Inbound Marketing Trends: Website Design

Website design lies at the core of your entire marketing strategy. It's not enough to design a stellar website and wait for it to yield results. It's imperative to watch out for new developments and adjust your digital calling card to the latest trends.

When it comes to website design, choosing the right platform, posting content, and tweaking navigation is half the job. Ensuring its continuous functionality according to the latest tendencies is what can keep your site on top of the SERPs and streamline conversion rates.

Let's take a closer look at the latest website design trends and how to use them for your business:

1. More Negative Space

Negative space has always been an integral part of successful website design. As more and more people are moving to mobile environments, the importance of negative space is increasing exponentially.

Negative space can:

• Bring information into focus
• Provide optical breathing space
• Demonstrate determination
• Reduce distractions

If you need to present a substantial amount of information to your visitors, negative space highlights it better than colors, special formatting, or dynamic website elements.

The more pressed-for-time your audience is, the more it can benefit from minimalism and negative space implementation.  

Pro tip: Use negative space to create contrast and make important elements of your website stand out.

2. Focus on Accessibility

Around a quarter of your target audience is likely to have a disability. That's why it's imperative to implement accessibility in your website design. While there aren't any enforceable legal standards that obligate you to make your website accessible, it's in your best interest to do so.

Some of the top practices to consider include:

• Adding alt text to images
• Making links descriptive
• Breaking up your content properly
• Removing distractions (flying banners, flashing images, etc.).

Some CMS have accessibility integration tools that allow you to catch and fix issues before they cause problems for your audience. If you use HubSpot CMS for your website design, you can implement WCAG Accessibility Tool.

3. Gender-Neutral (Inclusive) Design

As the world is moving away from gender-focused elements, so should your website. More and more businesses are removing gender-specific colors, words, and avatars.

It is important to be mindful when designing forms that request the user's gender. First, consider whether obtaining this information is essential for your business. If it is, consider replacing dropdown menus that only offer "male" or "female" options with salutation choices such as Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Mx. This allows the user to choose how they would like to be addressed and avoids making assumptions about their gender identity.

When creating a content strategy for your website, consider using gender-inclusive language as well. Keep in mind that such words as "ladies, "landlord," "postman," "guys," and "wife" are gendered. Don't make any assumptions. Simply avoid these words in your website content.

Remember that pronouns are also gendered. It's a good idea to use the inclusive "they" and "theirs" at all times.

4. Illustrations

While videos and images are effectively catching visitors' attention, they don't do enough to contribute to the uniqueness of your website. Meanwhile, illustrations can do just that and much more.

If you want to communicate specific information without looking generic and monotonous, you can consider cartoon illustrations. While creating them may be more time-consuming and expensive than posting stock photos, the effect of such illustrations (especially if they are hand-drawn) is dramatic.

Illustrations tend to make a long-lasting impression, increase brand awareness, boost personalization, and portray originality. They can help you get the point through without shooting complex videos that eventually slow down the page loading time.

5. Timeless Classics Meet New Trends

The timeless classic of website design is minimalism. Depending on your target audience, you want to convey maximum information with minimum distractions. Softer neutral colors and fewer elements keep the visitor's focus on content and calls to action.

Just because minimalism is a big trend, it doesn't mean that your website needs to be bland and empty. You can implement such approaches as:

• Horizontal scrolling – user scrolls left or right to find content to the sides of the webpage.
• Scroll animations – elements that appear or move as the user scrolls down the page.
• Scrollytelling (scrolling +storytelling) – a digital multimedia story that unfolds as the user scrolls down the page.
• Parallax animation – a visual technique that creates a 3D effect by contrasting the moving speed of background and foreground images.

All of them make your website easy to navigate without crowding the space with elements that your audience doesn't currently need.

Implementing the Latest Web Design Trends

Embracing evolving web design trends can elevate your site from outdated to conversion-centric. While some trends might not align with your business needs, others can significantly boost your website’s performance and align your marketing objectives.

At The Gist, we believe in the power and flexibility of the HubSpot CMS as our preferred website builder. Not only does it facilitate the integration of the latest design trends, but it also aligns seamlessly with the fundamental pillars of website design: functionality, simple navigation, user experience, mobile optimization, SEO, and effective CTAs.

Ready to transform your web presence with a custom HubSpot website? Schedule a time to discuss your website project with our experienced team. We’re here to guide you every step of the way.