QuickByte: Website Design Trends in 2019

Quick Byte

Episode Transcript

Woman: Welcome to the QuickByte podcast. Your five-minute digital dose of tech news, and tips and tricks for digital-first marketing. QuickByte is brought to you by Lance Montana, a digital marketing agency based in Brisbane, Australia.

Lucy: Hello, and welcome to episode 4 of QuickByte.

Laurence: Thanks for having us here.

Lucy: No problem. I’m Lucy, and I’m here with Grace and Laurence.

Laurence: Hi.

Grace: Hi, Lucy.

Lucy: And we’ve got five website design trends you need to know about in 2019. A couple of things first. When it comes to website design, there are lots of factors that are crucial to the success of your website; functionality, speed, staying on top of current website design trends, and Laurence?

Laurence: Safety devices. Yeah, security is power, but everything else doesn’t matter if the website’s been hacked and it’s been taken over by some, kind of, political movement in Europe.

Lucy: I thought you were going to say aliens, but political movement or so. And when we say trend, we don’t mean short-lived passing fads. We mean a change to your site that’s going to make it function and look better long term.

Laurence: Yeah, trending upwards.

Lucy: So, with that in mind, here are the five trends we say you need to know about in 2019. Number one.

Laurence: Mobile first website design. I said it before Lucy does.

Lucy: All right.

Laurence: This is a kind of less of a trend and more of a necessity. It’s been ongoing for the past few years, but last year, we saw some shift in the way mobile sites are treated by Google, with them, i.e. Google, putting the mobile version or mobile-responsive version of a website first in their index. So your website is now being primarily judged on how it appears on mobile devices. Okay, that is huge. So, just let that, kind of, sink in, and then the next thing to think about is, “Okay, well what are you gonna do about it?” So, Grace, how can we make mobile-first website design better?

Grace: Yeah, well, one of the big ones, which is also our second point on this list, is flat or minimalist website design. So, this is especially important on mobiles. Because we’ve got these little screens, we really need to get as much bang for our buck as we can here. So, what we mean by flat or minimalist design is cutting out clutter, removing oversized data-rich imagery, getting rid of big paragraphs of text, and just thinking about, “What do our users want to see here and how can we communicate that to them in the most simple way possible?”

Lucy: And flat or minimalist design doesn’t have to mean boring either. You know, you can be really clever with things like the use of white space, eye-catching colour themes, geometric shapes or even just, sort of, using new typography. Either it’s a really unique lettering that’s unique to your brand or you’re, sort of, paring it back so it performs optimally across all platforms.

Laurence: And I’d just like to point out that only serving content to people in their website during the experience when they actually need it is super important here.

Lucy: Yeah. It’s about making that journey easier, smoother so they’re not, sort of, confused and lost.

Laurence: I’m always confused and lost, is it because I don’t have enough flat or minimalist design in my life?

Lucy: I’d say that’s it Laurence.

Laurence: So, number three is micro-animations. So, Grace, are these tiny little people behind the website moving things around?

Grace: Well, that would be pretty cool. Maybe we should include that as number six.

Lucy: I’d say that’ll be in next year’s list.

Laurence: Yes, so micro-animations are just like very small, kind of, movements and responses to scrolls and mouse cursor movements on a website that gives some guide about, you know, the progress, what choices to make in your website journey. And it really is a way to separate good website design from great website design because it does take a little extra effort to include meaningful micro-animations around website design. But the results do speak for themselves, and I can speak from experience. A great example of this from memory is of a website we produced in concert with some design partners Autumn West End for the Brisbane leading architecture firm Ellivo, and it’s an awesome example of a website where it looks quite simple and it doesn’t feel overwhelming although there’s a huge amount of content on there, but there’s a whole lot of really well-thought-out tiny little micro-animations that make your 3D experience and help you to discover all the awesome content that’s on the website.

Grace: Yeah, that’s also really great if you’ve got a website design that’s, kind of, pushing the boundaries a little bit to let users know that they’re on the right track and they’re not in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.

Lucy: You know, yeah, does what text does, but it’s much easier to understand and it looks nicer.

Grace: Absolutely.

Laurence: Number four in our five website designs trends for 2019…

Lucy: This is Laurence’s thing.

Laurence: …you absolutely need to be on top of is video. And it is a bit of a favorite of mine because, you know, we just had a lot of success and getting results for ourselves and for, you know, our clients with video.

Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. From my point of view, you know, storytelling is super important and video is probably the most compelling form of storytelling. Now, if a picture paints a thousand words, well, video paints a thousand pictures.

Laurence: Just dumps a whole bucket of paint on your head.

Lucy: Pretty much. You know, it’s great at showcasing things that images or even text can’t, you know, the way, sort of, luxury fabric falls or the way a sports car, sort of, navigates its way around a racetrack. Works particularly well for luxury and lifestyle brands or if indeed you’re in the business of video, would also work for you, but there are lots of other benefits, too. Aren’t there Laurence?

Laurence: Yeah, sure. Look it’s not just window dressing with video. This is tried, tested, proven. Get on-board and invest in video. It’s gonna increase your SEO performance – Google recognises video results really strongly in search engine results aims so you’re gonna get better, SEO results from video on your site, you’re gonna have people stay on your website longer, which is, again sending great signals to Google, but it’s also sending great signals to you because you’ve got a more engaged audience and more chance of converting them, and there’s a heap of excellent conversion rate optimisation data about the efficacy of using video to sell products online as well as get people to click on soft sell conversion, ones like downloading white papers etc., etc.. Just do it, people.

Lucy: Do it.

Laurence: Number five. Staying alive for the last website design of 2019, Grace’s favourite, chatbots.

Grace: Yeah, I think we’ve got some mixed opinions about chatbots.

Lucy: Are these little men that sit behind us?

Grace: Oh, yeah, totally.

Laurence: Tiny little micro-chatbots.

Grace: Yeah, so we know that people have some mixed opinions about chatbots. They do have a little bit of a way to go, but they’re becoming a big part of website design for lots of online e-tailors, and if you do have a chance to do a bit of research into the ways that you can keep your users on your page, if they’re having any issues, then chatbots might be the answer for you.

Lucy: It’s also a really good way to collect data about your potential customers, you know? It’s sort of as these chatbots improve over time, there’ll be even more ways that these chatbots can gather info based on their interactions, their location, and, sort of, activity on your site.

Laurence: Yeah, the fundamental business case, it’s pretty obvious, you know. You can communicate with more people, get more information with less human resources, and they need to be put directly into your website. You’ve just got do it right, don’t try and do too much, and make sure that you build up a relevant chatbot, you know, with questions and answers and flows that work your business specifically.

Lucy: I think it’s important too, to don’t pretend you’re human if you are a chatbot. Make better clear distinction and people won’t get annoyed.

Grace: Yeah, and if people do request to speak to an actual human, then it’d be great if the chatbot did provide the right resources instead of saying, “I’m a human. Talk to me.”

Laurence: All right, well, that’s our predicted website trends for 2019. We’ve got a blog post on lancemontana.com.au where you can go and get more resources and find out more about all five of those, and we’ll also pop up a link to this podcast. So, thank you very much for listening.

Grace: Yeah, and if there are any topics you’d like us to hit in the next episode of QuickByte, give us a shout via @lancemontana on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. We’d love to know your thoughts. Thanks, everyone.

Lucy: Thanks, bye.

Woman: Thank you for listening to the QuickByte podcast. This has been a production of Lance Montana, a digital marketing agency based in Brisbane Australia. For more great free resources, go to lancemontana.com.au.

Show Notes

Topics covered in this podcast:

• Crucial aspects of successful website design
• Our top picks of the 5 website design trends that aren’t going away anytime soon

Resources mentioned:

• Microanimations on Ellivo
• Conversion optimisation with video on Neil Patel’s Blog