Like everything else in technology, web design trends are constantly changing. What worked yesterday might not work today. User’s buying behaviors and priorities change in reaction to technological changes and so websites should be designed in a way that respond to these changes. It’s not always easy to make an accurate guess of what web design trend will work and what will not in the next year. Looking at the technological and cultural changes that are going on right now, we can anticipate what trends in web design will dominate next.

This year, the changes are going to be more unorthodox moving away from the traditional navigation and theme specifications. It will be more centered around creativity appealing to the psychological aspects. The goal remains unchanged which is to make the content more presentable, easily consumable and the website more user friendly and contemporary. Let’s see what these trends will be like in 2020 and probably beyond.

1. Superfast Load Times

Website speed will continue to be a major trend due to its profound importance.Websites will keep getting faster and faster. Speed is the only thing that could cost you conversions, user experience, and brand reputation all at the same time. If your page takes more than 3 seconds to load, you will lose 40% of your visitors straightaway.

Continue to look into ways to speed up your website whether it’s image optimization, minifying JavaScript, setting up content delivery networks, reducing server load time or more. Optimizing for speed will also help you in search engine rankings. There are many tools and techniques that help to optimize various elements of a website for speed.

2. Story selling

Essentially, websites are going away from the brochure days. Modern websites are telling a story to get visitors more engaged. If your website is boring and just like any other website out there, your user’s engagement level will be a lot shorter.

Think about a story that’s involved in selling a product or pushing a cause. Come up with questions that need to be answered to get people to take an action. A compelling story has the potential to create sympathy, empathy or enthusiasm in readers and encourage them to take the action you would like them to take.

3. A.I. based Testing

As mentioned earlier, design trends in 2020 will not be of traditional nature. Modern web designs make use of machine learning and artificial intelligence coupled with the website traffic to make better design choices. For example, A.I. can change the color of a button to the one that gets the best click through rate. Similarly, machine learning can create patterns from user’s activities and provide them personalized offers.

A.I. makes these nitty-gritty design decisions that you don’t have to do yourself. It continues to increase the conversion rate on your site. In 2020, websites will have an increased interaction with chatbots and the algorithms of gathering and processing information will reach the next level.

4. Broken Grid

This is the latest trend that is working well for websites. Web designers are avoiding symmetry on purpose in 2020. You increasingly see websites with not everything lining up in little columns, not everything perfectly placed on top of each other and a lot of overlapping. However, the goal is still to subtly navigate visitors to the most important parts.

Blocks of unequal sizes, misplaced headlines and broken grids work if used creatively. Therefore, it should be done by a designer who knows how to take it in their stride.

5. Amazing Animations

Animations equal engagement. A little animation even if it’s just a picture fading in, or icons rising up can lend to your page being more engaging. However, avoid overdoing this. Incorporate some animations into your website to add a ‘this is cool’ feeling. There are lots of 3D modeling software you can use to add cool animations to your site.

6. Voice Interactions

Voice search is huge right now and it’s only getting bigger. We are constantly asking Google questions through voice. How do you get featured in those search results? That is where voice interaction in websites comes in. This will grow more and more important as people start searching sites either vocally or asking Google a question.

2020 will be huge for voice interactions. It’s high time to start reading up on how to add voice interaction to your website to get accessibility and to rank higher in search results.

7. Mobile First

As we know, mobile users have outnumbered desktop users. More and more people are accessing the internet through mobile phones. The time spent on the Internet coming from mobile devices also increased from 40% to 49%. It is only natural to design websites that cater to such a high percentage of users.

Design websites for mobile first and make sure it adapts to and looks good on all other devices. Google also uses the mobile version instead of the desktop version of the content for indexing and ranking known as mobile-first indexing. In 2020, the requirements for mobile-first indexing will get tougher.

8. Energetic Design

When you are thinking energetic design, think bright vibrant colors. Colors like orange, purple, softer red make things stand out. It makes things look younger and energetic. Take Apple, for example, which uses brutalism type letters, bold colors and big font sizes on its sales pages.

When you are building any landing page, take the font size that you normally use for headlines. Energetic imagery and beautiful typography will radiate vitality and offer a good visual experience. This trend is going to be more visible in 2020.