If you’re thinking about doing an overhaul of your website sometime soon, this is a great opportunity to give some careful thought to the design and layout you want to go with. Contrary to what some people may think, design does not come second to functionality.
Yes, you need a website that functions well, but the design and layout of your site are actually the things that first convince the visitor to stick around. One study found that 94% of first-impressions are design driven, another that it takes less than half a second for a visitor to form an opinion of your site.
And, as the number of websites has increased exponentially, users are becoming more and more discriminating. It’s becoming harder for businesses and brands to stand out above the sea of similarly design websites.
Here are design aspects Internet users are looking for in 2020:
- Bold graphics and text.This is the natural culmination of the minimalist design started by Apple & co. in the mid 2000s. To stand out, many websites are doing full screen visually arresting images and text overlays (usually sans serif) that fill the whole page.
- Simplicity and ease-of-use. If you haven’t redesigned your website in a while, your site can likely benefit from some simplification, since site design is going more and more in that direction. This was a result of the minimalist movement in web design but has been reinforced because it serves a functional purpose: with mobile traffic now outpacing all other devices, simple, intuitive websites win out because they’re easier to navigate on a variety of screens.
- Dynamic video & animations. Along the lines of grabbing people’s attention, sites are doing more with embedded videos and animations used to explain product features. The key here is that these need to be integrated seamlessly in your site’s responsive, lightweight design. We are not talking about those clunky embedded Youtube videos that never render correctly on mobile.
- A hint of whimsy. As we said above, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out online. The brands that manage to remain memorable are ones that break the rules a little bit and insert an element of personality into their websites. This is something that’s hard to quantify — each successful brand has its own way of doing it. Suffice it to say that, within the other design parameters outlined above, you’ll do well to think very carefully about how to convey some extra playfulness or “edge” in your design.
We hope these tips will give you something to think about as you consider your next website redesign. If you have any questions about website platforms and their performance on our servers, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
