What Small Businesses Should Expect
For small to medium businesses, web designing is never a static activity – it’s constantly evolving. Every year, new web technologies come into play, making older ones dated. If site owners don’t keep their eye on the ball, they could miss out on some exciting web features and functionality – at best. At worse however, there’s a lot more at stake. Read on to find out what’s at stake, and what new trends to expect from your web design agency in 2017 and beyond.
More Than Just A Pretty Website
As new web technologies emerge, it’s essential for website owners to ensure that their websites are keeping up with the technical and technological changes. Not doing so can mean more than just not having a “pretty” website.
Often, online marketers that quickly embrace new web technologies have first mover advantage. What that means is that they can quickly overtake their competitors, grabbing competitor market share in the process. Savvy web site design companies continually watch for emerging trends, and then act quickly to update or modify client websites to incorporate some of those new technologies.
Here are a few trends in designing savvy websites, which have emerged since 2017 began, and that are expected to continue well beyond the year…and into 2018 and beyond:
a) Be Visual: Consumer website viewing patterns have changed significantly over the past few years. Today, web design professionals are noting that their customers are asking them to incorporate more visual content, because their own clients are demanding that from their websites.
Website visitors today want a lot of info fast…but they don’t have time to read long-winded text. Videos, animations, info-graphics are the way of the future. They enable the website owner to display product or service information, in an easy-to-process way, using clever graphic symbols and layouts, videos etc.
b) Be Strategic: While web pages should continue to be designed with aesthetic appeal in mind, online marketers are now being more calculated in their site layouts. Landing pages are being more strategically designed to pack a bit more marketing ‘umph’ for the site.
Businesses are embracing website design techniques which leverage up-selling and bundling of relevant and related products and services. Shopping cart designs should be undertaken with a view of ‘prompting’ customers to buy more – instead of just checking out with one or two items. 'talk' to you customers on the site - remind them that this product or service works perfectly with this other product or service here. Ask them do they want a call to help them make their mind up? Offer them a trail, if your business allows that, or perhaps a free consultation.
c) Social Validation: Any professional working with a smart web designing agency knows the power that social media plays in online marketing today. Tap into social media and integrate those platforms into your website design. Consumers today crave social validation. So why not link your web pages to your Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram sites and provide them with an opportunity to validate your site in the process?
d) Be Convincing: The online ‘connected world’ of 2017 and beyond offers exceptional web designing opportunities to convince consumers that YOUR product/service is what they want – NOT the competitors. Marketers are adding User Stories, Testimonials and Personal Reviews from satisfied customers to be more convincing about their offerings.
The result: Visitors tend to be convinced about the value of a product or service that someone with their own background and social standing recommends.
e) Use Card Layouts: 2017 has seen a growing website designing trend towards the use of Card layouts. These are Pinterest-like design features that separate blocks of content to provide a more reader-friendly layout. Expect more and more of your competitors to jump on this bandwagon too, because it makes websites cleaner-looking and easier to view.
Other trends that 2017 has brought include the phasing away of annoying pop-up ads, and the toning down of pesky Live-chat sidebars and messages. Website owners seem to also prefer minimalist designs; where non-value-added bells and whistles are being shunned in favour of cleaner-looking web design and easy to follow layouts.
What The Future Holds
As website owners see more of their competitors embracing some of these newer trends, they too will start demanding that the web design agency supporting them offer the same choices. However, for those that hesitate and take a “wait and see” approach to making the necessary updates to their sites, opportunities may be lost with each passing day.
If you are one of those site owners or business managers still considering whether to embrace some of these new trends, you need to contact your web designing agency to get the ball rolling. These trends will persist for the rest of 2017 and beyond. Act now to take full advantage of them.
