Blog

Website design is no more about just the look and feels about a website. Website design also needs to ensure the seamlessness in the functionality and navigation of the site. With Webflow being one of the most preferred website building tools this year, a lot of the web design trends have changed.

This year, the focus is on what actually matters. Last year, the web design trends were mostly on Virtual Reality and voice UX. This year, we bring you the trend predictions from those people who are at the frontlines of web designing.

At present, web design trends are more focused on making the site responsive. Also, Google has declared that mobile-responsive websites will be prioritized while ranking in the SERP.

Why should you invest in a responsive web design for your site?

Responsive web design will help you solve a lot of problems for the site. Not only it will make your site look good on different devices, but it will also increase the time spent by visitors on your site. It also helps with the rankings of your site in the search engine results pages.

You don’t know what device your audience is using. Since we live in a multi-screen society, it is important to make your site look good in all the devices. There are more reasons to invest in responsive web design. They are as follows;

1. Cost-effectiveness

There is no doubt that if you have to maintain separate sites for your mobile and desktop audience, it will become expensive. If you choose a responsive design, you will save a lot of money by reducing the cost of paying for a separate mobile site. You have to invest in single-site design to appeal to your visitors irrespective of the device.

2. Flexibility

With responsive website design, it becomes easier to make changes quickly. You won’t need to worry about making changes on two websites. This is a major advantage when you have to make a quick design change or fix a typo on the site – you just need to do it once.

3. Offering better user experience

User-experience is THE most important aspect of a website. Everything that is done to a website, all the design trends, and updates are based on offering a better user-experience to the audience. When someone visits your website and he/she finds that it is taking forever to load, they will not want to stay on your site and the bounce rate will increase. A responsive website design reduces load time, you can view the contents quickly and your audience will have a better impression.

4. Better SEO goals

Great web design also has a positive impact on the SEO strategy of a website. At present, every business needs to have a proper SEO strategy. Without a proper SEO strategy, you cannot boost your site to the top results of the search engine results page. A responsive website can help you with the search engine optimization of a website because as we already mentioned Google gives preference to those websites that have a responsive design. Thus, it works like a big boost to the search engine results.

5. Efficient website management

Most of the businesses, especially the smaller ones, don’t have a lot of time and resources to update the way their website looks. Not every time you can hire a designer to make changes to your website. Responsive web design allows you to make changes quickly and easily.

The Game-Changing Webflow Design Trends

In the following section, you will find the top Webflow design trends in 2020. These are just the right design trends to focus on if you want your web design to include accessibility and functionality.

1. Ensuring the design truth

We are living in an era where fake news and misinformation spread like wildfire. This is why the major social media platforms have come up with policies to flush out and eradicate the misleading information. This is why here are some web design ideas.

1. i) Label them clearly – This is important because, in 2016, 82% of the middle-schoolers could not distinguish between an ad-labeled “sponsored content” and real news. Most of the ad formats like the sponsored contents are hidden within the fact that they are simply ads.

The reality is these are just ads, even if they don’t come in direct ad banners. This is why we have to label them clearly. Also, design work needs to be clearer. A lot of websites try to integrate sponsored content on their site’s homepage. The sponsored stories are simply from faceless brands. The real articles come with a proper category title (i.e. politics or news) while the sponsored stories lack any prominent header.

1. ii) The sources have to be more obvious. For any news or information, you have to consider the source. The designers can do their part. For instance, creating a design where every business can include their Twitter profile or include a link to the Wikipedia page or a Google search of the business name.

This will encourage readers and visitors to consider different sources. Finally, when a designer works on a blogging site, try to make the author and their credentials more obvious in the content-driven experience.

iii) Using related content for context and contrast. This is a different content on the same topic, most of the time starting with “You might also like…” This offers the designer with a useful tool to add easily accessible content for the reader to understand a topic.

2. Accessibility is the key

Web accessibility is the practice of ensuring that the site and its apps are accessible by anyone and everyone, even by a layman. This is a vital part of web design. It is important to make sure that even an individual with a disability is able to access the website or the application.

Did you know that majority of the websites and mobile application designs in the USA have to meet the ADA requirements? Making your websites and applications accessible is a priority these days and not just something “nice to have”. The work on accessibility is much more than a few checklists and automated checks through browser plugins.

Accessible web design includes reconsidering the ways we publish. For the videos and images, consider the use of right captions, transcripts, and other non-visual mediums. In the case of podcasts, you have to think about how you can make content available to those that have low or non-hearing issues. For infographics, think about how to make the content available to those who have visibility issues.

Previously the designers used to focus on the visual formats and low-contrast aesthetics. It is important now to consider the visual formats for the differently-abled. The truth is, none of us are getting any younger and this is why there will be some form of disability among all of us as we age. Thus, the web design formats cannot revolve around only for the young and healthy anymore.

3. The “Design-Content” is more important than the style

A lot of web designers cannot accept this. A clear and simply well-written content in plain typography will always have better performance than a good-looking site with poorly written content. It is important to realize that the “content” is more important than the design.

By this, we don’t mean just the written content. It is the way content is presented, the message it portrays should always come before the design. Otherwise, there is no point in designing something if it cannot relay the content to your audience.

For instance, before you design the cover of a book, you have to think about what you are going to write inside it. And before you write something, you have to come up with a concept/idea of what you are going to write.

Now we are not comparing a book with a website. The point is the purpose of a book and a website is the same. Both of them have to convey a message/information to the audience. Content is not about the blog posts or the words you write. It also includes the products you offer, the services, and the user experiences.

You have to align the content and the interface. This means the content strategy and UX design should be in sync.

4. Ensure an all-inclusive design

There is no doubt that designers consider others’ views, experiences, critique sessions, use A/B testing, and multiple other methods. However, at the end of the day, we all feel that what works for us, will work for others as well.

This is where our assumption is wrong. Inclusivity is about thinking about how to offer something that is valuable to anyone and everyone who is looking for it. Designing with inclusivity means, creating space for all sorts of the audience in the web designs and mobile applications we offer.

This is what gives out the idea that everyone is a part of us even when everyone has a separate identity. This is why excluding anyone due to a particular issue or a disability will affect the overall user experience. And that will cause a business risk, especially in these days, where a single tweet can either create or tarnish the image of a company.

The practice should be to create UX designs that are useful, usable, accessible, and valuable for any user irrespective of their identity.

5. Say no to codes

Webflow, one of the most preferred website designing tools, is all about no codes. This is a new way of presenting the web and software development that helps you to get rid of the age-old coding paradigm.

The reason why Webflow prioritizes so much about no-codes is that it has helped everyone to bring their ideas to life. Again, the concept of inclusive website design tools comes up here. Instead of learning all about codes, you can use Webflow to create your preferred website design.

The best part is you won’t have to look far back in history to seek analogous transformations. All you have to do is just go back to the first graphical user interface. No code aims to empower people in building their websites and applications without a single line of code.

This is ideally a form of visual web development service where the primary front-end web-development tools are accessible to more people. In 2019, Webflow CMS became the core of all kinds of powerful web-based applications.

6. Visual developers rising

With no-code tooling, comes the no-code tool’s user or also known as the “visual developer”. Similar to the desktop publishers that use tools like MS Word/Publisher, Adobe InDesign, visual developers have become experts in operating the translating machines that turn the design decisions into functional code.

It is now possible to automate the tasks that used to take hours of manual labor. Static wireframes can now be converted into fully functioning web experiences. Most importantly, in modern web design workflows, it helps in enabling brand growth. The marketing teams can move faster. With no-code becoming more and more natural, we might see the concept of visual developers becoming more and more natural.

Final thoughts

Yes, it is true that web design is a key differentiator. The design-oriented content is getting prominence, but what matter in the end are the business value and the shareholder gains. What should be important is the way web design is approached. It is imperative to have a conscious and principled approach to the design systems that will affect every landscape of business.

Because, like it or not, everyone has a web design in mind. The important thing is will the web design allow you to thrive in an organization or as an organization? Just because we all can design, doesn’t mean we are good at it. The difference is, in the skill level, the education, and the context.

This is where you get a web design that is devoted to helping people understand what the objective of a business is. This is where you get an all-inclusive web design for all, regardless of ability and identity.