7 Industrial Sector Website Design Trends You’ll See in 2019
It’s a new year – we aren’t the first ones to tell you that, are we? With each new year, we start to notice more and more trends. Call these “business resolutions,” if you will. But, instead of focusing on how to get a grasp on your finances or how to live healthier in 2019, businesses think about things like “How can we provide more value to our current clients in 2019?” and “What can we do to improve our bottom line?” That’s where website redesign comes in.
If you’re in the industrial sector and are considering a website redesign in 2019 in order to reach your overarching company goals, you’ve landed on the right blog post. Here are 7 website design trends you’ll see in 2019 – specifically chosen for their relevance to the industrial sector.
7 Industrial Sector Website Design Trends You’ll See in 2019
Responsive Design
Let’s start with an simple one. Any website designer worth his or her salt has been implementing responsive design for a number of years now. It’s just about industry-standard at this point. Responsive design means the design is built to scale to any size, from mobile to tablet to laptop to desktop. Previously, a site would have a mobile-specific version of the site and a desktop version of the site. Now, things are a little more simple: the design adapts to fit any size.
Icons
Three or four years ago, icons were all over the place. Then (likely as a result of overuse) they disappeared entirely from designs. Now, we see them back in 2019 designs – but sparingly. Icons can make a big impact when used to highlight strong imagery and boost meaty content. As you consider website design in 2019, keep that in mind and use icons when they’ll most make an impact.
Video Headers
Video headers are one of the hottest new trends in website designs. Many companies are featuring videos as the very first element a user sees when he/she enters the site. It’s a great way to brand your company culture from the get-go, but beware: videos can slow your website speed down significantly. We’ll talk about that next.
Lighting-Fast Load Times
Is load time really a design element? Probably not, but it deserves mention, since so much of website design in 2019 revolves around quick-loading elements. A savvy designer will not be handicapped by limitations with website speed, but will know how to work around them. For instance, in the video headers that we mentioned above, there’s a number of tactics we can use to render a high-quality video that still loads quickly.
Hamburger Menus
If video headers are one of the hottest new trends in website designs, hamburger menus are the other hot new trend. This design decision is driven by mobile – users are so accustomed to seeing the hamburger menu on their mobile devices that it isn’t such a leap to see it on desktop versions of websites. As a bonus, this type of menu clears up a lot of space for designers to work with. Instead of muddying the home page image (or video!) with a navigation bar, the hamburger menu allows a beautiful and engaging full-screen experience.
Parallax
Parallax has been growing in popularity over the last year, and I think we’ll see it used in a lot more websites in 2019. Parallax means “alternation” and is a scrolling technique on websites which creates the illusion of depth. The background and foreground elements on a web page scroll past at different speeds, making the 2-D page look 3-D. (Read more on the interesting history of parallax here. It involves Walt Disney!)
See an example of parallax in our case study of wire mesh manufacturer Banker Wire.
Integrate parallax sparingly on your new website to avoid overstimulating your users. When used appropriately, parallax will add value to your websites by improving user experience.
Atypical Scrolling
Here’s another trend in website design that we first started really noticing in 2018 but will take off in this new year. For most websites, a scroll of the mouse takes one further down a web page – just as you’d naturally assume. With atypical scrolling, though, a scroll of the mouse could scroll a user horizontally. Or, a new element could fly into the same space without the page progressing further down. See some cool examples of this new type of scrolling on ChromaCode’s site, a biomedical company that redesigned their website with us in 2018.
There are of course many more website design trends that will pop up in 2019, but these are the top 7 that we’ve identified for industrial sector websites. If you’ve been considering a new website in 2019, now is the time! RedMoxy Communications works with B2B businesses like yours and will work with you to integrate the best design trends for your unique audiences into your new website. Contact us here for a free consultation.