Web design ideas for your website in the coming 12 months: An early start will put you way ahead of your competition.
If there’s one thing we can say for sure about the future, it’s that the next 12-months are about to be some of the most challenging for business owners and web administrators. So, you need to position your website design now to brace those challenges and turn them into opportunities!
The price of delayed action
Procrastination is a human trait and we are all guilty of it. But if you ask any web designing agency what they think about inaction in the face of oncoming changes to how we do business, they’ll readily admit that business owners will pay a huge price for such inaction:
• It’ll cost you more to maintain websites with dated technology
• Fewer operating systems and web hosting services will support your website design as you move forward
• Hereto “loyal” clients and visitors will quickly switch to other websites and suppliers, because your outdated web design won’t connect with their devices
In short, website owners and administrators who fail to anticipate the evolution of web trends 12-months or more from today, will likely have a web site design that causes them to lose, rather than gain, visitor traffic. A competitor’s web designer will likely poach them away. And you know what they say about converting casual web site visitors into paying clients: It’s just 40% about conversion and 60% about getting them to show up for conversion!
Coming website designing trends
So, how should business owners and entrepreneurs position their websites to leverage developments over the next 12-months or more? Well, here are three web designing trends that you should start embracing now, in order to make your websites future proof:
1) Embrace mobile first: Over the past several years, Google and other search engines have been rewarding web designing services that have vigorously promoted their customers’ mobile sites. Most observers see this emphasis, from "mobile too" to "mobile first", as an imperative for a move to "mobile only" in future. If web site owners are stuck on "mobile too" iterations of their websites well into the next 12-months or so, it’ll be extremely challenging (and costly!) for them to catch up to "mobile only".
Speak with your web design team now, so they can start that transition sooner rather than later.
2) Create Voice User Interfaces (VUIs): The future of voice activated devices is already here! All leading device manufacturers are embedding voice directed features into their operating platforms. And within the next 12-months or so, with the proliferation of mobile devices and their status as the web surfing tool of choice, voice enabled website features will become the default, not an option.
You need to work with your web designer at the earliest, to map out the key areas of your websites’ VUI. An early start to this initiative will give you more time to test the interface and even run it in pilot for several months.
3) Less Blogging … more Vlogging: Web design services always encourage their clients to add a Blog section to their websites. This is not only a great marketing tool, but an excellent way to establish your site as a domain authority (especially in the eyes of search engines!). However, over the next 12-months or so, you’ll see more consumers thirsting for greater video content and less text based blogs.
You might ask: Why? Well, we’re on the cusp of having 5G technology go mainstream. When that happens, every website designer will start pushing out more video and graphic intensive content – because it’ll be cheaper and faster to download. You need to start discussing video blogging (Vlogging) with your web designing agency today, so that your website is positioned to take full advantage of this new trend in the coming months!
While many businesses are already incorporating all these three trends into their websites, the rate at which this evolution is taking place is measured. However, a web design that already integrates some/all of these features will be much better positioned to claim market share from sites that haven’t yet started to embrace these trends.
Plan of action
To help you map out a plan of action that’ll prepare your website for a smooth transition into the next 12-months or so, you need to open a dialogue with your website designing agency at the earliest. The agenda for such a discussion should include:
• A complete web site audit, with a view of assessing where your website stands with respect to your competitors
• A list of web design priorities that your service provider suggests you should focus on to position your site for the coming technological changes
• An implementation plan to help your web designer implement those priorities in terms of the short, intermediate and longer term steps
The longer you procrastinate the harder it will be to catch up with competitors who have already started embracing these trends. So, start working with your web design team today to start future proofing your own website.
