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As we head into 2019, many businesses are starting to think about their marketing plans for the upcoming year. Is a new website going to be in your budget for next year? This is a great time to take stock of the state of your current website and think about whether or not you need to update or refresh. If you have already started a growth-driven-design-based website redesign, then you are on the right track and are already planning to make continuous improvements to your site throughout the year (good for you!). For the rest of us, however, here are a few web design trends to keep an eye on in 2019 as you plot a new website redesign.

1. Mobile First 

It's no secret that we are more attached to our phones than ever now. We've known this was coming for a while. In 2015, Google told us that one of the key web design trends was that mobile searches had overtaken those on desktop for the first time. In 2018, Google made the shift to mobile-first indexing - this means that the mobile version of your website is the one that Google will include in their index. Between this shift form Google and user behavior trending more towards searching on phones, it is more important than ever to make sure that your website is in tip-top shape for use on a phone.

What does this mean for your potential 2019 website redesign? It means that you should think carefully about how your users are interacting with your website - take a look at your analytics. What pages are they visiting? How long are they staying? As you dive into your redesign, keep these findings in mind and make sure that you are thinking first and foremost about how your site performs and looks on a mobile phone. Is it easy for users to navigate and interact with the content they need on a smaller device? Think about designing first for mobile, and then expanding your design for desktop and tablet so that you are sure users can do and see everything they need to on a mobile phone.

2. The Need for Speed 

In today's busy world, people's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. If your website lags and is slow to load it's likely that your web visitors will just move along and check out one of your competitors.

It's not just our lagging attention spans that you need to worry about when it comes to website speed, it's also our Google overlords. In July of 2018, the Google speed update went live - in this update, Google included using mobile page speed as a ranking factor for search results. More than almost any of the other web design trends, speed needs to be at the front of your mind from the very beginning of your design process right through to the launch of your new site and the subsequent continuous improvements. This news isn't new, but the importance of it will only grow in the coming year.

3. Video Backgrounds

As we move into 2019, it's clear that video is becoming the king of the web. Cisco predicts that, by 2021, 80% of all web traffic will be video - making video one of the most important web design trends going forward. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but video can be worth so much more.

Using video on your website allows you to convey your message quickly and compellingly. One trend that we are watching for 2019 is the rise of video backgrounds and header images. These allow you to grab the attention of your users right away when they land on a page of your website. People are naturally drawn to video in ways that aren't equaled by text or images. They want to keep watching to see what happens.

As you think about a 2019 website redesign, think about how you can incorporate video to showcase your brand and your message.

4. Chat bots

Web design in 2019 is all about user experience. How can you make your site as easy to use as possible for your customers? What can you do to make sure that they are able to find the information they need and ask any questions they have as quickly and simply as possible? One answer is chat bots.

We have already seen these little guys popping up in the corners of many websites offering to help answer your questions. As the technology continues to evolve, we will be seeing more and more of them.

Properly used and configured chat bots can be extremely helpful to both you and your customers. From an end-user perspective, chat bots allow people to ask questions and get the information that they need quickly - a positive and easy interaction that will leave them with a good feeling about your business. From a business perspective, chat bots allow you to gather valuable website visitor data for your sales and marketing teams to leverage.

Are you finding that people are coming to your website and asking the same questions? Perhaps you need to make that information clearer and easier to find on your site. Perhaps it's an opportunity for a blog or social media post. Yo

ur users are telling you what they want - and for a marketer, this information is golden.

Whether you're looking to adopt new web design trends as part of a redesign project or as part of the continuous improvements you make to your website during the growth-driven design process, the web design team at THAT Agency can help. Contact us today to find out how!