WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, powering countless blogs and websites. Whether you’re looking to create a website for your business, start a personal blog, or compile an online professional portfolio, WordPress is an invaluable tool that can simplify the process. The CMS also allows you to customize your website in all kinds of ways, through templates, plugins, and more.
If you’re trying to figure out how to design your website, the number of options available to you can be overwhelming. But if you hope to create an effective website that will attract online visitors, you’ll have to stay up-to-date with the latest web design trends. So, if you want to build a new website or keep your existing one looking sharp, then read on to learn about the hottest WordPress website trends currently on the rise.
1. Chatbot Assistant
Many large companies have chatbots integrated into their company website because, when properly utilized, a chatbot feature can serve as an excellent customer service tool. Chatbots can provide visitors to your website with instant support, answering their questions in real-time and helping them navigate the website.
A company’s support team can only handle so many tickets at once, and this can lead to backup and long wait times. If a customer has to wait for too long to get the help they need, then it’s very possible they’ll just move onto your competitor instead. Chatbots solve this problem by acting as reinforcements for your customer support team.
While in some cases chatbots can be very sophisticated and utilize artificial intelligence, even the most basic chatbots can help you out. You can program them to answer frequently asked questions (FAQs), collect relevant customer information, and provide help in other areas. For example, Domino’s Pizza includes a chatbot on the homepage of their website that allows customers to easily place and track orders:
Ideally, chatbots will be able to answer any basic inquiries that a visitor to your site may have. In the case of more complex issues, a chatbot can collect information from the customer that will help your support team solve a given issue. Thus, when the issue is passed onto your human support team, they will already have all of the information they need to resolve the customer’s issue, enabling them to solve the problem in less time.
2. Bold Color Schemes
A bold color scheme can work wonders for your website. By combining colors that work well together and layering them throughout your website, you can effectively draw a visitor’s eye to any place on the page.
You can also use color to help define your brand. If you’re a swimsuit company, then maybe you want to project a playful, carefree image. Or perhaps you’re a tech startup and you want to make your company’s website look sleek and futuristic. In any case, the color scheme you choose for your website will play a significant role in shaping how visitors view and understand your brand.
While a bold color scheme can be a great tool that makes your website stand out from the herd, try not to go overboard. Incorporating too many bright colors into your website design can make it look cluttered and overwhelm visitors. Stick with a color palette that uses bold colors sparingly but effectively. For example, this homepage for Contrave, a prescription weight loss pill, uses just a few colors to achieve simple, yet bold, results:
3. Mobile Optimization
With more and more people browsing the web using mobile devices, it’s now of the utmost importance that you make your website mobile-friendly. In 2016, a study by the internet monitoring firm StatCounter found that, for the first time in history, more people accessed the internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers. That was four years ago and, in the time since then, mobile devices have become even more popular and sophisticated, suggesting that mobile internet browsing will only continue to trend upwards in the future.
Optimizing your website for devices like smartphones and tablets is the best way to capitalize on these mobile users. If your website is cluttered, difficult to navigate, or takes too long to load on mobile devices, then you’re likely going to lose out on traffic from a lot of mobile users. In addition to that, Google’s search algorithm factors in how compatible your website is on mobile devices when calculating search rankings. So, by optimizing your website for mobile devices, you may be able to actually improve your search rankings as well.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to make your WordPress website mobile-friendly, then look no further than Astra, a popular (and free) WordPress theme. Astra is a highly customizable theme that comes with a slew of features, one of them being excellent mobile compatibility. Just take a look at the mobile template example below:
Wrapping It Up
As new technology emerges and consumer desires change, web design will have to evolve to keep up with these trends. WordPress itself is constantly changing and, in order to maintain a successful website, you and your business will have to adapt and change along with it.
At times, it may feel difficult to keep up with the latest web design trends — and, indeed, it may be. After all, it’s not always easy to keep up with such a dynamic marketplace. However, if you want to keep your visitors happy, show up in search engine results, and stay relevant, then staying on top of the latest web design trends is a necessary task.
Luckily, WordPress makes it easy for amateurs and those who aren’t so tech-savvy to build functional and visually appealing websites. So, when using the platform to build a new website or update an already existing one, just remember to keep the above trends in mind. Implementing one or more of these features can end up having a huge impact on your website’s performance.