Like everything digital, web design constantly evolves. User tastes and expectations change, mobile devices take over more areas of the internet, new data reveals more about what works and what doesn’t, innovations occur, and so on.
Here’s a look at web design trends for 2019 that are catching on with brands of all sizes and reshaping the appearance of websites in every corner of the web. If you’re planning to launch or redesign a website this year, incorporate some of these elements to create a more appealing website and a better user experience.
2019 Website Design Trends
- Brands are using more videos on their websites, including explainer videos and as part of a robust content and social media marketing effort
- Infographics, maps, and all sorts of other still, animated, and interactive data visualization elements are an increasingly popular way to make information more digestible to website users
- Serif fonts are gaining more widespread use online, even though they’ve traditionally been reserved mostly for print by professional designers
- While tasteful use of color has long been touted as a good way to grab attention, black and white websites are surging in popularity in early 2019, providing a classic, reserved look
- Micro-interactions—like sound effects following certain actions, scrolling and hover animations, and other responses to user actions—are appearing with more frequency as a way to create a more engaging user experience
- As part of the evolution to ever-more-mobile-friendly websites, site navigation and use are becoming much more oriented toward thumbs these days
- Single-page websites were declared dead some years back, but now that things are geared toward mobile users who are accustomed to scrolling and averse to jumping around multiple pages, this format is making a big comeback
- Virtual reality-influenced graphics that looks more realistic, technical, and/or three dimensional are replacing 2D graphics and more cartoonish-looking imagery
- Website copy is ditching the hard sell and becoming more focused on nurturing relationships and trust through smart use of brand voice and prioritizing information over self-promotion
- The trend toward minimal website copy and text is reversing—partly due to the above entry—and brands are talking to their visitors more
- Curves and organic shapes are appearing with greater frequency in early 2019 web designs, replacing lines and angles
- Ambient design—such as website backgrounds that change based on the time of day, the user’s location, or the weather in the user’s location—is an exciting feature on the cutting-edge of web design that’s starting to become more accessible; look for it to appear more often over the course of 2019
