Latest Website Design Trends
Latest Website Design Trends for 2020
The New Year is nearly here – just around the corner as they say. This is the best time for designers to be aware of new website design trends 2020.
You need to build websites that people will want and appreciate.
The rapid changes in web design trends and web development technologies have a direct impact on what is considered good value or low value in creating websites.
It is absolutely imperative for every designer to keep up with these changes.
Looking back in previous years the web design trends over the years are fairly cyclical and continuous such as the prevailing minimalist and responsive designs which means that their popularity will increase in 2020.
Added with the degree of mobile internet penetration designers will have to focus on interface aesthetics and mobile-friendly principles.
What other specific website design trends can we expect in 2020?
Let’s take a look!
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1. Responsive Design
Google rolled out mobile-first indexing in 2018 which is based on prioritising content and links from mobile website pages.
The initiative will be carried over to 2020 requiring web designers to give priority to the mobile friendly websites.
Responsive websites are not a new web design trend in 2020 but they are important enough to be still included.
As mobile usage seems to be going up it is crucial to ensure your website works as well on mobile devices as it does on bigger screen.
Visitors quite simply would not stick around if your website provides a disappointing mobile experience and it is bad for SEO on top of everything else.
While you could create a separate version of your website that works well on mobile devices from the one people see on desktop. For most businesses the better option is to make one website that is responsive.
On a responsive website, each page has all the same copy, images, and elements no matter what device you view it on but they are arranged differently based on the size of the screen.
An image that shows up next to the text on your desktop may show up below it on a smaller screen for instance.
Making your website responsive ensures that your mobile users get all the same information and value from your website whilst still having a user friendly experience.
If creating a responsive website sounds intimidating consider a website builder that offers responsive templates. Most of the work will already be done for you.
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THREE seconds. That is all users spend in deciding whether to leave or stay on a website. Your design has that much time to convince a user to stay.
Research shows that 59% of users want a website to load in three seconds or less.
Furthermore due to the Speed Update algorithm announced by Google in July 2018 – designers need to reduce page load time if they want to improve their search engine rankings.
Hence speed should be a second important website design trend in 2020 for designers’ consideration.
You may have noticed whilst surfing the web there a lot of business websites now have a little window pop up at the bottom right side of the screen when you land on the website giving you the chance to chat with a representative.
Adding a chat window like this to your website means any visitor with a question can have it answered immediately.
But for many websites having someone available to answer those questions in real time is too much of a challenge.
One possible solution is by utilising a chatbot. You can program a chatbot to answer the most common questions your customers have so that most visitors still get their answer right away.
For questions the chatbot does not know you can at least program it to provide details on how best to get in touch with a live representative so your visitor still knows what to do next.
Chatbots will not be useful for every type of website but if you have a business website and you frequently hear a few main questions from your visitors then this can save you time while still providing your visitors with a good experience.
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The rise of animation in the past two years has been very rapid. It is predicated animation is one of the most powerful trends in web design and will get highly popular among designers and users.
The use of animation technology makes traditional web design more vivid, exciting and easy to use.
A growing number of websites are working animations into the background or images of web pages.
Good animations will draw the eye and capture a visitor’s interest without distracting from the main information you want them to see on the page.
It is a web design trend that makes your website a little more engaging and adds some personality by adding some movement to your web design with some simple animations.
Since animation is considered relatively new in the UI field there is lots of room for creation and development in the application of web design.
It is therefore logical for animation to be used and developed more in the coming years.
Micro-interactions will take animation one step further in terms of user engagement. These are animations that respond to what the user does on the page.
If you notice a website changing when you mouse over a particular spot or an animation that is triggered by scrolling down those are micro-interactions.
Micro-interactions are events which have one main task a single purpose and they can be built into your website or within your plugins and apps.
Their purpose is to delight the users to create a moment that is engaging, welcoming and humanlike experience.
These create a positive user experience because they hand visitors power over what they see as they interact with the site.
Knowing your actions shape the design in front of you is a good feeling even if it is only in minor ways.
Micro- interactions are becoming more common around the web making them a good web design trend to have on your radar in 2020.
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One of the best ways to catch the customer’s attention is to create a website with a dynamic video background. Moving objects tend to be more attractive.
Compared to text or still images, short video are more convenient way to provide more information and enables the user to quickly understand the characteristics of the web page or product.
Video helps increase user time on page which is good for SEO and conversion rates.
Facebook’s prioritising video posts is solid proof of the medium’s effectiveness. Today we live in an era of diversified information and the application of dynamic elements such as video backgrounds will gradually increase moving forward.
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For a while buttons, windows, and containers on websites tended to have sharp corners.
Recently more web designers are starting to shift their website designs toward softer, rounder edges.
This is a web design trend you can see in buttons and chat box windows around the web.
Plenty of websites still maintain their sharp edges and some use a mix of both. This is not a trend that is outright replacing the former way of doing things.
But if you want to keep the shapes on your website a little softer then you will be in line with one of the web design trends of 2020.
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8. Minimalism - Simplicity Not Simplistic
One of the classic web design trends is minimalism which is synonymous with simplicity.
Minimalist web design will embrace the concept that less is more in principle. The fewer the interface design elements the better.
With modern life being so dynamic and fast users have no time to process long and complex information.
Good design enables users to digest information in as short a time as possible. This is best achieved by using fewer elements.
Whether it is the use of white design, contrast or clear typography, a well-designed website makes navigation easy and provides accurate information thus making for a good user experience.
Well-designed CTA (Call To Action) also makes for higher page conversions.
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Further Reading: Minimalism in Web Design
9. Original Illustrations
Stock photography is easy but it does not add any personality to your website.
That is why many website builders and owners are turning to original illustrations for the images on their website pages.
Custom illustrations do come at a cost. Artists must be paid but they can transform the style of your website and create an entirely unique experience.
Custom illustrations often feel personal and playful whilst still doing the work of communicating something more about your brand.
You get to choose the colours you want to include and also craft imagery that might be hard to stage in a photo.
If you can find a good artist for your website then there are ways to inject some extra personality into the website experience.
10. Include Social Proof
Most of these website design trends come with a hefty price tag that may be out of reach for small businesses or websites devoted to passions rather than profit. This one is much more affordable.
Social proof is a way to convince new visitors that you are awesome by showing evidence of your success with other visitors.
For a business it could be logos of companies you work with or testimonials from other customers. For a blog it could be publishing the number of email subscribers you have.
You should tell other users how awesome your website is in your copy. Your words are not going to mean as much to visitors as proof if other people like them think you are awesome.
Find a way to work social proof into the design of your website to better highlight your value to new visitors.
Social Proof may include any social reviews used to signify the acceptable of a product, item, company, person or asset recognised by a trusted agency or body to enable the people to make an informed decision using social media management.
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11. Unique Fonts
Choosing a unique font is an easy way to add some personality to your website and make it stand out a bit more.
Fonts are part of a website that many visitors do not really notice but you can use your font choice to add some additional style to your website and draw more attention to important words.
Make sure that any font you choose is easy for your visitors to read. Style should not clash with clarity here.
As long as you keep the text on your website legible for all your visitors you can use your font choice as a way to add some extra personality to your site.
Playing with fonts could be risky should you fail to choose
1. The perfect fonts
2. Size of the fonts
3. Vertical space between each line you type and appropriate spacing between each characters
4. The width of text block if you want optimum reading experience.
5. Deciding the hierarchy of the fonts:-
- Headings will always remain large
- Sub-heading, usually smaller
- Text in the body which is smaller than sub-heading.
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12. Asymmetry
A bold choice that is showing up on some websites now is asymmetric design.
Using asymmetry in your web design provides a unique experience for your visitors especially as it is still not a particularly common design choice at this stage.
Asymmetry evokes modernism, forcefulness and feelings of vitality and movement. It also creates active space and leads to unpredictable patterns and greater freedom of expression.
Using colour choices can also create and differentiate asymmetry design. Sharp contrasts in hue – i.e. white vs. black or opposites on the colour wheel can make you feel off balance and even chaotic.
A dark colour and light colour will provide high contrast for users
Asymmetrical colour patterns are also natural and have an odd sense of balance to them. Experiment with backgrounds that contrast with the images or text on top.
Immediate asymmetry is created by pairing a pale, beige background with neon purple type to create a rarely used pairing.
A bright and a dark colour will provide strong contrast - while two dull colours will blend
Another common technique is to create an item with lots of colour and pair it with an item containing little or no colour.
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13. Hidden Menus
This is a web design trend that is commonly used on apps and mobile websites because it is an easy way to provide a menu that takes up very little space.
The hamburger icon itself is very small and it opens up your main menu when you click on it.
As it becomes more familiar to internet users with the growth of mobile friendly websites, it has started to spill over into the design of desktop websites as well.
A hamburger menu removes the list of pages in your main menu from all the pages of your website and puts them behind the hamburger icon.
If you want a website that has a very clean design then this allows you to include fewer elements on each page while still providing the navigation items your visitors need.
It is a controversial web design trend and it may not be right for your audience depending on your business.
This is a trend you should be considering to use only it if you have a good reason to do so.
14. Bright and Gorgeous Gradient
In the past few years, more and more designers have adopted colour gradation in design. In 2019, the fluid gradient was quite popular.
Even if only one colour is used this can create a rich layered structure with the help of gradients and different images – resulting in an aesthetically pleasing experience.
The use of bright gradients and bold illustrations will be one of the mainstream colour combinations to continue into 2020.
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15. Accessible Design
If you do not have any disabilities yourself then you have probably approached web design in the past without thinking about how people with disabilities will experience your website.
That is unfortunately true and normal since many web designers have not had accessibility as top priority in the past.
But that is beginning to change. One of the web design trends of 2020 is working to make websites more accessible for everyone.
Design magazines and blogs have started to provide tips for more accessible web design.
Designing an accessible website requires widening your perspective and doing some extra work but when you commit to it, you are opening up your website to an audience that was once left out.
16. Tactile Design
Another common trend of the past was keeping web design flat. Many websites are now starting to buck the old trend by adding more shadowing and depth to the images on their pages.
Tactile design can bring the images on your website more to life for your visitors. In addition, it provides a way to add emphasis to your images.
The difference is often subtle but it changes the user experience of your website and adds a little more realism.
Tactile design can be powerful when working with clients on website design and discovery projects.
They create structured limitations where productive conversations can take place and decisions can be made faster.
Using this can help control scope and manage your client conversations or simply use it for developing designs and websites faster.
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17. Creative Bold Typographic
The layout of the web page is just as important as the content displayed on the interface. Statistics show that more than 95% of the information on a webpage is text.
In terms of influence on users typesetting is second only to web colour matching and images.
Adventurous, bold typography impresses the audience. Carefully selected fonts can convey the emotions you need and build a powerful visual hierarchy.
In fact, more big names are starting to use their own exclusive fonts to enhance their brand’s recognition.
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18. Bold Colours
A lot of the web design trends for pervious years are about standing out and this is no exception. Many websites are employing colour schemes that are bright and bold.
Bright colours provide distinctive experiences that make your website more memorable.
You can use your colour choices strategically to draw attention to parts of the website you most want people to see.
This is another website design trend that is not for everyone. Some brands will be better served with more subtle colours.
If you are looking for a way to make your website stand out and really get attention then making bold colour choices could do the trick.
19. Data Visualisation
Big data has been a buzzword for a few years now and businesses in all industries have seen the growing influence of data on the tools and latest trends that shape how we do business.
Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the influence of data makes its way to web design as well.
Many websites are now incorporating data visualisation into their design.
In some cases it becomes a part of the main website and in others they simply launched a separate site to highlight valuable data they have created.
In either case, data visualisation is becoming a part of the story the brand tells and the visual identity they have on the web.
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20. Floating Navigation
Most of the websites you visit have their navigation in the same place across the top of the website.
Some websites are experimenting with different options though. We have discussed about the hamburger menu option but another possibility is floating navigation.
Floating navigation stays visible even as you scroll down the page.
It provides a unique experience but also offers the practical benefit of keeping all the navigation options present and visible no matter where your visitor is on the page.
This is example of CMS Website Services using Floating Navigation
As always it is not a common web design trend. But for any website builder or owner looking for another way to stand out then this will make your website a little more distinctive.
Wrapping Up
Web design trends are always a favourite topic for designers worldwide. Following the above 2020 website design trend designers can capitalise on their strengths to create more bold, unique and unforgettable designs.
Creative web design is not a matter of chance. It can be analysed, understood and executed. Keep an eye on new web design trends and you will be sure to build excellent websites.
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Latest Website Design Trends