Should Your Website Follow Web Design Trends? Innovative Web Design Trends Important for your Business
Design in all mediums is a complicated and often conflicting area, with web design being no different. Innovative web design switches back and forth from a minimal look to a busy background and copious amounts of content. Keeping up with the web design trends is difficult and your small business might not have the time, nor the budget, to continuously update or adapt your website to follow these trends. Moreover, continuously changing your website can affect your user experience (UX). Whilst familiarity may breed contempt, it can also breed brand reassurance, ease of use and repeat purchase.
What Are The Current Web Design Trends?
Much of the discussion surrounding the current web design trends indicate a move towards a more interactive web design era. Some features even conflict with traditional design practices such as the introduction of ghost buttons or what would have at one time never occurred – the hidden menu bar.
Other web design trends places focus on adding dynamic backgrounds or dominant headers that include high quality videos or rich photographic content. Many have taken this one step further to have their website focus on brand story-telling. These websites use parallax layouts combined with graphics and animations to relay the brand’s story through a vertical or horizontal scrolling experience.
Is It Important for Your Business to Follow the Web Design Trends?
You may think that in the throw-away culture that exists today your business’s website needs to be fully interactive, mobile responsive, fluid and design-focused to keep up with consumer needs. However before undertaking a complete re-design to encompass these elements it is important that you first consider the purpose of your website.
Think About Your Industry
Each individual industry lends itself to a different style and format. Taking a website design from a freelance photographer and attempting to replicate it on your ecommerce business may not prove as successful as you think. Design is important but user experience is more important.
What Are Your Competitors Doing?
You can conduct simple search research on several of your competitors to establish the website ‘norm’ in your industry, what you believe works and what you think could be improved. A Gallery page is beneficial for certain industries but if your business provides software, then you may better benefit from the addition of an FAQ page. You can also conduct research with your customers to find out what they require.
Consider the Whole Brand Experience
Having a good website is very important for your business. If your website is easy to navigate, provides the user with an answer to their search query quickly and efficiently and you are seeing a great conversion rate then you are definitely doing something right. Web development is more than creating a good website however. In order to increase your conversion rate you will want to increase your digital marketing efforts, by introducing social media marketing, SEO, PPC, e-mail marketing techniques or a combination of them all. A strong website backed by good marketing practice will help define your way in your industry.
Feeling Confused? Let Adeo Group Help.
Web design can feel like a daunting process. It is important that your website meets customer expectations but stands out from competitors by offering something different. Adeo Group have over ten years’ experience in web design and web development and have created over 350 websites for businesses from a number of different sectors. If you would like to find out more about re-design or design then we can help!