Is Your Website Ready for 2020?

In the ever-changing landscape of website land, it’s more crucial than ever that businesses make sure to keep on top of design and interface changes so not to be left behind. Maintaining a current look and feel for your website has become more of a requirement than a desire over the last few years, with this new standard set to continue well into the next decade and beyond.

So, you know that as a business owner you need to keep up with the latest web design trends – but how do you go about that exactly? What are the trends of 2020 to keep an eye on?

Today is your lucky day, because we’ve spoke to our web team to learn just that! Take a look below to read some of our forecasts on what you can expect to see dominating the web world in the coming year.

David – Head of Web

Modular Design

“This is the approach of creating re-usable blocks to create an ever-changing interface.

Modular design is basically a method that divides a system or project into smaller segments, which can then be brought together to function as one. The main thing to note about modular design is that it refers to small parts that are created independently, yet can still be used in different systems to power manifold functionalities.”

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page)

“This seems to be a growing concept and is probably going to be a big one next year. It’s a way of providing lightweight versions of your HTML web pages to be served to mobile users that load lightning fast. It’s created by Google & Twitter.”

Chris – Web Developer

Single Page Applications (SPA)

“I reckon we’ll see more Single Page Applications (SPA) as JavaScript libraries such as NodeJs, ReactJs and VueJs are becoming more and more popular. SPA’s give the user fast and seamless interaction with pages in which the page never reloads, but you can still navigate through the website as if it were normal HTML – this also allows us as developers to create snazzy page transitions which increases The User Experience (UX).”

Motion UI

“Whilst a user scrolls, you have things move or change on the page to keep the user engaged. According to Google, people’s attention span is around 8 seconds – which is less than that of a Goldfish (9 seconds), so having a bland webpage that doesn’t do anything could result in people losing interest. Examples of Motion UI are where the background zooms in as you scroll or an SVG gets drawn out on scroll.“

Headless/decoupled CMS’

“This one is more where I’d like to see web go rather than what I think will happen – I’d like to see headless/decoupled CMS’s become more popular. These systems basically separate the backend and frontend so that you can build the frontend in whatever framework is cool and trendy at the time, and all data is collected from the backend via APIs. It’s still in its infancy but I think it’s pretty cool!”

Oli – Web Developer

Type-only website designs

“Type-only website designs focusing on bespoke typography to lead the design as opposed to photography. This is great to enhance a company’s branding and get key points across to the user.”

Minimalistic website design

“Minimalistic website design… “To strip away extra flair and embellishment and move toward a much simpler, straightforward presentation”. I have personally seen a massive shift towards this approach over 2019 and expect this to continue into next year also. Flatter designs like this allow for easier functionality and designers can highlight key areas better through the use of things like vibrant colours.”

Motion and video

“As Chris mentioned already; I feel motion and video and going to become a popular trend in the web design industry. Demonstrating a company’s services through video (e.g. showreel) or even motion design allows for great content delivery and a nice user experience if done correctly.”

Web Development Services At Platform81

A lot of food for thought here and as you can see, we anticipate a whole host of new trends in web builds and digital design in the coming year. If you’d like to chat to our web team about what we can do for you in 2020, please get in touch and one of our team will get back to your query as soon as possible.