When it comes to starting a business, these days, your website is everything, it’s one of your biggest selling tools and should really encompass and portray your brand and its values. If you’ve ever visited a badly designed website, you’ll understand. Websites are essential, your business’s site will be open 24/7, meaning your customers or prospects can get in touch with you whenever they need to.
The internet is used every second of every day, it’s a vital part of any business to have an attractive, engaging and functional website. With this in mind, we’ve put together some of the top website design features which are popular now.
- Horizontal Scrollbars – Even since back in the 1990s, the beginning of the online age, scrolling hasn’t seemed to change much and has always been a necessity. With web design trends changing constantly, some site designs now include more horizontal than vertical styling, resulting in the horizontal scrollbar and the ability to scroll left.
- Bold Text – More and more sites are using bold text, it’s bigger and you can’t miss it, it makes the text to feel more important so users are much more likely to stop and read the message. Instead of bombarding customers with endless paragraphs, you can now scale back on content by using bold text.
- New Fonts – The use of eye-catching fonts will also help to catch customers’ attention, these days businesses tend to stay away from the basic and standard fonts like Arial and Times New Roman. There are so many more options to be creative through exciting fonts and there’s also the option to design your own.
- Goodbye Stock Photos – You may have noticed that there’s a stock photo for everything, while these types photos are handy, they’re available to anyone, so you may see your images appear on other competitors’ websites. Stock photos also tend to have a ‘fake’ look to them, so we recommend investing in your own photography as well as use real photos of colleagues. This will give a more unique feel to your website, as well as a more personal and ‘transparent’ approach to your customers.
- Strong Mobile Design – Over 80% of consumers use a smartphone and 50% use a tablet to search the internet, numbers which are growing every day. It was never important for businesses to have a mobile optimised website, but these days the site will need to look as good as a desktop version, if not your customers may choose your competition. your website will also need to be optimised for multiple devices including iPhones, Androids and other smartphones, as well as bigger tablet screens. some businesses have also considered creating an app, apps make shopping easier and are also a way to keep the brand in the customers’ mind.
- Simple Layouts – Less is more and there’s nothing worse than a website with information all over the place, as a consumer you won’t know where to start. The website will look disorganised and it’s an information overload, it’s important to use navigation bars and landing pages, ensuring your information is spread out and easy to find.
- Videos – YouTube was introduced well over 10 years ago and now videos are a necessity. Videos are big and are now a part of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so why not start a YouTube Channel and ‘show your human side’, customers will start to respond.
- Animations – It’s hard to go an hour without seeing a Gif and now it’s easy to upload and use animations online, while they may not seem very professional, they can be, it just depends on how you use them. Gifs will help to convey emotions and are shorter than videos and more interesting than pictures.
- Online Chat – Nowadays it’s not unusual to visit a website without seeing a conversation pop-up, with someone online asking if you require any assistance. These may be manned by a robot or a customer service representative, either way, they’ll improve your user experience. When you see something on a website and have a question, usually you’d have to send an email or call the company, but now you can message them for an instant reply.
Technology and the digital age is ever-changing and with all kinds of innovations, web design is always evolving, at Wensum Print we make it a priority to go above and beyond what required from a web design company to ensure complete customer satisfaction. For more information on our services, please contact a member of the team today!
