Web Design Trends – follow the crowd or do what’s right for your audience?
Posted on 22nd January, 2020 by Applecado
In a couple of seconds you can find a million articles about web design trends for 2020, or how-to’s instructing you on the latest technologies your site absolutely must have - I mean, if we’re honest, we’ve got a couple of such articles. But, is it best to jump on the latest trends, are you joining the crowd, time stamping your website or even alienating your audience?
Design
Don’t get us wrong, we love a beautifully designed site. Using a website or app that has been carefully considered is really pleasing. Not every trend is right for every product, service, or company though.
There has been a lot of talk about big full screen photos in web design.
As you can see – stunning in a lot of cases, but if your website is very information and fact driven (e.g. a county council site, the NHS etc) this wouldn’t work. The enormous effort behind gov.uk’s digital transformation is also a thing of beauty. People are visiting these sites to get information, contact details, search for factual documentation etc, they need a clean, clear, direct route to the information they need.
However, perhaps you’re a photographer, make bespoke furniture, work in the arts or other similar industries then a full screen photo could be a very impactful way of showcasing your portfolio of work quickly.
Audience
While some trends might be ideal for one audience, they might not work for another. It’s key, as with any part of your marketing and communications strategy, that you understand who your audience are.
By developing an understanding of your audience, what they want from your website and how they want to access it you are quickly able to decipher if the latest ‘trends’ would be a help or a hindrance.
Content
Finally, design is not the only aspect that goes through trends. Content does too. This could be video, animation, blog lengths and styles. Again consider what works well for your product and audience and apply that to your site.
Video might be great for some audiences, but if your customers live in a low band-width area , not able to view video for accessibility reasons, or even in need of time-critical information or answers, video would not be recommended.
Also take a look at this blog [link] we wrote about content marketing to get some ideas about what could work for your website.
Trends
Don’t be blind-sided by web designers who say your site must have this feature or that feature as it’s the latest trend. Be true to your business and audience and understand what’s needed as well as what looks great.
Testing and Evaluating Change
If you’re not confident about making changes, you might want to consider A/B testing on your website.
A/B testing will usually keep a version of your current site (A), while siphoning off a percentage of real-life users to a second version (B) with the change you’re contemplating.
You can compare analytics and the behaviour of these users to determine whether or not to make the change permanent – by running two versions alongside each other, you control for some other variables (such as time of year, if you were running other seasonal promotions for example).
Get in touch
If you’re looking for a web agency who will work with you to make sure your site is beautifully designed in line with what your audience needs, give us a call now.