Website Design Tips 2019 From Experts
Black Flag Creative | Website Design in Los Angeles
Whether you are new to the digital world or you have been around since dial-up, it is always important to stay up to date with trends, tips, and the newest technology. Alongside this, it is important to update your website, refresh your brand, and enhance the way the online world sees your company. In efforts to help your business stay ahead of the competitive curve, we at Black Flag Creative want to share and discuss some of the key website design tips of 2019.
These tips are all designed to enhance your website and capture your audience in a way that speaks volumes. Incorporate what fits perfectly with your brand image, website design, digital footprint, and of course, your mission and tone.
1. Keep It Minimal
It seems that the minimal trend has transcendent the personal lives of individuals and has manifested itself in the workplace. Individuals are not only opting in for a minimal way of living but in business, they are looking for it too. Nothing is more of a red flag that when individuals are leaving your website because it has become “too much.” With that in mind, keeping it minimal is crucial in the digital world. Your website design needs to be minimal, captivating, easy to understand and navigate while also keeping the attention of your viewers with quality digital media.
Bill Ross, the CEO of Linchpin, says, “Instead of adding lots of flashy elements to a site, they should have plenty of white space, which gives your design elements more breathing room. Without white space or any negative space, your site would look uncomfortable and cramped, which would hardly be considered professional.”
2. Create A Visual Hierarchy
Having a visual hierarchy has one clear purpose in mind; to capture the attention of your audience and website traffic. Due to the integration of tablets and cellphones in the digital space, now more than ever have websites and businesses opted for a visual hierarchy. Essentially, you have to keep in mind how much an individual may scroll through your website before they switch pages or get off.
Therefore, it is crucial to develop a visual hierarchy from most important to least important. In this, you can create a breadcrumb that leads individuals to your purpose and goal. Start with what captures your audience and introduce color, contrast, and different elements that accentuate your website!
3. Easy To Read / Simple To Understand
With this next crucial tip, we would like to map it with further advice to better help you understand your website content and how it should be presented to your audience and visitors.
According to Wix, there are four crucial elements to keep in mind when developing and showcasing the content of your website.
4. Don’t Make It Too Small
Looking back at trends over the years, one of the most common was having a lot of wording and small fonts. This trend has clearly left the station and a new one has entered. Do not make the font too small and do not overpower the design with a lot of wording. Brand and businesses have started opting in for larger fonts and minimal wording. This not only creates a more aesthetic appeal, but it also gets the point across quicker.
5. Contrast Is Crucial
When creating easy to read content, it is important to think in terms of contrast. The sole purpose of this is to ensure that your content and your focus areas stand out enough to capture the attention of your website visitors. With this in mind, contrast is crucial to showcase your content, call to actions, headers, and captivating content in an easy to read and understand method.
6. Too Many Fonts
There is such a thing as having “too many fonts” on your website. One of the crucial website design tips from experts is to never sacrifice the quality and simplicity of your website by adding too many text styles and fonts. This limits the synchronicity and flow of your website when you have too many fonts and different texts break on your process. The rule of thumb is to have one general text for information, one quality and captivating header text style, and a secondary header text style that should only be used sparingly.
7. Make Navigation Simple
With minimalism and simplicity being the primary theme of 2019, individuals have opted in for simple and easy to navigate menus. With that, the many benefits of this are evident. Not only do you communicate to your audience the most important areas and pages of your website, but you also allow them to reach their target goal quicker. For instance, you want to be able to offer your services in a simple and easy to read manner, making navigation simple so they can contact you quickly without losing interest. Therefore, making the way a website visitor interacts with your website creates a more dynamic and easy to remember experience that ensures they will keep in coming back.
8. Include Social Share Buttons
Today, the method in which individuals, businesses, and customers interact is more diverse than ever before. With that, one of the most important website design tips to include in your 2019 practice is ensuring that your website has social share buttons. According to iMPACT, not having social share buttons limits the amount of traffic your website can receive alongside communication from clients and visitors. With social share buttons and quality content, you can expect your visitors to share your content with their audience, which in turn, brings more awareness to you and your business. Without quality and easy to use social share buttons, you are missing on organic traffic, website visitors, and potential leads.
“To create a memorable design you need to start with a thought that’s worth remembering.” ― Thomas Manss
9. Video Content
As one of the most common website design trends of 2019, video content has become more and more popular in particular niches. With that, it is making it’s way into the digital marketplace to cover an endless array of markets and individuals from chiropractors to digital marketing. The reason being is that video content can captivate an audience like never before. Although video content was often used in real estate videos, it is now a way to send a message, to stir emotion, and tug at the heartstrings of your audience and visitors. More so, it allows for a brand or business to share its mission, a purpose, or a message without complicating the website with a lot of wording. Lastly, it is convenient.
This is what 99 Designs has to say about video content. “Video not only diversifies the page but caters to an on-the-go audience who don’t have the time to scan through a lot of text.”
10. Thumb-Friendly
To think about designing your online website in terms of “thumb-friendly” can be an odd take on website design. However, with more and more users conducting online searches from their phones and tablets, thumb-friendly website designs is actually a viable and crucial aspect of website design in 2019. According to Josh Clark, writer for Designing For Touch, websites that use a thumb-friendly approach receives more traffic and more clicks than other websites, because it makes the process more simple for the visitor of the website. With that in mind, you may want to start thinking in terms of thumbs. Thumbs up to that!
11. Easy To Load
When talking about website design and vital aspects of creating a website, load times comes to mind. If you have ever gone through the dreaded “website audit” check, then you know that load time is an aspect that is often regarded as one of the most important. With this in mind, it is important to have a website that is easy to load and unencumbered by large images with high resolutions that take forever to download. As a simple tip for 2019, easy to load website design involves a level of minimalism when creating the design of your particular website. According to Relevance.com, a website load time can be improved by using a host that supports the particular capacity that your website needs. It is important to keep in mind that the load the host will carry will vary depending on the size of your website.
12. 8-Second Rule
As we move further in the digital age, website visitors have become more short-attention focused. With that, did you know that the average attention span for an individual visiting your website is about eight seconds? Yup, that is less than a goldfish. However, if you can utilize this to your benefit, you can expect to convert website visitors into leads in no time. In short, it is important when designing your website to keep in mind what the viewer sees first. As far as website design tips for 2018, use the 8-second rule when creating your website design alongside the visual hierarchy we have discussed. In these eight seconds, keep in mind what the viewer sees, the message your website portrays, and where this will lead them next if they are captivated.
13. Include A Contact Page
This is a simple web design tip for 2019 which has come and gone plenty of times. There has been a trend over the years of individuals including a contact form in their footer or in their sidebar, often removing the contact page altogether. With that, this trend has died down and the contact page has come back for plenty of reasons. As a website design tip, the contact page is a crucial aspect of your website to include for various reasons. Not only is it where individuals will be able to contact your business or you personally, but they can get to know more about your hours of operation and other useful information. With that, the contact page creates more of a cemented bond between the website visitor and your business compared to a simple contact form on the footer.
14. Conversational English
This next tip that we are going to share may be one of the most important on this list. With more and more individuals and businesses opting in for a mover conversational and relatable approach, websites have developed their content with more conversation English compared to corporate talk. Even corporate businesses have utilized a more humanistic approach when creating their online content. Not only does this remove the mundane content that can lead individuals off your website, but it is also often more captivating. Copywrite expert Susan Greene says, “Write copy as though you’re speaking directly to the visitor. Use the second person like “you” and “we.” A friendly, informal tone is better than stiff, corporate-speak.” With that, websites have started incorporating catchy and informal titles and headers that relate to their audience rather than professional stiff talk that may bore the visitors. When creating your copywriter, think in terms of what your audience wants to read and how you can blend that with what you want them to know about your business.
Incorporating 2019 Website Design Tips
The digital landscape has changed rapidly and now more than ever individuals want simplicity and easy to understand information. Although we are living in the age of informational overload, you can enhance the experience by ensuring that your visitors have a quality and user-friendly experience on your website. With this in mind, Black Flag Creative aid in the process of incorporating any or all of these techniques and tips into your website design.
With custom templates and web design features, we are here to help you get the most from the digital field. Sail with Black Flag Creative today!
