In the digital age, we are now, and the evolving web technology, not to mention all the revolutionary technologies, such as IoT, AI, and many more for instance has altered how people work, play, and live. Furthermore, as the world becomes global due to the internet, businesses are facing tough competition. For a brand to stay competitive, having an online presence is a must

Having an online presence, however, is not enough. The website should not only be able to provide the products and services to meet the changing demands but should also be attractive and interactive enough to draw customer attention. Thus, web design has become a crucial part of any eCommerce web design endeavor. 

Web design is important since it impacts how the audience perceives a brand. The impression a brand makes on the audience could get them to stay or leave the business website and turn towards the competition. A good design helps keep lead on the brand page

The Web Design World

The web design world does not stand still, and web design and development continues to be very much in demand. In the effort to deliver the best user experiences and capitalizing on the current tech advances, web designers constantly are experimenting with new ways of building websites. And, if a specific approach proves to be effective, it makes sense that it will spread like wildfire and become a design trend. 

Web design encompasses a lot of disciplines and skills in producing and maintaining websites. The various design areas include graphic design, authoring, interface design, which include standardized proprietary and code software, search engine optimization, and user experience design. In eCommerce website development, seasoned designers already would have seen a lot of industry trends come and go over the years. 

The trends however that succeed become very ingrained that it’s easy to forget that they were the hot new thing once upon a time. Design trends are the best place to turn to have an idea of what’s on the horizon in the web design development world. 

Big Trends in Website Design You need to Know

      

1.Personal Websites

People could build unique places to exercise more creativity in the designs, as well as experiment with new techniques and share thoughts. These personal sites are created by individuals to contain a more personal content nature, instead of pertaining to an organization or company. 

These personal sites are used primarily for entertainment or informative purposes. However, they could also be used for marketing one’s personal career and social networking with others who share the same interests, or a space to express personal opinions, feelings, and so forth. 

  1. Custom Visuals

This year is anticipated to see disciplines towards new directions. Now, designers and users have started to see the benefits of having a responsive design, along with more intricate and complex animation, illustration, as well as design features that are one-of-a-kind. The trend now is custom visuals used to add value to sites across devices. 

Custom visuals allow creating stunning visuals. These visuals could be built within the brand, and deliver them to end customers. In a layman’s term, they are BI and Data Visualization tools that convert data from various sources to interactive dashboards. 

  1. Human-centered design

Today, technology makes complex designs simple. A web design that’s human centered is a wider form of design than just offering a great UX. The design initially asks why a site exists, what is the purpose and the goal. The object is to design in a way that the purposes are met and human use is satisfied. 

This design trend is a bit different than the user-centric design where the key objective is designing a functional website. Human-centric design becomes functional, still, it’s accomplished by taking care of all needs to fulfill the purpose of the website to serve the user base. 

  1. Experiences that are AI-enhanced

Websites using Artificial Intelligence to offer experiences based on the use of patterns of customers. Moreover, the trend includes modeling the journeys that users would want to venture and make better suggestions to make the experience more personalized. 

They also offer new ways to get to know a product or a service. 3D models could be navigated to check out details, as well as follow the animated journeys. AI could be quickly used to access insights as well as automate processes and campaigns. Also, they could directly embed into new customer touchpoints. 

  1. Micro-animations design

Micro-animations help direct users and boost the experience, creating a journey that’s more fluid. The animations are short, and also designed to direct users through their tasks when they interact with digital products. They seamlessly integrate into the UX of a product and boost pathways therein. 

The growing use of smooth, natural, and more advanced animations visually enhances a website, adding an element of playfulness without putting the load times at risk. Animations are small but robust. When the curtain is pulled back, it would reveal the why, the how, and when designers implement animations, it will be difficult picturing a world without them. 

  1. Functional Simplicity

The trend now is one-color, simple, and bold typography websites. Functional simplicity means perfectly designing the basics. The main idea behind this trend is to firmly put the product quality in the foreground. Expert processing and high-quality materials ensure that they perfectly function and build to last. 

The color palette also fits the bill. Almost exclusively, it’s monochrome, with neutral greys, beiges, and whites of various shades, and a simple dark blue and black even. Items could be high-gloss or matt, or transparent, but always they’re refined in look. Purism and functionalism make for a unisex, timeless look every single day. 

  1. Ethical design trend

One of the most exciting aspects of the work is the creation of responsible and ethical design. Simply put, with the help of some search engines, ethics are moral principles that will affect a person’s behavior and how he or she conducts himself or herself. 

The moral-compass depends usually on life experiences, which is not different for design service providers. Moreover, ethical design means working hard on designing wonderful products, together with their beliefs. Design isn’t a naturally ethical activity, thus designers should understand ethics and learn to integrate it into the design work. 

Good Web Design Principles

In eCommerce website development, an effective design must fulfill the function intended through conveying its specific message while engaging the visitor simultaneously. Factors including colors, consistency, imagery, typography, functionality, and simplicity, all contribute to good web design. 

Web design has plenty of key factors that contribute to how it is perceived. A site that is well-designed could help create trust and guide site visitors into action. Building a great UX involves making certain that the design is usability-optimized and the ease of functionality use. 

Check out these guidelines for any web design and development project. 

1.Purpose of the Website.The purpose or goal of a site is to accommodate user needs. A clear and simple intent on all the pages helps users to interact with the offerings of the brand. Determine the purpose of the site. It is an entertainment site that covers sports events or is it meant for selling products? There are so many purposes for a website, the core common ones for all include:

  • Building the reputation
  • Describe expertise
  • Sales and aftercare
  • Leads generation
  1. Navigation. It is looking for a system that is used on websites in which visitors find and to interact with what they are searching for. The key to retaining visitors is web navigation. If it’s confusing, visitors would give up and find what they’re looking for on other websites. The key to keeping visitors is to keep navigation intuitive, consistent, and simple on every single page. 
  2. Simplicity. The best way is taking into consideration the experience of users, as well as the website’s usability.  Achieve simplicity through design with the following:
  • Color. Has the power to evoke emotional responses and communicate messages. Find a palette that fits your brand to influence the behavior of customers to the grand. Keep color selections to five and using complementary colors work very well. A pleasing combination of colors boost the customer experience and make them feel good. 
  • Imagery. It is every aspect of visuals within communications that include still illustration, video, photography, as well as all kinds of graphics. All of the imagery must be expressive and should capture the company’s spirit and the personality embodiment as well. Since first impressions are crucial, high-quality images are critical to creating an impression of credibility and professionalism. 
  • Typography. It has a critical role on the website. It dictates attention to brand as well as works as a visual interpretation of it. Typefaces must be legible and should only use a maximum of three various fonts. 
  1. Visual Hierarchy. Hierarchy is the order of elements based on their relevance. This is done by either color, size, imagery, typographically, contrast, texture, style, and whitespace. The visual hierarchy’s most vital functions are determining a focal point, which shows visitors where the most vital information is located. 
  2. Web content. Effective website design has a wonderful design and of course great content. The use of compelling language could attract and influence web visitors and convert them into customers. 
  3. F-Shaped Pattern Reading. The most common way visitors scan text on the website. Most of what people see is located on the left and top of the screen. The F shaped layout imitates the natural reading pattern, which is from left to right and then from top to bottom. An effectively designed site works with the natural way readers scan a page. 
  4. Time for loading. Waiting for a site to load could lead to losing visitors. Nearly half of the visitors expect a site to load in just a couple of seconds or even under that. It’s likely that they would leave a website if it fails to load in three seconds. For faster loading time, consider optimizing the sizes of images. 
  5. Mobile-Friendly. More people these days use their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets or others to browse the web. Creating a site that has a responsive layout is paramount. It is where the site could adjust to various screen sizes. 
  6. Grid-based layout. Grids help in structuring the design and keeping organized content. Grid helps align page elements and keep them clean as well. A grid-based layout arranges content to clean and rigid structures, with lined up columns and sections, and feel balanced, which impose an order that results in a website that’s beautifully pleasing. 

The Benefits of Quality Website Design

1.Visitors stay longer on the site. In today’s’ heavy-information era, keeping customers longer than 30 seconds on the website could be a challenge. Nevertheless, a great and appealing web design, as well as cutting-edge design makes visitors browse more often and longer. 

  1. Polished-look factors, such as contrast, colors, and fonts could make a great difference in the overall website quality. Although some would ignore these things, actually these are much more critical and strongly impact the reading, usability, and functionality of a site. 
  2. It helps grow the brand. A high-quality, consistent website helps strengthen the identity of the business and to make it even stronger. A small number of changes could spell a huge difference in the way users respond to the website. Thus, it enables the brand to stay competitive and unique. 
  3. Lesser expenses. Investing in a new web design won’t compromise the website quality and should be your choice at all times. Get a good quality website with an extra investment that could be extremely beneficial in the long run. 
  4. More brand customers. The longer a visitor would stay on the website, the more he/she gets to know the business and its products and services. Hiring professional web designers, everything that’s used, from images to text would determine the number of users would make purchases from the site. 

Conclusion

New and evolving technologies are marking what’s deemed as impossible a decade ago possible now. Website designers are anticipating all of the technological advancements in action and how they could exactly impact web design this year and onwards. 

 

Author Bio:

Working as a Business Development Executive at Mobile application development  Company – eTatvaSoft. Gray writes about emerging technologies and She has already written for many other blogs as well. Being a tech geek, she keeps a close watch over the industry focusing on the latest technology news and gadgets.