Business websites are evolving all the time. Just take a look back at old images of Amazon.com from the 1990s if you want to see how much things have progressed. In 2018 a number of new trends came along, again changing how businesses should present themselves in digital format. Designs change like the wind, so it can be advantageous to stay on top of them. The following are some of the stand-out design innovations from the last few months. Use them to your advantage.

Maximalism

For years, digital marketers implored businesses to cut back on on-screen clutter and embrace minimalism. The theory was that having less stuff on the screen would make it easier for customers to find what they were looking for. But with so many sites now adopting the minimalist theme, many companies realised that it was doing them more harm than good. They just didn’t look any different from their competitors.

Enter maximalism, the new web design philosophy making waves in the industry. Maximalism is the opposite of minimalism – it’s the idea that more onscreen action is better, at least for some businesses. But like minimalism, it has rules. Just as minimalism needs plenty of well-proportioned white space and complementary fonts, maximalism also relies on a kind of symmetry. In some respects, it’s actually a lot harder to get maximalism to work because it’s so bold and daring.

Maximalism doesn’t have to be brutalist, but it can be. We’re talking full-screen graphics, large fonts, computerised typesets, and brash colors. It’s not a style that tries not to be offensive.

Floating Menus

With PC and phone screens growing every year, website designers are now experimenting with the idea of floating menus. The basic idea is to get rid of clumsy, fixed-menu systems and replace them with something more elegant, streamlined and user-friendly. Whether the trend will genuinely catch on remains to be seen, but businesses hope that always having navigation nearby will cut down on scrolling time and make it easier for customers to begin the route to purchasing a product.

Floating menus don’t have to be intrusive, especially if they fit in with the rest of the website theme, but designers have to be careful.

Video Elements

According to Full Funnel Digital Marketing, the purpose of a website is to generate more sales for the business. But many firms now have such complex products that simple static pictures don’t adequately convey information.

Video elements provide a potential solution. Unlike regular video, which is still difficult to seamlessly integrate, video elements offer a kind of hybrid between still and motion, like a GIF. Companies will hard-to-understand menus, or product designs can use these video elements to improve the user experience. Specific details can be looped so that visitors can watch them over and over until they understand.

Motion Fonts

Typography is the backbone of modern web design, providing businesses with a plethora of beautiful fonts for exciting their customers. Today, it seems like there’s a typeface for every business theme, from restaurants to banks. But what comes next?

In 2018, motion fonts have been growing in popularity. Motion fonts are usually based on a specific typeface, but with varying boldness. For instance, a motion font would appear as a video starting with a thin typeface and growing gradually into a thicker one.

Motion fonts are by no means a fringe project. Some of the biggest names in the tech industry, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, have all gotten on board, hoping to make these new typefaces standard across the web. Whether it will prove to be a fad remains to be seen, but with 64,000 axes of variation, there are plenty of ways designers could experiment.

Systematic Design

In essence, this means keeping all motion and visual elements consistent, no matter which channel a customer is using. Having a system in place actually makes the design process much easier for companies. With set rules in place, there’s less guesswork that goes into creating new online and offline content. Master UX tools take a lot of the hassle out the process too, allowing businesses to retain their aesthetic, no matter how they’re trying to spread their message.

The Rise Of Illustrations

So far, most businesses have focused on photography to sell their products. This makes a lot of sense since people want to see what they’re buying. Until something dramatic happens, this state of affairs is likely to remain, especially in retail. But some companies with more complex products are beginning to find utility in illustrations or photo-illustration composite images.

Dropbox, for instance, has begun using illustrated work to advertise its cloud products. It’s hard for the company to really capture people’s attention visually because what it sells is so intangible. But now, with the help of artists, it’s starting to use illustrations as a way to bring its storage services to life.

Fewer Straight Lines

Straight lines are the bread and butter of minimalism. But their days may be numbered if recent website design trends continue. The new direction is to include more rounded and organic shapes for things like click boxes and background images. Far from creating a cluttered impression, the style feels quite natural and certainly more friendly than typical business website design. It’s a bit out-of-the-box, but it seems as if right angles have had their day. Take a look at the payment company Stripe’s website to see this trend in action. Harsh corners are a thing of the past.

Companies are also looking to use color differently to complement the new design language. Soon you’ll be seeing slowly changing and vibrating colour segments which change as you scroll down the page. Again, the idea is to make websites feel more engaging and alive.