As modern web design practices continue to change over the years, staying current with the latest design trends is important to the success of your ecommerce business.

Today’s web visitors are more knowledgeable and judgemental than ever, with 75% of consumers deciding the credibility of your business based on your site design alone.

A strong, clean, modern, and mobile-ready web design is essential to the reputation of your brand. Here you will learn how to incorporate 2019 website design best practices into your own site.

Optimize for Mobile-First  

When Google rolled out mobile-first indexing back in March 2018, it was a game-changer and caused the now infamous “Mobilegeddon” movement. Google now indexes your website’s mobile version first, which means they prioritize responsive sites over sites that aren’t mobile-friendly.

Since over 50% of searches are performed via mobile devices, Google has decided to fundamentally reshape its indexing process to meet the needs of its users.

Here are our mobile-friendly guidelines for 2019:

Size Matters in Mobile Usability

Pressing the wrong button because it was poorly sized, or even worse, having to zoom in just to read something important on a mobile device can be very frustrating. It’s important to remember that size matters when it comes to mobile device readiness — especially when it comes to business-critical buttons and text on your ecommerce store.

Say No to Pop-ups

Pop-ups are inconvenient for mobile viewers. That’s why Google introduced an important algorithm change in 2017 that prioritizes sites with user-friendly pop-ups that don’t block content or hinder usability. Google doesn’t believe that traditional pop-ups have a place on mobile devices. Save yourself, and your online shoppers the headache of dealing with obnoxious mobile pop-ups. Screen space is sacred on mobile devices and you don’t want to interfere with the shopper’s user experience.

Keep it Simple

Simplifying your mobile design helps improve usability. Since you are working with a lot less space on a mobile device, hiding additional or unnecessary information can help make your ecommerce site’s mobile experience more enjoyable and easier to use.   

Geometry is the New Black in 2019

There are many benefits in using geometry in web design.

Geometric shapes create a sense of balance and symmetry, making your site easier to follow. When used correctly, geometric patterns be both visually pleasing but functional — they can guide your visitors to look where you want them to. Here are some tips to utilize geometric design principles in your website:

Choose a meaning: Whether we are aware of it or not, each geometric shape has a meaning, similarly to colors.  By understanding the psychology behind these shapes, you can use them more dynamically in your design. You can learn more about the psychology of shapes here.

Mix it up: When used in combination with the right colors, mixed and matched shapes help create a really beautiful and dynamic design.

Stay minimal: It can be challenging to keep your design minimal when your goal is to be interesting and creative. When done right, minimal designs can pair extremely well with geometric patterns because they naturally balance each other out.

Bright Colors and Gradients

It’s no secret that bold colors keep making the “Top Trends” list.

Color is considered one of the most compelling visual communication tools available. Captivating designs paired with bold hues become more interesting and easily engage more visitors (and hopefully creat more ecommerce conversions).

We can’t talk bright colors without talking about gradients as well. These two color considerations go hand-in-hand.

Gradients provide depth and texture to a design and subtle visual interest without being overwhelming. In combination with bright colors, gradients can create bold statements and guide user emotions, helping your visitors connect with your product or idea.

Below are a couple ways you can incorporate 2019 color best practices into your design:

Be bold: Have fun with your colors but don’t choose them randomly – color psychology still exists! Your brand color palette should still be influenced by the emotions you want to express as well as what kind of message you want to convey to your visitors about your business through visual identity.  

Where to use gradients: Gradients can be used to signal a change, navigating the viewer’s gaze through their purchase journey. When used efficiently, they can draw the visitor’s focus to important information on your site or entice them to complete an action, like joining your mailing list or browsing a particular category of products. UI Gradients is a great tool to create the perfect gradient for your site.

Animations Are Back

Animation isn’t just for cartoons or flash-based sites anymore.

From scroll-triggered animations to hover effects, hints of animation are now appearing everywhere in ecommerce web design. However, use them sparingly – web animations should only be used to make your website feel more intuitive and interactive to your viewers.

When used thoughtfully, animations can be a strong tool for helping your visitors feel engaged with your content.  The key to animation is moderation – too much of a good thing can often end in a bad user experience, and web animations are no exception.

Here are some guidelines on how to incorporate animations into your ecommerce website design:

When to use animations: Animations can slow down your website, so it is recommended you use animated elements to fulfill a specific purpose beyond just looking visually appealing. Use web animations to:

• Highlight actions using microinteractions
• Display hidden information with hover animations
• Create sliding galleries using transitions
• Help tell a story or spark visual interest

Video headers: People love video! Videos can catch our attention like no other form of media. Video also helps boost the amount of time visitors are on your page, boosting your ecommerce site SEO and conversions. Incorporating a video header will encourage your viewers to become more engaged with your content. Compared to static images, videos are a convenient way to present information by allowing your visitors to immediately understand your website or product.

Contrast: Most video headers have text or buttons on top of the video. It is recommended to use a background for your video that will create a strong contrast between the video and the overlaid text. A general rule is to either have light text with a darkened video, or dark text with a lighter video background. Uniform footage that uses only a few colors will work best for this header.

Mute it: Many merchants make a common mistake when creating video headers: they don’t mute it. Video backgrounds are set to autoplay and if you embed your video before muting it, your visitors are most likely going to exit your site because of the unsolicited noise. Having music or sound play unexpectedly is a tactic straight out of the 90s, and we guarantee people will bounce off the site because of it. Mute your videos and your visitors will be happy you did!

White Space Equals Usability & Readability

White space (or negative space) is the area of a web page that is left intentionally blank or empty of content. It’s the space between graphics, areas of text, and other design elements on your website.

Even though we call it white space, it doesn’t necessarily need to be the color white. It can be any color, pattern, or texture. White space is a great tool to balance certain design elements and organize information in a logical way to enhance your visitor’s visual experience. The concept of white space is nothing new, but with the push to create a better user experience on device-agnostic ecommerce websites and drive conversions, white space will be even more important this year.   

Visual Clutter is Out

Loading up your page with too much information or too many graphic elements will make your website look dated and less functional.

No matter how much value these graphics or information may have, if your visitor is unable to read or navigate through your site, they will have a poor experience. This is where white space comes in – use this effectively to reduce visual clutter and guide a visitor’s focus to important elements on your page.

2019 web design best practices in ecommerce caters more and more to a stylistic approach while being incredibly easy to use. more experimental approaches are making their way into regular design practices as well, making this year’s approach to website design bolder than ever.

Above all else, No matter which guidelines you want to incorporate on your ecommerce site, make sure it is aligned with your own brand.

Your website represents your brand, so your design and your brand should work hand-in-hand. Specific trends such as bold, bright colors or animations could be completely wrong for you depending on your audience.

Stay up to date with web design trends, but at the end of the day, always, always focus on your visitor’s needs first and foremost.

Looking to dust off your website design? Get in touch with Studio for a complimentary design consultation today!