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The Future of Website Design in 2020: Everything Startups Need to Know

Image courtesy of Pixabay

As more and more of our life gets digitized every day, the technology this is powered by needs to stay close and keep up. Nowadays, the internet has gone from being a source of information and entertainment to a staple for many across the globe. 

Whether you’d like to read a book, pay your bills, order groceries, or book a plane ticket for your next vacation – it’s all online. With that being said the future of website design in 2020 is here!

According to a study, 38% of your website visitors will stop engaging with your website if the website content or layout is not attractive.

As such, websites have become a common sight. These days, a driving force behind a successful business is an online presence. With so little time on their hands, modern internet users have become conditioned and now have certain expectations from websites. Certain design choices can make or break your website’s popularity.

This is why website owners may take weeks, sometimes even several months to design their website and choose the tone they want to strike when communicating with their audiences. Every single detail is extremely important. 

Web design is an intricate process, where a keen eye for detail is greatly appreciated. From knowing which colors complement each other, to knowing which font types speak to which target audience – web designers have their hands full when trying to create the perfect website customers will enjoy visiting.

The look and feel of websites, in general, have changed dramatically over the years. Some of this was because technological discoveries made improvements possible. 

A number of changes, however, were made to accommodate the user experience and make websites easier to navigate. With that in mind, let’s take a look at web design trends in 2020. What can you expect your average website to look like as the year goes by? 

Here is a list of the web design trends that are likely to be popular in 2020: 

1. Mobile-First Responsive Design

The Internet is being used now, more than ever. It is reported that around 59% of the world population are active Internet users as of April 2020. In the year 1995, around 16 million people around the globe used the Internet. By the end of 2019, this number rose to 4.346 billion. 

Here’s an important fact to consider. The year 2009 saw the release of the first Android and iPhone smartphones. With the convenience of having all of the Internet available on a portable device, it’s no surprise that the number of mobile Internet users increased.

  • As of 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic came from mobile devices. What does this mean in terms of web design? It means that there is a new standard that has come to be an essential feature for any website that would like to be successful. In 2020, you can expect almost every website to be mobile compatible.
  • It used to be that website owners had to choose whether they wanted their website to be desktop-only or mobile-only. Developers would then have to create a desktop-only and a mobile-only version of the website. 
  • As users accessed the website, it would recognize the user’s device and redirect to the appropriate version.
  • With the introduction of CSS grids, web designers were able to ensure that all users, regardless of their device, would be treated to the same high-quality website experience.

2. Use of SVGs

Another important trend in responsive web design is the use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) instead of bitmap images. When interacting with a global audience that primarily uses mobile devices, bitmap images tend to lose their quality as you scale them. 

As you scale your bitmap image, you start to see little pixels that make up the entire image. With SVGs, however, you gain the ability to resize the images depending on the user’s resolution without actually losing the original quality of the image. 

And finally, SVGs are very affordable and widely available for web designers to implement. Putting the pure aesthetic value aside, using SVGs has a huge impact on your website performance. By using these images, the number of requests a server has to go through to load them decreases dramatically. 

This ultimately makes the page loading speed much faster, so it is something worth looking into. High-quality images coupled with a quick loading speed is a combination no one would turn down.

3. Hand-Drawn Images

While most website owners are still playing it safe with minimalistic website design, some are being daring and trying to stand out from their competition with unique details that can be used to attract more attention. 

Some will focus on the visuals and use bold, eye-catching colors with a simplistic design. Others will use eccentric fonts or asymmetric design to immediately strike the tone of uniqueness. 

However, most website owners have quickly come to discover a very powerful way to make an impact on their visitors. Believe it or not, this trend happens to be – hand-drawn images!

You might be wondering how it’s possible that in the age of constant technological advancements, with so many high-resolution, breathtaking images available for the taking, there is still room for hand-drawn images? 

Importance of Hand-drawn Images on Websites

There’s nothing wrong with stunning imagery or computer-generated artwork. It can still make for a very tasteful design choice in 2020. But sophisticated, clean, and stunning is the norm the modern consumer is used to. 

Hundreds or even thousands of websites are going to cater to these needs. This often leads to the websites of 2020 becoming viewed as ‘too perfect’. The perfect design tends to become repetitive, at best. 

A hand-drawn image reminds you that a website is so much more than a URL and a domain name. To some, this may be viewed as an imperfection. But this imperfection is what adds personality to your website. 

It adds a note of humanity and humanizes the browsing experience. That’s exactly where its charm comes from. It adds a deeply personal, if not quirky, visual element for your audience to notice and connect with your brand.

4. Integration of Chatbots and Automated Assistants

The modern consumer wants to spend as little time as possible looking for what they need. This is why we can see a large increase in voice-powered search inquiries. 

For the sake of convenience, more and more websites will stick to this trend and allow users to issue voice commands to interact with content. 

Another fairly new addition is chatbots. This is almost considered crucial for e-commerce oriented businesses and websites. Integrating chatbots into a website allows visitors and potential customers to become more self-sufficient and self-serving when interacting with the content. 

Chatbots can be set up to route different requests to departments or individuals whose attention is needed. They can also be used to provide information and answer customer queries with absolutely no human interaction required. 

Not only does this allow for faster customer processing, but it also decreases the expenses of maintaining such a website at no cost to customer service.

5. 3D Immersive Visuals

Virtual reality is a huge trend in 2020. Of course, the expenses that would go into designing a fully responsive VR website would be insanely high. Not to mention that it would be cutting off a significant number of users who still don’t have access to the technology. 

As VR grows more and more popular, immersive 3D visuals are the next best thing web designers can turn to. This means that the website will take up most of the screen, blurring the line between digital space and reality. 

Immersive 3D graphics and visuals unfold on the screen, captivating the audience and thrilling them with a powerful presentation. Using immersive 3D visuals on your website greatly increases the chances of your visitors staying on the page for longer periods of time. 

Expectations of the Future of Web Design

Technology and website design go hand-in-hand. One enhances the other. 

Website owners across the globe will do everything they can to deliver the perfect product their visitors will be overjoyed to use and interact with. As new technological advances and breakthroughs come, new web design trends will emerge and become mainstream until the next big thing comes along.

It’s very important to keep track of these trends as they appear, because each of them can be used, at the appropriate time, to create a major impact with your audience. Keep in mind that the changes in the trend you encounter can be very fast-paced. 

So what was revolutionary and incredibly popular at one point, may become obsolete or even unwanted a few months later. It is very important to stay in touch with current trends as well as the technological advances that may eventually change these trends. 

This is what allows you to anticipate any notable changes that may come, and adapt to them faster.

Conclusion

Those who stay abreast of trends, ever-evolving technology, and ideas and who update their websites will have a significant impact on their users. 

Are you looking to update your website or make a new one? Contact a top web design company in India, to get started and implement new changes to your website to stay ahead of the game. 

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About the author

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Varun Bhagat

Varun Bhagat is a technology geek and works with PixelCrayons which is a renowned web & software development company in India as Sr. Technology Consultant. He possesses in-depth knowledge of different web development technology and helps the clients of his company to choose the best technology as per their needs.