The Top 7 Website Designing Trends Shaping 2020

Internet users are demanding more from a website in terms of user interface and experience. Simple and plain presentation of content is not engaging visitors anymore. Businesses have to be represented in a very attractive manner online.

Lacking a web presence is a surefire way of losing customers to a competitor. And everyone’s in on the online game. As a result, the competition is high and with so many innovations, we have collated a list of 9 design trends your business website needs to stay abreast of in the new year.

Focus on Basic Functionality & One Page Applications

It is important that we ensure our website has all of the basic features and functionality before we consider upgrades and enhancements. No matter how evolved technology gets and user expectations change; a website has to fulfill certain basic criteria:

• A Navigation Module for easy travel throughout the website.
• Content that makes sense and is relevant to the business objective.
• Chat Support.
• The relevance of any and all Imagery used.

Here we must note that e-commerce sites are now shifting away from taking a customer through several screens for a transaction to the newer one-page application. No longer does a customer have to follow prompts and input data on multiple screens until he can finally checkout and make payments on a final screen. Now customers are starting to execute an entire transaction on a single page form. This results in a far more pleasant and streamlined transactional experience for a customer.

Fluid layouts, Organic Design & Elements

This is one of the latest big developments that is going to stay strong in 2020! 

A broken grid allows the freedom and fluidity to play around with the overall design of a webpage and base its layout elements based on a customer’s user experience. Asymmetrical layouts are currently the rage among UX designers and show no sign of cooling off as we head into 2020.

Designers are clearly shifting away from the rigidity of the conventional rectangles, squares and circles to more “fluid” or “organic” shapes. The reasoning for this is the fact that Mother Nature is not a symmetry lover. It is we human beings that like straight lines. Gentler and slightly “imperfect” lines and shapes are more pleasant to the sensibilities of a human user and this is being incorporated more and more in all areas of website design. Geometric shapes with sharp edges have been used for a long time now in website design. This is because they instil a sense of reliability and trustworthiness in the user. But a point to note here is that these feel a bit too “artificial” and machine-like. Users are now craving for a more human touch and responding well to it.

Certain businesses have to have more than one primary focus, and a split-screen layout allows just that. One must realize that information overload, i.e., overwhelming a user with too much content is an ever-present concern. Split-screen designs can overcome this hurdle handling larger volumes of knowledge and communication. When they’re used after careful consideration, they are rather effective as they make use of visual storytelling.

Flat Design

This emerging trend too is here to stay. The demand for fast loading and performance-driven websites is ever-increasing. More and more internet users are now venturing to mobile devices instead of conventional large-sized desktop or laptop computers. The demand for a mobile responsive website is on the rise. The current app development platforms and businesses are now making this flat design trend go viral.

A minimalist approach utilizing clean and open space, vibrant colors and simple 2D illustrations is what helps a website load fast on a user’s mobile device and yet remain interesting and stay popular. The resulting website is less data-heavy, thereby demanding less of hardware resources.

Failing to acknowledge and work with this trend will result in a high bounce rate. A “bounce” describes the user behavior of landing on a website and finding it either (i) too heavy with information, (ii) difficult to navigate or (iii) just plain unattractive and then eventually leaving the website. 

A high bounce rate will ultimately affect a website’s search ranking as the Google algorithm clearly favors responsive designs.

Pronounced Shift from Conventional Content and Graphics

(i) GIFs – Instant gratification is the new norm. You as a brand website have a mere few seconds to grab a visitor’s attention and deliver on their need for information. GIFs are able to address this need perfectly as they are ideal for presenting a complex concept in an entertaining and quick way. They are also quite light on both desktop and mobile browsers as they hardly take up any data. 

(ii) Other Animation – Websites use videos and complex animations to draw a user in and keep him hooked on the content. The banners and specific texts on a page are animated to activate when the page is being refreshed. Scroll-triggered animations that activate when a user starts to scroll in search of more content helps to maintain the same level of expectation and enthusiasm from the website and the user takes his time to consider the other available content before clicking on a call to action or eventually clicking out of the website.

The presence of animation all over a website but in a sensible and tasteful way increases user participation and retention. It should be noted here that this is only the case when we use animation sparingly. We don’t want the animation to be the star of the show. We’re just trying to get the animation to make our content the star of the show. Ideally, animation adds more to the website functionality of conversion rather than its visual appeal. This is a point that is easily and readily be overlooked.

(iii) Full-Screen Imagery Vs Image Carousels – once an eye-catching feature found on most websites, Image Carousels are now fading out of use. They’re seen more as a distraction now and are failing to keep a user on the page and delay them from going elsewhere. 

Websites are leaning heavily on personalization and customization. Full-screen background motion and still imagery are also here to stay.

(iv) Gesture-based Interaction – Another rising trend is that of interaction-free from buttons. Users are catching on to gesture-based interaction and preferring it over pressing buttons.

(v) Non-Traditional Scrolling – For some businesses like interior design firms, a website that supports horizontal scrolling gives an enhanced and fun user experience. This is not something that should be taken up by every website. Horizontal scrolling works well only with the types of businesses where users would feel like doing it to explore more of the business on a webpage.

(vi) Data Visualization – Customers feel more entertained and inclined to invest in the business’s products and services when they are positively affected by the way data is presented to them. When designers create interesting and fun infographics to convey data to a customer, it is easier for the customer to discover more about a product and make decisions.

Use of Bright and Vivid Colours

The balanced and elegant use of bright and eye-catching colors is the basis of design. Bright and vibrant colors in different gradients and patterns are finding more applications in different parts of a webpage. Conventional tastes and color palettes are giving way to wild experimentation. This is something definitely to be tried out as long as the resulting effect is pleasant, energetic and tasteful.

Chatbots /Conversational Bots

The advent of AI and Machine Learning has now unleashed the gift of the chatbot. Well-designed chatbots enhance customer experience. They are being made more conversational and intuitive.

This makes the user experience a lot better since it feels authentic. The game is changing with bots that are better learners than ever before. They are quicker at answering questions, taking feedback and storing user-preferences. A lot of chatbot-building platforms are starting to crop up that help you create a friendly and conversational chatbot. 

MobileMonkey is making waves with its chatbots. For those of us who are yet to catch on, big and small brands alike have been making use of the Facebook Messenger service as a marketing tool. It is effective as it capitalizes on Facebook’s mammoth user base and the higher level of engagement afforded by a messenger chat. `

Despite a decline in Facebook’s organic reach over the years, Facebook Messenger is a marketing tool that is freeing up a brand’s promotional-email channel to do much, much more. And MobileMonkey has just revolutionized this marketing space with an incredible Messenger-Chatbot building platform. It is a great alternative and is giving stiff competition to the existing Flow XO, Octane AI and similar platforms.

This makes the user experience a lot better since it feels authentic. The game is changing with bots that are better learners than ever before. They are quicker at answering questions, taking feedback and storing user-preferences.

Highly Readable Typography

Creative and bold typography is responsible for setting the tone in which content is delivered to the user and also draws attention efficiently to the main selling points. After all, open any website and you’ll see that most of the information being conveyed is in plain and simple text!

Choosing great fonts and soothing-yet-attractive color options are conducive to present text that a user would read to gain information about the brand and its offerings.

This trend of large and attention-grabbing titles are encouraging some websites to get rid of any background imagery altogether to draw focus.

Using Gripping Videos

Gone are the days when videos would slow the webpage down. The increase in bandwidth and internet speeds has had the pleasant effect of reducing video load time. Videos are great for showcasing products and services. Videos are a sure win over still images of products any day. They’re particularly beneficial when they’re placed on the header of the landing page so that a user is immediately hooked and impressed. 

With ever-decreasing attention spans and the increasing unwillingness of users to scroll through multiple pages, this trend is still going strong.

Sketch & InVision Studio are still going strong

The debate on the best technology and design tool is eternal. Inspite of the advent of MockFlow, Balsamiq, Axure, Adobe Comp and a host of other wireframing and prototyping tools, Sketch and InVision Studio are still the go-to tools for designers. 

Sketch allows the creation of advanced interfaces and prototypes. Symbols, a feature of this software allows for the reuse of UI elements designed on it. It can work in tandem with the InVision suite with the help of the craft plugin. 

InVision Studio helps with creating interfaces with multiple features. On a single artboard, it allows creating highly-customized animation with gestures and interactions.

Design Landscape 2020

In addition to the above, a lot of new trends will be observed next year. 3D illustration, thumb-friendly navigation, and micro-interaction will become widespread. 

Schedule a free consultation today to learn more about eFrog’s expertise in incorporating the latest trends in web design to your site. Along with using the most popular and current web design trends, we evolve constantly in order to meet the ever-changing design landscape. A good browsing experience leads to a happy user and eFrog is all about converting these happy users into customers.