There is so much accessibility, functionality, and easy-to-understand usability in Facebook that it rendered websites for brands a little bit obsolete. Virtually everything you can do on a brand’s webpage can be recreated, faster, on Facebook: there’s no need for a domain, no need to pay a web designer to design your page, and no need to encourage people to click four or five extra times to get what they need.

More importantly, that’s where the people are. 

Facebook gives you a page. 

You populate it with things for sale, brand values, and contact information. 

Your audience, who is likely already on Facebook, takes it from there. 

Easy. 

However, as with most things during 2020, the pandemic brought Facebook’s physical limitations forward. 

Brands sought out different platforms for virtual experiences that went beyond the function-first approach of Facebook and other socials. 

Zoom. Hangouts. Houseparty. 

The difficulties of hosting virtual events on an ephemeral platform are obvious. What people needed was different to a social media platform, or a way of communicating. They needed a whole world. 

Enter, the website. 

Websites: A Functional Explanation

In the absence of other things – going outside, meeting friends, travelling, anything that has to do with people – websites have stepped in to give people a taste of the possibilities of indoor experiences. Some websites have made themselves into virtual cities and stalls. Others are built around gamification. Even more others change frequently, not just the design, but also the functionality. 

For people whose primary internet usage for the past seven years has been Facebook, the possibilities of websites has more than tripled what they can do on the internet. Not to mention, it’s also shown them something that is easily forgotten: the possibility of web design itself. 

In the early days of web design, it was all about what you could do with this new technology. As we became more familiar with it, websites grew sleeker and more sparse. Doing things ‘just because’ gave way to doing things in a way that would maximise profitability. 

The internet grew up. 

Web Design 2021

And then COVID-19 happened. 

Facebook and other socials started to struggle. 

And the web slid back a few years. 

Right now, we’re in the midst of a 90s resurgence. Nostalgia is a powerful incentive in any case, but coupled with what’s happening around us in 2021, no wonder people want escapism in any way they can find it. 

Web is an excellent way to provide that escapism, and talk about your brand. 

Why Web?

Web is really the only medium where brands can directly interact with their fans, and one of the only mediums where they can have a little fun. With a captive audience desperate for any sort of engagement, this is an excellent opportunity to capitalise on the current situation and create brand design that really stands out. 

More importantly, that entertains and informs. 

With websites, a key facet of design is that you need to reward people for taking the time to visit your web-page, particularly if there’s no reason for them to do so. Web allows an opportunity to engage with and explore the brand without the pressure to purchase, and the space to take in a different side of the brand. 

Any side of the brand. 

Web in 2021 is a blank slate. Everything else on the web is so structured – so Facebookized – that the slightest step out of the norm feels like a big luxury, something that comes around only rarely. 

Tips for Web Design in 2021

• Maximise every aspect of the browser. From customised messages in the tabs to hidden links, good web design can create a miniature world on the web that allows deeper access to your brand than a Facebook page or a simple brand page. 
• Experiment. With web design, nothing is forever unless you want it to be. Print campaigns and newspapers are permanent; web design is fluid, and can be done just ‘for fun’ without the risk that, ten years from now, it’ll be dated.
• React, interact, act. Websites allow you to use aspects of your brand voice that could go unheard in Facebook or a corporate website. Allowing your brand’s personality to shine through can help hold your audience’s attention. They’ll remember a fun web-page that they spent a few minutes on. 
• Design to brand. Use hidden links and easter eggs if you have to, but bring your brand’s personality and voice forward through every part of the design. 

This isn’t to say these are the only tips, or that Facebook cauterised web design. 

It’s the opposite. In the 15 – 20 years of the internet, we’ve honed and created a way of displaying information and an easily-understood visual language that is almost universally recreated. Now that the mold has been set, it’s the perfect time to break it, stand out, and speak above the crowd. 

What’s next for websites post-pandemic?

There are people who might say that the age of the website will end when lockdown does. 

That isn’t strictly true. 

While websites might experience a dip in their newfound popularity, they won’t go back to pre-pandemic levels if a website is done well. With web, there are no real limitations on what you can do. 

Put simply: 

You can sell a pair of shoes on Facebook. 

But to make people drool over your shoes, allow them to try them on virtually, make shoe-shopping fun, you need a website. The web, as they say, is forever. 

The post Facebook Killed Website Design appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

This had happened for a very simple reason. Facebook was eating up all internet traffic and it had become pretty superfluous to put time and effort behind a site. To make matters worse, Facebook was giving away a lot of free traffic, too, so brands could be found more easily on Facebook organically than they could on Google.

This made the need for sites nearly redundant, because even if you had a great site (and more so if you were a B2C brand), your site was not going to get that much traffic. People would even initiate most searches on Facebook, and even when they didn’t, your Facebook page would probably rank even higher than your own site on Google.

But times have changed. Facebook has stopped giving any real organic traffic, and now the only way to be seen by a good number of your customers on the platform is if you pay for the privilege.

Even when you do pay for the visibility you’re hampered by all the limitations of the platform, and you’re still showing your content on a site that’s doing its best to keep people on it. Your site, on the other hand, can be built in a way that works for your business, not Mark Zuckerberg’s. He’s rich enough.

So what should you do? You should build a site that’s at the centre of your communication efforts. You should, if I may say so myself, work with an agency like ours, one that understands what all your messaging is and then finds a way of displaying it conveniently for your audiences.

I’m going to be very kind and assume that anyone you work with will get the technical side of things correct. It’s a long shot, I know, but there’s a ton of great resources to cover that. If you need one you can see the ultimate web design checklist that covers it all. No use reinventing the wheel.

What I’d like to cover today is the high level plan of the site, the part that is much more about communications than about the actual nuts and bolts of the site. Anyone can get that right. 

From a content and structure point of view, a good web design and development agency, or a good web planner, will understand that any website should:

Be built to convert.

The website should be built to convert your visitors somehow or other, either into customers, into leads, into sales, or into fans. You should never waste traffic. Build a plan for every kind of visitor that you get and make it a point to have a goal (or multiple goals) for each. You won’t hit that goal with every visitor, but I can guarantee you that you will not hit a single goal that you don’t set. If you’re selling online, for example, then your primary target will be to close a sale, but if your visitor is not ready to purchase then you should at least get them to give you an email address or to share a product. Failing that you can place them into a bucket to hit them again with advertising at a later  

Cater for your different audiences.

While also making it seamless for them to navigate through. Some people will land on your site because they are ready to buy, others are there to research a product or solution that you offer. Make it easy for clients to choose where they want to go, and lat your site out in a way that will solve your visitors’ problems without creating new ones for them.

Host your content in a way that’s easy to browse and share.

It’s all well and good if your site looks incredibly sexy from miles away, but if the experience is frustrating for users, then it’s not really fulfilling its function. Some people are awestruck by inspirational experiences, and if that’s what you’re aiming for, then you should excel at it, but don’t play around with fancy stuff if you’re giving your audience a 5,000 word blog post to read. Just give them the text and informative images.

Tell your visitors about you, who you are, what you stand for.

It might sound obvious, but make it easy for your visitors to find out who you are and what drives you. If people find it hard to learn about who’s behind a brand, or at least why the brand exists, then they’ll have trouble trusting it.

Act as an extension to your social media activity.

Your website should include versions of the content that you create for social media. I’m not saying that you should have a feed that automatically pulls posts from your Facebook feed, that’s lazy, but you should make it a point to keep your website as updated as you would update your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. But the medium is different, so make it a point to create content that makes sense in the context of a site.

Once we’ve established some of the key elements that need to go into a great site for the roaring 20s, I think that it’s time to see how we will get there. It’s not as hard as it might seem, all it needs is a bit of thought before we get started.

In order to do this you need to start off your planning before you start designing and developing, and you should work on a strategy for your site that will tie down:

• Your audiences
• Your goals (for each audience, if they differ)
• Where you’re going to get your traffic from
• What you’re going to do with your traffic
• What behaviour you’re expecting from your visitors

And in the end…

Websites are here to stay. They’re more important than ever, and you need to work with a good partner to get yours right. A good website will give you control over your narrative and will help you stand out from the crowd. If you want to have a chat about your next site, feel free to get in touch, we’d love to help you. 

The post How a great web development agency can build a site as the centre of your communications appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

For a lot of brands, it’s the only form of storytelling they can have a little fun with. From glitchy graphics to hidden links to slow-scrolling pictures, web design enhances what’s good about your brand to mythic proportions. It’s the Willy Wonka method of storytelling, everything bigger and brighter and more beautiful. 

In 2021, web design isn’t just storytelling; it’s crucial storytelling. Without a good website now, the losses aren’t even calculable. 

And that’s without taking into account the fact that without a website, your brand might not exist on the greater planes of the web. 

So. 

Let’s talk about web design. 

The State of Web in 2021

As with most trends, what happens on the web starts out in real life. 

What happened in real life is this: people stayed indoors. Mobile phone users glued themselves to their phones. Internet usage skyrocketed. 

Websites ruled. 

In Malta alone, 91% of the country was online by January 2020. It’s estimated that, during COVID-19, internet usage increased to 100% in countries most afflicted by it – think Italy, the United States, even Malta. Online traffic surged. 

Globally, transactions online increased 39.7% from January 2020 to January 2021. Global conversion rates increased by 40.3% for the same time period. 

Everywhere, everyone, was online. 

Which meant that everywhere, everyone, had something to say about web design. 

Web is the first impression your audience will get with your brand. Websites that load slowly, are difficult to access from mobile devices, or are just plain ugly are going to affect your brand’s reputation, even if you don’t know it. 

A negative review left on Facebook is bad. 

A person who clicks through your website and leaves without saying anything at all is worse. 

85% of B2B and 79% of B2C consumers put a lot of value into the experience they have with a brand. That includes their first impression of your website, and how easy it is to understand. 

Web Design 2021

Here’s what we’re seeing in Web Design for 2021. 

Silverscreen Life

Let’s face it: we’re unlikely to move past the pandemic in the next year or so. In the meantime, there’s been a resurface of digital events, digital experiences, and digital lives, from online lectures to virtual lives. 

Interactive websites can make the separation between virtual and IRL seamless. 

Do you remember the early internet? All those clickable, hidden links?

This is similar, though without the 90s pop-up ads. 

Think of clean, clear space and elaborate, moving visuals – parallax is making a comeback this year, and we’re a fan of it for clean websites that want enough animation to compel and hold the attention. 

Our tip: add animations. Animations help keep focus where static images struggle. The best of both worlds? Have a static image with some animation. Additionally, make sure your website can load up content fast – optimise it for that purpose. 

We See You

Seeing other humans has become a little more rare since the early days of lockdown. 

Is it any surprise that web design is suddenly, understandably, loaded up with images of humanity? Avatars, filters, memojis: human identity built to bridge a connection. Images of humans and personalised services bring the website back around to experience. 

The experience of your life, of how you look at the world, of how you understand. 

It builds connection. Seeing yourself reflected in images, your capabilities echoed in design, helps consumers feel like the brand considers them at all stages, not just to make purchases. It’s conversation and connection without being obvious.  

Dark mode or light? Colour or black and white? Larger text, smaller text?

Customisation features allows for audiences to really feel like the brand understands them, understands their needs, understands that sometimes they need text to be bigger or to have a different colour-palette for legibility. Each website a nest of interfaces. 

Each interface unique. 

Our tip: don’t skimp on accessibility. More people than you know struggle to read tiny text, tell colours apart, or to manoeuvre around a factory-built website. Give your audience as many ways of customising it as is possible, and remember that most of your consumers will be accessing your website through their phones or tablets. 

Remember When…?

We’ve been writing a lot about nostalgia recently, and with good reason. From clothing to web design, 2021’s bringing nostalgia back. 

In web design for 2021, this means tactile response. It means a physical moment made virtual. Web pages will scroll, turn, twist, move, just like the pages of a magazine, a leaf of postcards, a selection of notebook doodles. Websites look lived in and used and heavy. 

Websites are interactive. With so much of our lives conducted virtually, this interactivity, this physicality, helps connect a user to the moment. They’ll remember it. 

They’ll want to relive it. 

Forget the sleek, flat, 2020 gloss. 2021 is all about the heavy physicality of the past, ‘60s curves, ‘70s patterns and ‘80s colours.  

Our tip: What’s your favourite nostalgic memory? Is it the glitchy spatiality of Windows ‘95, or the sweepy, flowery patterns of ‘70s mandalas? Add that into your website – as text, as a graphic, as a hidden link. Nostalgia makes people feel better, think back to a better time. Happier consumers are more likely to remember you when they’re in a position to buy something.

Design With Purpose

There’s been a lot in the news lately about historical moments. We’re living through something that is going to be taught in schools, immortalised in memoirs, and taken apart by university graduates. What history is going to remember is who helped, who hindered, and who watched. 

Companies are expected to be the helpers. 

Brands are expected to talk about social issues. Audience loyalty, especially now, is a fickle thing to hold: with so many companies talking so much about so many things, it’s easy to switch to a company that better holds your values. We’ve spoken about this before, and we’ll continue to say it – your best supporter is always going to be who you cultivate. 

Web design in 2021 puts your loyalties at the centre. 

You have to talk about what you support. Sustainability? Community responsibility? Put it in there. Dig through your archives to showcase the diversity of your customers. Add a graphic to talk about burnout. Your audience wants to know that you care. 

In 2021, it’s fundamental that you do. 

Our tip: you have to have an initiative you’re proud of. Maybe you boosted your employees’ wages when so many other companies slashed them. Maybe you switched to environmentally-friendly packaging. Find your pride, and put it where people can see it. 

Softer, Soothing, Supportive

From gentle colours to feel-good news, web design in 2021 wants to uplift. 

This means a call back to simplicity. Clean lines. Pastels bleeding into one another. Colours. Whimsical type. 

Whereas 2019 was all about the corporate, the glossy, glassy, smooth, professional web, 2021 is about softness and feeling good and design that makes you happy. 

Our tip: Play around with colours, shapes, and text. We’ve had our fill of professional blue, corporate grey, and gentle beige. A pop of colour, a curlier text, can help liven up a corporate website – and show your brand’s personality a little better. 

Statistics for Web in 2021

We don’t like telling you what to do without backing it up with facts. 

Here are a few to get you started. 

• 55.64% of internet users come from mobile devices. 
• 68% of consumers expect better from businesses when it comes to digital capabilities. 
• 94% of people notice the appearance of a website first, and make the decision whether or not to continue using it on that appearance.
• People make up their minds about a website within 50 milliseconds. 
• Websites that take longer than 2 seconds to load abandon the website 38% of the time. 
• 48% of people decide a business’ credibility based on their website design. 
• 85% of users believe a mobile website should be as good or better than the desktop version. 

Web Design Going Forwards

We’ve made a lot of changes in the year and a half of the pandemic. 

Only some of it is internal. 

The rest is external: in the way we run our social media apps, the way we talk to each other online, the way everything looks. From sleek, flat, angular design, we’ve gone for softer curves, brighter colours, and better usability. As more of our lives become entwined with online, this is not likely to change. 

If anything, it’s going to become more important. Web is never going to be the same as it was before 2019. 

Neither are we. 

So hit the ground running, and get ready for the future.

And speak to us if you want to take this journey with us.

The post Web Design in 2021: Where We Were, Where We Are, Where We’re Going appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.