Every year, we see articles, videos, and other forms of content preaching about the latest web design trends. But the thing about trends is they come—and go.

When you build a website, following the “trends” means your site will quickly become dated.

No one wants to redesign their website every year – as this is expensive and time-consuming. In a perfect world, you want a website that contributes to your long-term business goals. This boils down to good usability and conversion optimization.

At Tall Poppies Design, we’re not ones to get wrapped up in trendy aesthetics and flash-in-the-pan gadgets – as these tend to age poorly. In this article, we want to discuss some web design trends that will give you a leg up today, tomorrow, and every day in the future.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

1. Psychology-Charged Design

Websites like Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, etc. are more than just websites – they are psychology masterclasses.

When we say, “psychology-charged design”, we’re talking about applying principles of human psychology to influence user behavior within websites.

This practice is crucial to building intuitive, user-friendly websites in line with how the human brain absorbs information, navigates content, and makes decisions – and it always will be.  

A reputable website design agency or designer understands how factors like color, layout, typography, and imagery evoke certain emotions and guide attention – compelling users to engage with the site.

Ultimately, psychology-charged design is the key ingredient to help users take the intended action on your website. This could be buying a product, clicking a call-to-action button, booking a consultation, or just spending more time exploring content. We’re going to put this bluntly: knowing how to incorporate psychology principles into design is what separates novice web designers from experts.

2. Exceptional Copywriting

Copywriting rarely gets the love it deserves on a website. Humans are visual creatures, and let’s be honest, words can be boring.

What many people don’t realize is that copy makes or breaks websites – and the tolerance for subpar copy is extremely low. We work with a lot of life coaches and online educators. A single typo or poorly-worded sentence may compromise their credibility—and therefore sales.

Think about it: would you sign up for an online course if the provider’s website was riddled with errors? Would you give your personal information to eCommerce websites with lots of typos? Probably not.

Even if you have an ugly website, you’ll be ok if it has a good copy – and this is NOT vice versa.

We get a lot of clients that want to write their own website copy to save a few bucks. It’s easy to look at a polished webpage and think: “I could write that in 20 minutes!”

Keep in mind, professional copywriters are an investment for a reason. That’s because they are doing much more than just putting text on a web page.

When you invest in a good copy, you’re really investing in:

• Clear communication with your ideal audience
• A professional brand image
• Strong user engagement
• Effective SEO (more on that later)
• Favorable conversion rates
• Impactful user experience

There’s a lot more to professional website copywriting than what meets the eye. If you’re going to spend the extra money on anything in a website build, it should be copywriting.

3. Mobile Experience Design

It’s no surprise that most website interactions take place on mobile devices these days. 

As of this writing, nearly 70% of total website visitors are on mobile. Mobile experience design was a web design trend in the early 2010s. But it’s a baseline requirement these days – and will be for the foreseeable future.

Mobile experience design – or mobile responsiveness – is about creating a website that is 100% user-friendly on smaller screens with touch-based navigation.

A well-designed mobile experience is essential to improve your overall user satisfaction, increase time spent on your website, improve conversion rates, SEO rankings, and ultimately, boost your business outcomes. When you work with professional web designers, mobile experience design is part of their core design and development process— right from the very beginning. It’s not an add-on or an afterthought.

4. Good Readability

This goes hand-in-hand with website copywriting.

The majority of humans scan websites for the information they need.

This is why excellent readability is essential in making sure the user can easily understand and absorb the content on the site. Readability involves factors like typography, font size, font weight, line spacing, color contrast, and content structure. (And Katy’s constant pet peeve: column widths!)

High readability minimizes user strain and enhances the overall user experience which are key components in helping users take the intended action (whatever it might be). High bounce rates, low conversions, and declining website traffic are telltale signs your site’s readability needs work.

There’s also a lot of debate about whether readability impacts how Google ranks websites. Regardless of the verdict, this needs to be part of your web designer and copywriter’s process when building your site.

5. Website Accessibility

The importance of website accessibility (as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act) has picked up a lot of steam in recent years – and it’s one of the website design trends that will remain relevant for years to come. Basically, web accessibility is about making your website easy to navigate for disabled users.

Accessibility can be a decisive factor for clients in choosing between your website or a competitor’s. Every website these days should cater to:

• Color Blindness: This involves using visual indicators to help users better understand and navigate your web pages.
• Blindness/Poor Vision: Accessible web design emphasizes clear, descriptive labels for all form fields, enabling screen readers to clearly pronounce and highlight these fields to improve site navigation.
• Impaired Mobility: The availability of keyboard navigation is crucial for users with mobility limitations. Web accessibility involves using interactive elements that are keyboard-accessible to assist these users.

Try this fun exercise: coolers.co/contrastchecker and add in your brand’s colors that may be layered on top of each other such as your button text color and the button color, or a background color and your text. Do you score over 4? If not, your brand colors need some tweaking for website accessibility standards.

In modern times, website accessibility is a fundamental practice for credible web design agencies.

In addition to creating a more user-friendly experience, it allows you to reach a wider audience. Inclusivity is not just a passing trend; it’s a vital feature to accommodate all website visitors.

6. Professional SEO

If you’re a life coach in Denver, you’d want your website to pop up first when someone Googles life coaches in Denver, life coaching services in Denver, etc. SEO is how you accomplish this.

In a nutshell, SEO (a.k.a. Search Engine Optimization) involves a plethora of on-site, off-site, and technical tactics to help websites get placed on Google searches and drive traffic. Professional SEO should be woven into the web design process. 

During the initial site build, this includes keyword optimization, mobile-friendly design, fast page load times, user-friendly navigation, and more.

Ignoring SEO can limit a website from gaining online visibility—and attracting potential customers. And what good is a website if it’s not attracting visitors?

When you work with a web design agency—or a professional web designer—they should partner with an SEO specialist to make sure all the site’s technical components are properly set up at the very least.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Earning favorable spots on Google’s search engine results pages doesn’t happen overnight. Most leading web design agencies offer ongoing SEO to continuously improve a site’s online visibility after the build is completed.

7. Data-Driven Web Design

We see a lot of business owners make decisions about their websites based on what THEY like or think works best. All too often, they are surprised by what truly inspires their target customers to take action.  

Professional web design services don’t operate with guesswork. Every decision they make is backed by data. Sometimes this data is based on experience and research. A/B testing (also referred to as “split testing”) takes it to the next level.

A/B testing works by creating two different versions of a webpage (version A and version B) and testing them with user segments to see which performs better – whether it’s conversions, click-through rates, time spent on a page, etc.

A/B testing is one tactic as part of conversion optimization strategy which is to experiment, analyze, and implement real results specific to your business. Using this data, web designers can adjust design elements, copy, layouts, features, pricing, and so on.

Without split testing, it’s much harder to understand which aspects of a site are working well and which parts could be improved. Now, data-driven design doesn’t end once a site is launched. As the latest web design trends evolve, a web page can lose its effectiveness. A/B testing is the primary vehicle for how the top web design agencies perform conversion rate optimization – which works to improve business outcomes across the board.

Over to You

Most web design trends come and go—and a few stick around for the long haul.

When you partner with a web designer or web design agency, the elements we talked about in this post should be engrained in their process.

At Tall Poppies Design, our goal in every website build is to create something our clients can be proud of for years to come with graphic design, web development, SEO, copywriting, digital marketing, and more. 

More importantly, we want to create websites that don’t need a redesign every few months. 

If you’re a life coach, online educator, or small business owner, our website design services are specially formulated for you. Get in touch with us today and tell us about your project!In the meantime, feel free to look through our website portfolio.