adpapa Editor
21 June 2020
I want to talk a little bit about web design tips for 2020 and beyond. As we know, digital changes frequently, so it is important to stay up to date. These tips will help you create an effective web design, including the colours, layout, speed and more. Let’s get straight into these tips.
Have a purpose
First of my web design tips for 2020 is having a purpose. I know this is not design per se, however I strongly believe that all websites should have a purpose. It doesn’t matter what the niche, brand or geography is, we all know that there should be a clear purpose for the person going to the website. It could be to purchase on an e-commerce store, sign up to a mailing list or event, or even simply to visit a small business brochure website.
There should be a clear method to contact you, or purchase products, or engage you for your services; whatever this purpose is, ensure that the website is clearly built around it.
Make it fast!
Second tip is focus on load speed. You want the website to load as fast as possible. Website visitors are impatient and they will not wait longer than a handful of seconds for your site to load. The worst culprits for slowing down websites, tend to be video, audio and images.
Never just upload a 500kb image without first compressing it in file size. You want to find a tool that you can compress your images with, and ensure you always do it.
Simplicity
Third in my web design tips for 2020 is simplicity. Awesome web designers practice the mantra of “less is more”. That is, they do not want to clutter the website with too much text or focus points.
Every page within your website should be simple, and easy for website visitors to read. You don’t want too much text because people are very impatient and they will just leave.
Be responsive
Next tip is responsiveness. In 2020, there is no excuse for your website or web application to not work well or at least be viewable, on mobile devices, whether that be phones or tablets or other devices.
The design does not need to be perfect replica of the desktop experience, however it’s really not that difficult to use the CSS grid with media queries. In fact, it’s pretty simple with frameworks like bootstrap.
Obvious navigation
Fifth place for my web design tips for 2020 is obvious navigation. Your website navigation is extremely important, as that’s how your website visitors will know where to go, and find the different things that they need.
Don’t make the navigation complex or hard to understand. Be as obvious as possible when designing and naming menu elements. Some of the best award winning web designers use very simple menu naming for a very good reason.
Practice consistency
Number six is practice consistency. You really must stay as consistent as possible across your entire website. This means your layout, colours, typography, headings and everything.
You want to ensure that you stay consistent to allow website visitors to consume the content of your website and not get confused or perplexed.
Great readability
In seventh place is readability. Obviously this is super important. Website visitors need to be able to easily read the content without any problems. Getting fancy with gradients or background images, or animations, or very small text, etc just makes the website frustrating to read.
I’ve seen this over and over, especially with websites that are designer portfolios or trying to be overly tricky. They end up failing the basics because they wanted to be very different.
Ensure that your website has a good contrast with text and background, have good line height with body copy, don’t allow text that is too small and don’t be too tricky with the layouts. Look at this example, you’d expect something technical like warehouse racking systems to be complex layout, but it has been achieved in a clean, easy to understand method.
Clear call to action
Second last in my web design tips for 2020 is call to action. We all understand that it is important to have a clear call to action. You generally want to try your best to keep your call-to-action above the fold. That means that when a visitors goes to a specific page, that the call to action is right there in their face, without the need to scroll.
This CTA could be a contact form, email subscription form, a download link, whatever. The main purpose of your website is that call to action, and you want that visible right away.
Good colour scheme
Number nine is the colour scheme. Having a colour scheme that works well is really important for both the branding and the website visitor. The company may have specific branding colours that you must use, however just make sure that any other tertiary colours that you use will go well with that scheme and that there is a great contrast.
Summary: Web design tips for 2020
So the above are my nine web design tips for 2020. I trust that this list of tips helps you create your next website designs, and that you find ongoing value in my article. All the best and enjoy that design work!
