11 Website Designing Standards to Follow

Design­ing an impres­sive web­site in 2019 will do for your brand what a grand open­ing of a flag­ship store­front once did for com­pa­nies a decade ago. As you build your web­site, con­sid­er the incen­tives and design tac­tics list­ed below to curate the strongest online brand expe­ri­ence possible. 

Importance of Website Design in 2019

Target audience perception 

Your web­site is your most valu­able brand real estate in 2019. As con­sumers con­tin­ue to shift their lives online, there is a greater like­li­hood of cus­tomers meet­ing your brand for the first time online and engag­ing in the con­sumer expe­ri­ence via your website. 

Your web­site aes­thet­ic, design sim­plic­i­ty and page respon­sive­ness across devices will reflect immense­ly on your brand. If you want to impress view­ers and con­vert them into con­sumers, you must meet them at their device of choice with an unpar­al­leled web­site experience. 

Customer conversion

Your web­site is where prospec­tive con­sumers turn into your con­sumers. While oth­er exten­sions of your brand and mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy are incre­men­tal in get­ting users to this stage, your web­site is where all your mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing efforts com­bine to push prospects through the pur­chase fun­nel — whether it be goods or ser­vices.

A clean, sleek, and trend-for­ward web­site design is essen­tial for walk­ing users through your online shop­ping expe­ri­ence to check-out, where a trans­ac­tion is made and where view­ers become your brand pur­chasers, mak­ing the first step to becom­ing loy­al consumers. 

11 Website Designing Standards to Follow in 2019

Responsive Design

In 2018, web­sites were assured­ly mobile friend­ly and trend-set­ters plant­ed the seed for mobile respon­sive­ness. Google even updat­ed its algo­rithm to make sure its rank­ing web­sites were opti­mal across all user devices. 

Respon­sive design is easy to main­tain and comes with so many ben­e­fits that there are no excus­es to ignore it. A respon­sive web­site loads beau­ti­ful­ly on any device and func­tions flu­id­ly, allow­ing users to inter­act with con­tent, but­tons, and immer­sive fea­tures from the palm of their hand, on the go, or sit­ting com­fort­ably behind the screen of a desk­top. Wher­ev­er the user is, your web­site is there, too, and pro­vid­ing the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence of your brand.

Typography

When it comes to design aes­thet­ic, con­sumers pre­fer to see pret­ty type­face fonts. In 2019, you have the free­dom to explore a range of font design ele­ments, includ­ing size, ver­ti­cal spac­ing, width, and hierarchy. 

Tra­di­tion­al font rules have been in place since the rise of CSS. A few of these rules remain, but with more relaxed con­di­tions. For exam­ple, head­ings should be larg­er than sub-head­ings, and sub­head­ings larg­er than body text. What’s dif­fer­ent now is that size ratio para­me­ters are open-end­ed. Indulge in font explo­ration and find the bal­ance of fine and bold that com­mu­ni­cates your brand to con­sumers with­out dis­tract­ing them from your con­tent or product. 

Video Headers

By now, the video is a promi­nent por­tion of your mixed media, and a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of your mar­ket­ing bud­get is spent on qual­i­ty video pro­duc­tion. Now, the trick with supe­ri­or video is to get con­sumers to care about it and want to watch it. 

Exper­i­ment with visu­al­ly stun­ning video head­ers that encour­age engage­ment with­out dis­tract­ing users from press­ing play or fol­low­ing the call to action. There is a cur­rent design trend to lay light-col­ored text over dark­er video stills. Try imple­ment­ing this tac­tic, and see where it leads your cre­ative design inspiration. 

Parallax

Par­al­lax is a design ele­ment that offers dif­fer­ent views of your web­site to con­sumers as they scroll along a page. While par­al­lax is not quite vir­tu­al real­i­ty, it increas­es the depth of your 2D web design to cre­ate a more immer­sive web­site experience. 

As today’s con­sumer adjusts to aug­ment real­i­ty and design, it is advan­ta­geous (and even­tu­al­ly nec­es­sary) to car­ry these design ele­ments into oth­er aspects of brand inter­ac­tion, includ­ing your website. 

By using par­al­lax in your web design, you have a greater chance of lur­ing view­ers in and encour­ag­ing them to stay on your page for a while. As view­ers tune in to your con­tent and spend more time on your pages, your SEO improves, trig­ger­ing a pos­i­tive cycle that pro­motes more views and engagement. 

Hero Images

When using Par­al­lax, try to use Hero Images. Hero Images are large, stun­ning, and top qual­i­ty pho­tos that best enable the immer­sive expe­ri­ence you are try­ing to pro­vide. Big images also go a long way in mak­ing an impact­ful first impres­sion. Choose your pic­tures per page wise­ly, as each one can cap­ti­vate or repel your audience’s attention. 

CSS3 Animation

The ani­ma­tion is the beloved favorite of web­site scrollers, media con­sumers, arti­cle read­ers, and third-par­ty passers­by. Ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters are easy to grow fond of, to remem­ber and to lis­ten to when learn­ing a new con­cept or get­ting to know a brand. 

In 2018, ani­ma­tions began infil­trat­ing web­site con­tent and design, thanks large­ly to CSS ani­ma­tion and SVG ani­mat­ed graph­ics. With tools avail­able for every­one to use, adopt­ing ani­mat­ed graph­ics, scrolling effects, back­ground video, or micro-inter­ac­tions is an easy deci­sion to make. 

Hamburger Menu

As screens get small­er and web­sites adapt to fit these inter­faces, one fea­ture that is shrink­ing to match design demands is the menu. Instead of list­ing menu options hor­i­zon­tal­ly or ver­ti­cal­ly across a page, three lit­tle hor­i­zon­tal lines are now enough to com­mu­ni­cate that a par­tic­u­lar cor­ner of the page is where the menu lays. Include this sleek, sim­ple design to make the most of your web­site design in 2019. 

Material Design

Mate­r­i­al Design in an adapt­able Google sys­tem that includes guide­lines, com­po­nents, and tools that accom­mo­date user inter­face design best prac­tices. Mate­r­i­al Design and Mate­r­i­al Com­po­nents enable web devel­op­ers and design­ers to work in seam­less col­lab­o­ra­tion to pro­duce a web­site that is most pleas­ing to and engag­ing for a viewer. 

Exper­i­ment with the com­po­nents of Mate­r­i­al Design to offer view­ers a var­ied online expe­ri­ence that reflects your tech­no­log­i­cal and artis­tic apti­tude. Remem­ber that visu­al design is a mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and you can tell an entire brand sto­ry or idea by sim­ply swap­ping design mate­ri­als.

Card Layout

Card Lay­out is a design ele­ment that divides web pages into sep­a­rate sec­tions. Each sec­tion has head­ings, con­tent, and appeal of its own. A con­sumer might click into sev­er­al card sec­tions from one land­ing page, nav­i­gat­ing into a thor­ough­ly enrap­tur­ing expe­ri­ence only to return and dive into a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and equal­ly immer­sive jour­ney through anoth­er card section. 

Include an Icon Library

Use the Icon Library to show view­ers icons with each brand exten­sion you have to offer. Icon Library uses vec­tor graph­ics for icons, so you don’t lose image qual­i­ty while scal­ing images to the desired size. 

Stay ahead of website trends in 2019

A big part of stay­ing cur­rent with web design demands is stay­ing ahead of web­site design trends. Fore­cast­ing trends can be time-con­sum­ing and cost­ly, but as your online pres­ence becomes your focal point of real estate, the invest­ment is essen­tial to your business. 

Learn more about the trends above and the best ways to incor­po­rate a few into your company’s web­site and mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy by get­ting in touch with our team at Rosy Strate­gies. We have all the exper­tise and guid­ance you’ll need to get ahead of next year’s design expe­ri­ence expec­ta­tions and retain view­ers as your loy­al brand con­sumers. Vis­it our web­site to learn more, today!