The design of your website plays a significant role in the credibility and reliability of your business or brand. People associate poor website design with low-quality service or cheap practices. So, does this mean you have to update your website as new trends emerge constantly? Well, not really. This article will explain how you can set up your website to reliably bring in visitors and build positive, long-term customer relations for your brand.

Modern Design Trends – Why Accessibility is King

If you are looking for a design that will last you a while, you should start by accounting for the major shifts in trends today. Modern design is changing rapidly. As new trends emerge, they become instantly popular thanks to social media. As a result, designers are resorting to eye-catchy websites that pop. But the lifetime of such designs is limited. If the usability of your website is taking a hit to accommodate flashy designs, it is worth reconsidering your approach. With hundreds of options available on the market, your visitors have many choices.

So, how can you get ahead of your competitors?

Enter – Accessible design.

The answer is simple, make your websites more accessible. Many websites on the web are designed to look appealing, but often they do not rank well in terms of usability. Accessibility is essential to inclusive web design and has positively impacted business growth. Even if making your website inclusive is not your primary concern, you should still strive to make your website more usable for good results. You can take the edge over your competitors by designing a user-focused website. In doing so, you will improve the user experience of all visitors and expand your customer base by reaching a demographic that is often overlooked. 26% of the US population suffers from some kind of disability. With more than 90% of the US population having access to the internet, this translates to potentially one in four US internet users suffering from some form of disability. Designers are now accommodating this often overlooked demographic, websites and social media platforms today are moving towards inclusive design to capture a larger market than their competitors.

Website Trends

1. Delight
   

Delight web design example, used by Airbnb.

This design is well known for the positive user experience it provides. Notably, this design is used by the home rental platform, Airbnb. This web design style includes animations, sounds, and tactile gestures to help user navigation. This design has a lot of potential for accessibility. Using animations, sounds, and gestures gives you multiple options to accommodate people with sensory limitations.

1. Typography
   

Typography web design example, used by Ade Mills.

The Typography used involves minimal imagery and instead uses bold text and contrast to beautify the website. This design gives you a lot of room to experiment with different combinations of text and colour contrasts to create a website that speaks to your audience. Usually, the text of the home page is large and provides good contrast with background colours. Using a combination of bold text and strong contrast makes your website easier to view for people with visibility issues. In addition, designing such a website usable with text-to-speech software will make it accessible to those who rely on text-to-speech for navigating the web.

1. Visible borders

Visible borders web design example, by Suomitro Sobuj.

This design is created using a grid structure to neatly arrange different webpage elements. Webpages designed with this style are easy to navigate as the various sections are easily distinguished. In addition to that, playing with the contrast can make the overall navigation much easier. Using the proper combination will allow all of your users to absorb the information presented on your website at a quick pace.

1. Linework
   

Linework web design example, used by Breef.

.Similar to the Visible border design, the Linework design uses a similar principle of visibly separating different sections of the webpage. This style gives you the liberty to add your way of separating different sections. Enhancing the usability by adding graphical elements and larger text can significantly improve the user experience and make it easy for everyone to interact with your website.

1. Colour Contrast
   

Colour Contrast in web design, used by CDG.

The trend of using bold colours has been on the rise; many modern websites use colours to attract user attention to their pages. Designers have the liberty to use bold texts and illustrations with colours that help them stand out from the background. Designers can use different colours and text combinations to make their websites more attractive and user-friendly.

What Makes a Website Accessible?

Design is an extensive process. Every minor detail goes through thorough checks and revisions to reach completion. Designing a website to be accessible requires that you follow some fundamental guidelines. The World Wide Web Consortium has laid out four accessibility principles that help you determine if your website design follows accessibility standards. Known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, these are as follows:

• Perceivable
  Is the website content consumable in different ways? For example, providing ALT text for images.
  
  
• Operable
  Is the website easy to use, and is it usable with keyboard navigation?
  
  
• Understandable
  Is the interface easy to understand and access?
  
  
• Robust

Is the website compatible with assistive devices?

These principles ensure that accessible design on the web follows a particular set of standards. For more detail, you can read the full document here.

Conclusion

Having a website for your business is a must these days. As people spend more and more time online, it is important that your business is reachable to your customers. A lot of website designs today are made to look appealing but lack ease of use. With social media, such websites gain much attention but sacrifice user retention. If you are building a website that will stay fresh for the coming years, you need a design that emphasises usability. Accessible design is great because it works to improve the user experience for all users on your website. At CDG. we have experience in developing websites that help accelerate the growth of our client’s businesses. Our award-winning designs represent our dedication to our client’s online success. For more information on our services, contact us here.