Website Design Trends to Keep Your Site Fresh

Keep up or get left behind. This is the everyday marketing challenge in today’s fast-paced, digital world. When it comes to your website, staying on top of the latest trends in relation to both site appearance and functionality is what will help you make a strong brand statement: Strive to make it accessible, easy to navigate—and memorable.

Here are a few trending design elements to incorporate to best position your site to stand out:
  
Mobile-first design. It seems obvious but is worth reinforcing: Studies show that readers won't stay on your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Make sure your website is user friendly for mobile and tablet access. And consider that Google prioritizes these websites over non-mobile sites.

Flat design. Taking a fresh and straightforward approach to connecting with users, we’re seeing clean, crisp, minimalist graphics with broken grids, asymmetrical layouts and more open/white space. With less clutter, it allows the reader to focus on the message.

Micro moments are user-focused animations that create quick, one-touch access to information on mobile devices. Also called micro interactions, these animations are take-action prompts that allow users to interact with your brand. When done right, these subtle animations can direct the reader to the right content at the right time, driving them to important messaging or to complete a form or initiate a download.

Movement using interactive video. There is power in video—and today’s trend is pushing more high-quality video content on websites. Video conveys messages quickly and effectively and boasts a higher retention rate than reading static copy.

In addition to product or process videos, we’ll continue to see more video in the form of cinemagraphs, particle backgrounds, and animated thumbnail images.

Hero images. Bigger is (still) better: We’re continuing to see designers using over-sized leading images—these create a unique, compelling story and draw the reader in to learn more. Large typefaces with serif fonts are also having a moment.

Bold, saturated colors. Making a high-impact graphic statement, the trend is using vibrant colors and unique graphic treatments like double exposure, gradients, and drop shadows to create depth.

 
Personalized and customer-centric content. The key is to drift away from traditional static content to a more dynamically-rich content. The best practice is to create a dynamic website and a smart marketing automation plan that delivers top content.

Our team at Shamrock is embarking on a redesign of our website and we’ll be incorporating a lot of these elements in our new site. Stay tuned for the big reveal!

Ellen Moriarty