Is there a new website in your New Year marketing plans? Here are the latest web trends for 2020 that you’ll want to be incorporating into your web design.

• Oversized lettering/bold typography. Huge typography is gaining in popularity, as website owners strive to simplify web design. 
• Big solid color blocks. Think of familiar Facebook posts with solid color backgrounds. Use these on your homepage in conjunction with photos. Each block can contain a key message, a testimonial or a call to action.
• Split screen content. Do you have several key messages? Easy. Line these up side by side. Think about adding a call to action in the center to tie the two together.
• Asymmetric layouts. Most websites are based on grids, generally (invisible) columns and rows. Web designs that stand out will display broken grid techniques, with design elements placed chaotically. 
• Background video. Animation instead of static background brings your platform to life. Video contributes to your Google authority, or SEO value.
• Hidden navigation. By tucking your navigation away, you can save a lot of real estate for other components. I struggle with this one. We put a serious amount of thought into the navigation so that it has the maximum SEO value and makes it as easy as possible for users to get where they’re going. Now we’re hiding it?
• Flat design. Flat design lacks shadows and gradients. It’s streamlined, efficient and easy to read, but it may be falling from fashion. Another trend that doesn’t make sense.

An overarching design theme: Large elements surrounded by lots of whitespace

White space remains a key design element to showcase a key image or content. Now that white space is making its way into the online form! Think about it–how many times/week do we fill out online forms—to order something, to generate feedback or to get more information. Forms are important components of web interactions; expanding a form so that it takes up more room on the page, making it more inviting, accessible, easier with which to interact improves the user experience. 

Global web trends

Altered reality. Stores and brands are implementing altered reality (AR) into their websites by allowing customers to virtually “try on” clothes, jewelry, makeup, etc. They’re allowing users to rearrange furniture to see how it would look in their homes or offices.

Microinteractions. Look for more microinteractions that are meant to delight us. They’re tiny automated signposts that you’ll see when you: 

• Upload a file, hit the submit button, and see an upload status bar go from 0% to 100%. That’s a microinteraction. 
• Hover over a Call to Action and the color saturates and the button gets bigger–that’s another microinteraction! 

Data. No matter what industry you’re in, it’s increasingly valuable to be collecting our user information, and more web designs will be based on that data.

If you’re thinking about a new website in 2020, contact Top of Mind Marketing.

We can help organize information, develop content, build the site, manage images and help it show up in search engines. We’re writers and content marketing experts.