What’s In
1. Dark Mode – Offering dark mode options is becoming increasingly popular as it reduces eye strain and conserves battery life on mobile devices.
2. Minimalist Design – Less is more with a focus on simplicity, ample white space, clean lines, and minimal distractions. This helps in improving readability and overall user experience.
3. AI Chatbots – Using artificial intelligence to create interactive chatbots that provide customer service on demand, answer FAQs, and guide users through the website.
4. Mobile-First Design – Prioritizing the mobile experience in design and development due to the increase of web traffic coming from mobile devices.
5. Micro-Interactions – Small animations or changes that provide feedback to the user when they interact with a website, such as button hover effects, loading animations, or scroll-triggered animations.
What’s Out
1. Stock Photos – Overused and generic stock photos can make a website look cold, unoriginal, and lack authenticity. Opt for custom photography of REAL humans and illustrations to humanize your brand.
2. Overuse of Pop-Ups – Pop-ups, especially multiple ones appearing one after another, can annoy users and increase bounce rates. Instead, set a limit of how often to show the pop up, only show on exit, and use less disruptive tactics, such as sliders.
3. Text-Heavy Pages – Large blocks of text with little to no breaks or visual elements are uninviting and hard to read. Aim to make your content scannable, with ample use of headers in varying font sizes, bullet points, and visuals.
4. Using PDFs for Content – PDFs are not user-friendly on mobile devices and can disrupt the reading flow. Alternatively, use native HTML pages that are better for SEO and readability.
5. Side Bars on Mobile Devices – Sidebars can be difficult to use on smaller screens and are being replaced with more mobile-friendly navigation solutions like hamburger menus or bottom navigation bars.
Does your website past the “cool” test? Contact us for a website audit.
