With only 8 weeks left of 2018, it’s time to start thinking abut next year and what this means for website design – what changes have come in this year that will be here to stay? What’s going to be making a bow and fading from new website designs? There’s plenty going on which is great, and of course the digital world wouldn’t be so fascinating if it wasn’t always constantly evolving.
So what are the top website trends for 2019 that you should think about for your website?
- Something we already love – sticky menus! Yes, you heard that right! You’ll notice on our own website, when you scroll, the menu moves to the top of your browser, so that no matter how much you scroll, you have easy access to our menu and pages. This is a top trend for website design, and something we do on all websites, unless a customers actually asks us not to. It also means that changes to the top of website designs may be incoming – because you’ll want key information in that sticky area.
- Really making a move towards practical websites with quality content. This is something we mention year on year, but we are now seeing this clearly in new website designs – the designs need to be practical for the users, super easy to navigate and content geared towards them. Get rid of useless images and content that has no real meaning or value. Web users want to find information straight away, and design is now helping with this. This even goes so far as getting your website loading really quickly now, as attention spans are even shorter!
- Video backgrounds on websites. This has been slowly feeding in for 2017 and 2018, but more and more websites are now promoting videos on their landing pages – it’s a great way to advertise products or services, or simply add a bit of a wow factor. Expect to see this much more in 2019.
- Leading on nicely from point 2 – minimalism and bold fonts (typography). We love these types of designs, clear and clean, with striking fonts – not only making content easier to get to, but also the websites look super fresh and modern.
- We’ll also see a move towards serif fonts again too – there are so many font options out there these days that serifs aren’t really looking old fashioned anymore. Infact, they can add some fun to your website.
- Augmented reality – we’ve already seen a good increase in this over 2018, but we expect more of a push towards this in 2019.
- A couple of years ago, no one asked us about integrating chat bots onto their website, now it’s becoming even more common, especially with larger organisations and companies. They have realised that visitors to your website will often engage better if there is a prompt to chat, it improves the relationship from the off and gives your business more personality online. We’re currently working with one organisation to introduce a custom made chat bot onto their website, as well as other companies and businesses who want to offer live chat facilities. If you’ve not thought about this, we think you need to start!
- Micro interactions – this is an event with a purpose. You click or do something on a website, and it reacts to you – think, refreshing Twitter with the volume on. Ever noticed a beep? That’s a micro-interaction. This could be something like hovering over a picture in a shop and a little heart pops up for example.
- Another new move we’re absolutely loving is grid layouts. You’ll be very used to these if you use Pinterest or Instagram, but it seems the idea of grid images and sections is moving over to website design, which we think is great! Gone are the days of scrolling through rows of information and a tonne of pictures.
The future
It’s always a good idea to look to the future, and in some cases what’s happening in digital might take a while to work for small businesses, but interesting none the less! Voice User Interface (VUI) – we are already adopting voice user interface throughout our lives (think, asking your car to call someone, Alexa or Google home for example), so it makes sense that this will soon be adopted by website developers too.