet reaches people on the other side of the planet. Imagery is more diverse and inclusive. Designers are increasingly thoughtful about providing accessibility for everyone.
At Spade Design, we stay at the top of our industry by being an expert in yours. We follow trends and design toward the future. When you work with us, your website redesign gives you a site that increases rankings, converts visitors and increases traffic, and that success just keeps getting better. If you’re curious how much of a difference working with us could make for your business, reach out online or call us at (888)412-3128.
