Image credit: Pixnio
Best Web Design Trends Of 2019
This year is soon coming to an end, which means it’s a great time for two things in particular: looking ahead to what’s around the corner and reviewing all the progress made during the previous 12 months. Each is crucial in the web design world where advancements are rapid and competition is fierce, but too much focus gets placed on the former — the less you know about what’s happened, the harder it is to predict what will happen.
In this piece, then, we’re going to recap the most significant best web design trends that have proven influential in 2019. The better we understand them, the more equipped we’ll be to not only keep up with the curve but also get ahead of it. Let’s get started:
Minimal animation
Whether it’s in marketing emails or on product pages, you’ve surely noticed plenty of companies making use of animation this year, and I’m not just talking about generic animated GIFs. Done tastefully, animation (particularly in the background) is incredibly powerful for livening up a website: it makes it more engaging and eye-catching, making visitors want to keep scrolling to see what else will change.
PWAs (progressive web apps)
Having a mobile app is advantageous for various reasons, but the conventional development process is long and expensive. This is why progressive web apps (essentially mobile-optimised websites that are capable of working like apps) are so valuable. Back when the design world was looking ahead to 2019, there was reason to think that PWAs would further deliver on their potential — since companies like Starbucks and Pinterest have gone down the PWA route this year, it’s fair to say consider that expectation-borne out.
Brand storytelling
Driven by consumer expectations, this is a time of corporate ethics and humanisation, with businesses eagerly looking for ways to appear less robotic and detached. What’s more, when you’re trying to choose between two brands, it’s the one with the better story that you’ll pick. Due to this, brand storytelling — and structuring a website around it — has become hugely influential this year. Shoppers want to like the companies they support.
Material design
Innovated through Google in 2014, material design has steadily filtered through the rest of the business world in the years since, with each year seeing a significant step forward. The core of the design approach is minimalism: stripping away unnecessary elements and using everything present (including graphics, animations, and transitions) to make the core functionality of a user interface as straightforward and intuitive as possible. This year, companies have stepped up with cutting through the clutter to deliver straightforward designs.
Conversational commerce
How often do you see live chat prompts on websites at this point? It’s become extremely common, and there are two main reasons for this: firstly, businesses have learned how valuable it is for building customer loyalty, and secondly, the advent of sophisticated chatbots has made it possible to field basic customer queries on a 24/7 basis with no human intervention. Conversational commerce sells, and it’s a trend that’s only going to continue.
Each of these web design trends has proven impactful throughout 2019 and is going to get even bigger in 2020. Are they the best we’ve seen this year? Well, that depends on what you consider important in web design — but I think there’s a strong case for it.
Author: Kayleigh Alexandra/ Micro Start-ups