5 Reasons to Forget Website Design Trends

Andrew Forbes

Andrew Forbes founded Peak Ed Designs with the goal of offering an educational experience that would better equip his clients for success in the online world. He is a front-end WordPress designer/developer, instructional designer, and online course creator that surrounds himself with a team of experts that synergistically work together to deliver high impact results for our clients. Peak Ed Designs enjoys working with small and medium-size coaches, educators, and entrepreneurs to get their business ideas out of their head and out onto the web.

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Are you constantly chasing website design trends? Are you overcome by jealousy when someone else’s website looks more ‘up-to-the-minute’ than yours? While it’s important that your website doesn’t look dated, it’s equally essential that you don’t confuse your customers with endless and unnecessary stylistic overhauls. Consider these five good reasons to spare yourself the stress! 

Web Design is Much More Than ‘Looking Pretty’

Most websites draw in visitors who are looking to collect information or take action. Anything that stands in the way of this should be avoided. Don’t get us wrong, Peak Ed Designs lives and breathes attractive websites, but we simply believe that too many bells and whistles can result in overkill. 

If your website is a gaming site, social media platform, or fashion-centric business, then providing the latest design may be a differentiator in the mind of your client. If not, they’re more likely to respond favourably to a clean, classic, functional design. 

Too many web designs seek to be all things to all people. Nobody knows your customer better than you, so it’s best to keep them in mind when making design decisions.  

Design Trends Often Sacrifice Fashion for Function 

When constant trend-chasing consumes your free time, that’s a shame. When it stands in the way of your customer having a good experience on your website, that’s a crime! User experience is the law, and frivolous features should never add hurdles to the journey your visitor takes when attempting to purchase or sign up for something. Your website’s menu, sign-up forms, pop-ups, and other visual features should serve as beautiful signage on the road to lead conversion, not debris that clutters the pathway.  

Design Inconsistency Makes Your Brand Confusing 

Visual branding is important, and there’s nothing wrong with an occasional upgrade. From time to time companies will tweak their logos, colour palettes, and other aspects of their presentation as a means of breathing new life into a brand. Those who do so constantly, however, risk coming across as aimless, or worse, literally confusing their customers. 

Brand cohesion is important. By remaining consistent across channels, you’ll ensure that any brand recognition or goodwill that you earned on, say, social media, is carried over elsewhere. Road signage, pay-per-click, website, coupons, storefront and all other elements of your branding should portray a strong and consistent image. Too many pointless website overhauls betray these efforts.   

Web Design Trends Can Hurt Your SEO 

Slideshows or videos that play automatically can affect the speed at which your website loads, which, in turn, can be detrimental to both user experience and search engine optimization. A higher Google ranking is much more desirable than a shiny website feature. Again we reiterate: it’s great to wow your clients with website design, but it’s just as important to ensure that you do so in a way that won’t punish your UX or search engine ranking. 

Example of Forgetting Website Design Trends and Winning SEO
For most organizations, the game is won or lost on search engine results pages. The Peak Ed built website for CADS ranks second for this search query. 

Design Trends Change Constantly

Web design is no different than any other form of fashion; trends disappear as quickly as they emerge. If your goal is to have the very latest website design, it’s a job that will remain forever unfinished. Clean, crisp, functional, fast-to-load websites that are easy to navigate will never go out of style.  

Web Design Trends to Avoid 

Consider the revolving carousel known as the website slider. A poor delivery mechanism, the website slider is clicked on by almost nobody. They typically display poorly on mobile devices, and are not readable by the screen readers used by the sight impaired. While fading from favor, they are still prevalent, but serve as an example of an overused stylistic trend that puts fashion ahead of function. 

Web scavenger hunts are another hot trend right now. Having users play games, seek clues, or otherwise earn their way to new areas of the website can be fun in certain isolated instances, but it’s certainly not something we would recommend for an e-commerce website or anyone else attempting to populate their sales funnel. 

If, at the time of your reading this article, you find yourself saying ‘those trends are not even trends anymore’, well, that’s kind of the point. We encourage our clients to stick with the tried, tested, and true. Remember, your website should work for you, not the other way around. 

Example of forgetting website trends and growing your business
A scavenger hunt is a great way to amuse a captive audience, but it probably won’t help you sell a power tool to a busy contractor. 

Next Steps 

Peak Ed Designs has built our reputation on the strength of high-functioning, timeless website designs. Our builds emphasize user experience and search engine optimization, while never sacrificing visual appeal. In short, we want to help you stand out and grow your business

If you want a website that strongly represents your company, while providing the path of least resistance for your customers, we’d love to talk. 

I want a website that helps my business grow.

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