50 milliseconds is enough for visitors to form an opinion about the website. Thus, it’s crucial for any business to create a professional-looking and user-friendly website to engage the visitors and make them stay on the site. That makes web design essential for any company. Yet, web design trends change constantly and, in this article, you’ll find design trends that are out of time so that you can optimize them for the users.
7 Outdated Web Design Trends
We have compiled the 7 most outdated web design trends to help you keep your website modern, engaging, and efficient. So, let’s elaborate on the anti-trends so that you can avoid them.
1. Homepage Image Sliders or Carousels
Sliders and carousels hurt user experience and turn out to be not as effective as they were expected to be. According to the latest research, web visitors do not read past the first slide. What’s more, they distract the visitors, saying nothing about how they overwhelm the website and slow down page load.
A more effective alternative to sliders with rotating and changing content is an engaging image, photo, or video placed on the homepage of the website. Besides, today there are tons of tools and services to create fabulous visuals for your website and social media. Thus, for instance, you can use Crello, which is not only a photo editor but also an album cover maker, photo stock, animation maker, video editor/maker, and many more. Using this service, even non-designers can create pro-looking visual content for any purpose.
2. Complex Navigation
Menus with too many sub-menus require the visitor to search for the needed information and page when the main goal of the navigation is to simplify this task. Just bear in mind drop-down menus are out. Choose simple and minimal navigation for making it easier for users to find what they need fast and effortlessly. In such a way you shorten the user journey and increase the conversion rate.
3. Too Much Movement or Animation
Too much movement on a web page can distract visitors that results in poor user experience and low conversions. So, don’t overuse animations and backgrounds videos. Always ask yourself what is the purpose and if they bring any value to your customers and readers, if not it’s better to refuse to add animation or video to the page.
4. Aggressive Pop-Ups
One more way to distract the visitors as well as annoy them is to use aggressive pop-ups. What’s more, since 2017, Google has ranked websites and mobile pages with intrusive pop-ups lower in search results. Thus, it’s better to refuse to use too many pop-ups on your website. The better alternative is to use live chats, newsletter forms in the footer, or pop-ups that appear when the user scrolls the page to a definite place. In such a way you increase user experience and build an email list.
5. Obvious and Generic Stock Images
The web design needs to be engaging and reinforce your business’ messaging. Yet, obvious stock images won’t help you to achieve that, instead they make your website generic and faceless. It’s better to use branded photos and images. It’s a way to build credibility, enhance brand awareness, increase trust, and just make your website more creative and appealing.
6. Sidebars
It’s better to refuse to use a vertical sidebar for subpage navigation just because it’s not effective anymore. Overuse of banners ads is a reason that most users just ignore the sidebar. That’s why they are pretty inefficient and static. It’s recommended to add horizontal navigation and sub-navigation instead of the sidebars. Also, you can use sidebars for the blogs to display related posts, for example.
7. Dull and Muted Color Schemes
In 2021 it’s better to avoid using muted, dull, and boring corporate colors. Users find them not eye-pleasing. Vibrant colors are a better choice for your business website. Grey and illuminated yellow are considered the most trending colors of the current year. Try different combinations and schemes to find the best one for your brand.
Takeaways
You have only a few seconds to engage users and make them stay on the website. Avoiding these outdated design trends will help you to build a more appealing and pro-looking website that will convert visitors into customers and buyers.
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