A well-designed website is every brand’s chance to make a great first impression. In a few clicks or taps, customers can score brands on metrics like credibility, modernity, relatability, creativity, and digital savviness. Therefore, in many ways, good web design can make or break a brand. What, then, constitutes a good website, and what should brands be paying attention to when conceptualizing or revamping theirs?
Like most artistic pursuits, there really isn’t a guaranteed path to success. However, there are principles of design, as well as annual digital trends, that brands should know. The best websites—regardless of a brand’s personality—are readable at first glance, easy to navigate, coherent in tone, uncluttered, and make use of only high-resolution images. When it comes to content, it should be readily accessible and regularly updated. But all these are simply the skeleton of web design. From here, brands can dress these bare necessities with muscle and sinew, experimenting with animation, interactive elements, videos and audio, layouts, and other experiential features.
Making things even more exciting is how annual digital trends can guide brands on how to combine and customize these elements to further individualize their websites. For instance, in 2022, there was a departure from aesthetics that feel raw and undone and are seeing websites use imagery, text and colors that evoke safety, comfort, and recovery—a response to the tumultuous last two years. To give brands a starting point for what styles and designs they can consider adopting, we list down some of this year’s most popular website trends.
Calm and comfort your customers
Brands aren’t (or shouldn’t be) impervious to the difficulties their patrons have had to face in the two years of pandemic living. Brands must communicate empathy and understanding to customers to send the message that we’re all in this together, and by trusting your brand. Do this by choosing the right copy and color scheme, and marketing products and services as the best companions to have currently.
Communicate a safety-first message
Speaking of products and services, it’s now important to mention if and how your products have gone through rigorous safety and quality checks. Customers have now learned to look for certifications, awards, and other legitimate markers that show them you took COVID risks into serious consideration and made the necessary adjustments to make your brand COVID-safe.
Return to minimalism
Brutalism was big in 2020 and was enjoying an uninterrupted streak of success, until 2022 came and folks set their sights on a post-pandemic world. As the world hopes to embrace a new normal, they’re banking on the opportunity to start from scratch. A clean slate rouses feelings of effectively purging the bad and making lots of room for the good to come. Minimalist websites can encapsulate this sentiment well.
Use text as images
Still in line with 2022’s minimalist trend, we’ve seen more websites use text as hero images. Words can replace graphics and photos when the right text, size, color, and background are employed. When you’re able to do away with too many images and replace them with text that’s just as eye-catching, you’re also more likely to have a sleeker and less cluttered website.
Experiment with micro-interactions
The problem with minimalism is that it can be flat and boring, or it might not match your brand image if you’re all about being loud and bold. Fortunately, there are small but impactful tweaks you can do to counter this. Micro-interactions are getting more time in the spotlight this year; these are the cute, surprising but unexpected effects that can delight customers and make the ordinary action of browsing through a website fun again. Hovering over an image and having information about the item pop up is one example of a micro-interaction. Tapping a menu and having menu items fan out instead of traditionally drop downwards is another example.
We’ve positioned these points as “trends,” but know that all of them serve long-term goals of brands that will never change. A good website—one that’s able to roll with passing fads yet maintain its integrity and the soul of the brand it represents—is inextricably linked to effective SEO use, PPC advertising, and lead generation. It’s a critical portal for customers to get to know a brand and keep finding their way to it every time they need the products and services it offers.