These Tricky Web Design Trends Can Ruin The Look of Your Website: Tips and Examples

Table of Contents

Intro

There’s no secret that, in 2019, it’s important to launch a high-quality website. Basically, it’s the way a user introduces their business, works, and art to the potential audience. Same to your promo, the website you work on should be as beautiful, comfortable, and trendy as possible. Without a doubt, it’s not easy to stand out from the crowd today! The thing is that the startups have any resources to use for it. As a result, the more helpful tools other businessmen and companies use, the fewer chances you have to stay unique.

Fortunately, now you do not need to waste money on the services of the expensive web designers. Why? Just because you can be a designer by yourself! Today, you’ll figure out how to cope with tricky web design trends. In a word, this post will be your ultimate guide on how to set up a stylish website and use all the web design trends properly. That’s why soon we will make a detailed analysis of the winning and the failing designs.

What should you know before we get started?

The last decade brought online users multiple attractive and easy-to-manage things that refined online projects. Before it happened, we used to overpay big money for boring and poorly featured sites. They looked primitive and did not have voguish (or at least convenient) functions.

Back in our days, now users have such evergreen must-haves as:

responsive web design, which adapts to the gadget a visitor uses to enter your site,
mobile-friendly design, which increases your website traffic in a great way,
mobile-first design, which is even better,
visitor-friendly interface to make your project a go-to place,
flexible settings, (both for you and for visitors)
search engine optimized the design to make the site fit any requirements,
easy-in-use navigation, etc.

Initially, there are also some basic features you will need. Among such options, there are:

newsletter popup for news and special offers,
maps to show the shortest way to your office,
blog to become closer to the audience,
and social media integration.

When it comes to social media, you get even more traffic than it was expected. For these simple reasons, we recommend you to study all the most popular networks. Knowing the way they work, you will understand how you can increase site visiting stats. Needless to say, you will need to register your own accounts for business. Start with these 4 most visitable places:

Instagram,
Twitter,
Pinterest,
and Facebook.

Each of them has unique statistics. For example, you can read our previous post to know how Twitter stats actually work.

To say more, we also have many customizable and simple web design elements. They can make your website more user-friendly. With it, people will like visiting it but to get a regular audience you need something more. Start with classy design elements like:

MegaMenu or hamburger menu,
counters,
infographics,
background vids, and other top-notch visuals.

Then move to a few effects like:

Parallax effect
or Lazy Load effect.

Other vital options you should always remember about

And only when you are sure that the website is comfortable and user-friendly, you can move to add your content to it. Still, before you get started, let’s mention some more important features any website owner should always remember about! What are the things any online project requires to be well-liked?

First off, never forget about the loading speed. It should be excellent to make online users love your site. In case there are any delays, make them disappear. All in all, you have less than 5 seconds to catch the attention of a prospect. Moreover, never overload the site with third-party content and make sure it displays only after the main one!

Secondly, make your pages or items to be found easily. To become the owner of a popular site, you should let its visitors find everything and anything. And do it quickly and without a hitch!

Among the other options, there’s translation-ready design, mailing list, and things like that. Use them to boost your traffic in a trustworthy way.

Plus, you should pay special attention to the typography you use. Of course, it should suit the look of the website but, before all else, your fonts should be eye-friendly. To illustrate, check out these 15 best readable Google fonts.

Finally, now it’s time to move to web design trends. How to work with them? How to understand which ones are helpful. What are the web design trends that can easily be overused? This post will answer all your questions. Ready? Steady? Go!

Creative Web Design: Visuelle and its advantages

Let’s start with a good one! Here is Visuelle – a bright example of creative design, which was made for modernism fans. As you can see, this design looks voguish enough to get the attention of the audience but what’s inside the beauty?

#1 Winning Web Design Trend: Counters

Among the features you definitely want to use for an eye-pleasing website, there’re incredible counters. Basically, they make a nice way to showcase important information. In fact, the human brain is a weird and complicated mechanism. It recognizes visual elements faster than other types of information. That’s why counters are your must-have. To say more, our brain remembers visual info for a longer period of time.

What can you introduce with the help of counters? Actually, anything that is somehow connected to numerals. For example, it could be:

the number of customers, who are satisfied with your work,
the number of sales,
the number of cases, and much more.

On the other hand, there is another cool web design element – the countdown counter. As the name of the trend says, it shows how much time there’s left. You can use it to highlight a special offer or emphasize the new goods arrival.

#2 Winning Web Design Trend: Minimalism

Although this design was made for creative purposes, (so you can see that the website looks kinds modern and unusual) the structure of Visuelle is still minimalist. Why? On the first hand, simply because minimalism is always in trends! On the other hand, minimalist design is the best solution for creative websites.

Let’s say that the components of the web design should harmonize with each other, As you can see, Visuelle’s design is already colorful and contains many eye-catching details. To create a visual balance, such a design requires minimalism. This step protects the website from overload and allows you to use complicated designs at the same time.

Among the main features of the minimalist design, we can see such things as information provided in a clean and clear way, (e.g. contacts) so it will be easy to find them.

#3 Winning Web Design Trend: Animated Particle Background

Honestly speaking, this point is a real zest of the mentioned web design. In case you still haven’t heard of Animated Particle Background, here’s your must-see! It’s a leading web design trend of 2019.

Without a doubt, even if you have never heard of this trend, you totally saw Animated Particle Background at least once. These days, it’s a wonderful alternative to a custom hero section on the web page of your website. Many years ago, the effect was only used to create such things as snowfall or raindrops. Without a doubt, progress never stays still! Thus, now you can improve your website look using Animated Particle Background.

Being lightweight, these UI elements won’t influence the loading speed of your site. Just make sure you are not overusing this web design trends because even the breathtaking things can become awful when you use them too much! All in all, Visuelle is a magnificent example of successful usage of the trend.

Failing Web Design: Casino Website

At first sight, looks like the showcased below design has everything you may want to use. Icons, CTA buttons, rates, images, numerals, and counters – are just to name a few. Needless to say, this home page is extremely storytelling and it’s the first problem we can see.

#1 Failing Web Design Sign: Showcasing All Content at Once

Unquestionably, the home page is the main page. Usually, it’s the first page a visitor sees, so the way your home page look influence the next actions of the prospect. It makes them want to view out other content or leave the site. For these simple reasons, website owners want to interest the visitors ASAP. They want to showcase everything at once.

As a result, such users add as many details as possible and overload the home page. Showcasing all the content at once, you destroy the web design. It won’t be eye-friendly anymore, which will confuse the customers. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t cram all the info of the entire online project and put it to the home page.

The right main page design should have the next features:

eye-friendly look,
simple navigation,
and interlinking.

On the whole, it should contain only the most important information, which will guide the visitor to the other pages.

Talking about Latest Casino Bonuses website, it has such failing web design signs as:

lots of homepage sections,
multi colored design, (the elements do not harmonize with each other that makes harder to follow the navigation)
many columns that have a lack of dividers in between.

To sum everything up, such solution makes the content of the site perceivable and hardly identifiable. In case you want a visitor to have tired eyes, here’s what you should do.

How to fix it?

If you look at the screenshot above and see something quite familiar, don’t be upset.

Let’s see how you can fit it! So, to improve your web design, follow these instructions:

use the home page to showcase only the main info,
use a simple and clear layout to avoid labyrinth designs,
make sure the sections of the home page are separate one from another, (fix it with the help of dividers and color contrast)
prefer bold captions and readable fonts,
clearly explain what each section if for.

Good Example: Tempores

Here is how you can use many bright colors but have an eye-friendly and clean web design at the same time. Opening the live demo, you will see that this website theme also has Animated Particle Background feature but the home page (as well as any other page) is not overcrowded.

#2 Failing Web Design Sign: Wrong Color Scheme

Gently speaking, your color scheme is the basement of the website. It matters and matters a lot! Firstly, the colors you choose influence your visitor’s final decision-making. Do they want to stay on the website or will continue researching? That’s what colors are about! To say more, many eCommerce website owners say that the properly chosen color scheme increase sales. Besides, there’s no doubt that colors and shades awake needed emotions.

And here’s one more reason why you do need to take care of your website’s color scheme: colors are treated as corporate identity. Other words, if your company has red and white as the main colors for logo or something, these colors should be the main for the design of your business site.

What’s wrong with the colors of Latest Casino Bonuses website home page?

they use 3 different colors for CTA buttons,
they use almost all the basic colors for icons of a single page: green, (both light and deep) yellow, blue, (also in 2 variations) red, orange, white, and black,
they use the background with light color and white font with it,
they do not have a corporate identity at all.

In a word, the named website just has all the possible and impossible shades. As a result, a visitor simply loses concentration.

How to fix it?

To create a winning web design, never overuse the tricky trends! Among such web design solutions, there are bright colors combinations. You know, expressive shades are voguish but even the most unusual colors require harmony. To get it, you need to:

find your basic color or colors,
study the principles of the right contrast creation,
figure out what are the most popular color combinations are,
research of the colors meaning,
and, finally, analyze your web design.

Resources

Luckily, nowadays, even users with the tackiest taste are able to do their best in creating color combinations. The thing is that there are so many free resources you can use. They show the most winning color combinations, allow you changing hues or shades, and even upload your custom colors. For example, just upload a pic you are going to publish and see what background colors can feet it.

Coolors is one of such useful online resources. This tool is a fast color scheme generator but you can find its analogs as well as to create a perfect color solution.

#3 Failing Web Design Sign: Don’t Miss Trust Signals!

Talking about today’s web design trends, there are literally tones of elements and features. However, the most important components of your website do not depend on recent trends. Still, many website owners are too busy to take all the features and add them to their web design, These guys forget about such must-have things as trust signals.

If you’ll have a closer look at this casino site, you will see that there’s actually no place for contacts. Alas, it’s the first trust signal you should make! Although somehow users will be able to navigate to ‘Contact Us’ page, it’s not the same! Contacts should be visible and easy-to-find section!

Plus, viewing the screenshot, we can see that the next page has the problem with colors again. There’s no contrast and content hierarchy also requires hard work.

How to fix it?

Well, just make sure you have created a separate page for your contacts and added it to the menu. By the way, experts say that there actually should be 3 places for such info. You’ll need to use:

header,
footer,
and separate page to publish contacts there.

more details

Graphical or Animated Web Design Elements You Should Be Careful With

This part of the post is about thicky web design elements. They are stylish, they are marvelous, they are visually-pleasing and attention-grabbing. And they can ruin your design in seconds. What are these damn good and dangerous components? Here they are.

#1 Tricky Web Design Trend: Cinemagraphics

To make a long story short, cinemagraphics became popular nearly 2016. Since then they remain one of the most frequently used web design trends. Cinemagraphics are high-quality images with a moving element. They make the online project more dynamic, which provides for stronger user engagement.

Using cinemagraphics should be a careful thing. They should:

fit the look of the site,
be without multiple details that grab the attention from your content,
avoid bright colors if you already have them for other web design elements like fonts or icons.

#2 Tricky Web Design Trend: GIFs

Before cinemagraphics appeared, GIFs were extremely popular. Actually, they still are and here’s the first web design mistake we are going to talk about. Without a doubt, website owners enjoy adding GIFs to their designs because:

it should entertain online visitors
and catch their attention.

However, there are so many disadvantages you have to remember about! To start with, GIFs should never be overused. They can influence the quality of the website because:

GIFs are quite heavier than conventional static images,
these elements load longer,
they support only 256 colors,
it makes the moving image pixelated.

To sum everything up, GIFs are not always visually-appealing. Thus, make sure you use these web design elements sparingly because you don’t need a flashy website. Just look at the screen above! How long can you stare at the image without having your eyes tired?

#3 Tricky Web Design Trend: Video Backgrounds

Same to other mentioned element, video backgrounds can distract from the main content of your website. If used improperly, they will be just visual noise. In case you do want to add a video background, focus on the ones that don’t have too much motion. Keep in mind that these elements are for the background only, not for the main promo!

Here’s Monstroid 2 – a positive example of a professionally created video background. The most important features you should look at when choosing a video are:

the moving picture is not too bright,
it’s not too fast as well,
it has minimal content displayed over the video,
this content is readable and harmonizes with its background,
the fonts are readable,
the logo and buttons are visible and can’t be missed.

Trendy Visual Effects That Can Ruin Your Design

Parallax Effect

Among today’s must-haves for designers, site owners, and everyone who deals with website design, there’s Parallax scrolling. Originally, this attractive visual effect was created to be used in video games. However, it appeared that Parallax can improve a website without a hitch, so this web design trend has been useful for years!

Basically, Parallax creates a magnificent illusion of depth and motion when a user scrolls the pages. It looks amazing enough to catch visitors’ attention and guide them through the content of your online project. The trend brought success to many big players but it has a few disadvantages. In 2019, when technologies become more and more progressive, so there are even more downsides.

So, here are the main reasons why this well-known web design trend can ruin the way your project looks.

First of all, overusing Parallax may transform your website into a real disaster. In the end, visiting your website will make people feel like they are tripping.
Secondly, online users already got used to Parallax effect. That’s why it becomes trite. As a result, in 2019, Parallax effect is not so exciting as it was a couple of years ago.
Originally, Parallax uses a lot of graphics and JavaScript to work. This, obviously, influence the website’s page loading speed. As you may know, by default, JavaScript is quite resource-intense. It can easily slower your website loads. We already told you about the importance of this point, so make sure you avoid everything that slows the site.
In addition, Parallax is not good for mobile devices. Opening it on a small device, you can see that Parallax on mobiles is hardly impressive. Also, in 2019, over 50% of online users prefer surfing the web space via small-screen gadgets.

Needless to say, you still can get the advantage of Parallax effect. There are many minimalistic styles that won’t bring disadvantages to you. Here’s Aromacafe – a wonderful example of smartly used Parallax scrolling.

Infinite Scrolling

Infinite scroll is another trendy web design effect. This is the technique, which loads content continuously when your visitor scrolls down the page. It eliminates the need for pagination. With the help of Infinite scroll, a website owner can showcase their items, photographs, blog posts, etc. The effect became extremely popular after the successful using on multiple social media websites like Twitter. Still, it doesn’t mean that any website requires this web design trend!

Same to Parallax effect, Infinite scrolling can ruin your design and make people want to go to another website. Keep in mind that comfort goes before of else! Got it? Now let’s see why Infinite scrolling way become your website’s downside.

The first mistake of many users is using the footer and Infinite scroll at the same time. Just think about it! A user wants to see the footer to get to the next page or see your contacts. They scroll down the page with your goods but the lost of items never ends! And the faster this poor person scrolls your page, the more new items it loads.

Such an endless scroll will quickly irritate a visitor, so think twice whether you really need this trend to be a part of your website design. In case you still believe that you need it, don’t forget to turn off site footer on the pages that have Infinite scroll.

To sum everything us, here’s why using Infinite scroll may be a bad, really bad idea.

Your footer becomes unusable. When the visitors got used to the fact that footer is the place where they can find any important link and secondary information.
Performance degrades: using this web design trend for a website, you endlessly load more and more content into memory every time. It has a negative impact on web page look because the browser will have more work to do to render this page.
On the other hand, using bookmarking and back-to-to buttons become problematic.
Plus, analytics are also harder to implements when you are using Infinite scroll.
This web design trend is generally hard to use.
The scrollbar of your website becomes unusable. It will also become untrustworthy.
Infinite scroll irritates people. This web trend is can hardly be called an honest one. It shows people that they are almost done (with scrolling the pages and reaching the footer) when they are actually not.

Attention-grabbing Web Design Trends You Should Use Smartly

Pop-ups

Using pop-ups is always a risk. For many years pop-up windows have been a simple but working way to catch the attention of visitors. It allows you to provide different kinds of info like news, promos, sales…

This web design shows a winning use of the pop-up window.

However, same to all the tricky web design trends named in this post, pop-ups come with their downsides. You should use this element smartly! Overusing pop-up windows (adding them to every single page or making them appear too often) website owner just tastes the patience of the visitors. Nobody likes closing these windows all the time, especially in case a promo shows up when they are reading or scrolling the page.

General Tips to Avoid Mistakes with Your Pop-up Windows:

To avoid such common mistakes, make sure that the visitors have their time to search for the necessary items before a pop-up window appear.
Besides, do not use pop-ups more than 1-2 times per single session.
Finally, use pop-ups for important or interesting information only. It’s OK to offer subscription or inform online guests about a special offer but don’t use pop-up windows for every product.

Call-to-action Buttons

CTA buttons may be one of the simplest and the most successful web design trends at the same time. Shortly, the call-to-action button is the button, which is meant to make a visitor perform some actions. These web design elements are so popular just because having them a website owner can get more traffic and increase sales. It happens quickly and without cheating. And, as always, if used improperly, CTA buttons can ruin the look of your website.

To start with, here are the main features your CTA button should have:

the design of the button should be the same to the design of the website,
the color of your CTA should harmonize with all the other colors you used to design the web page,
at the same time, there should be a contrast to highlight your CTA button,
the text you are going to use should be laconic,
plus, it should be readable and clearly explain what the button makes,
also, there should be whitespace and soon we’ll tell you why.

Why do you need whitespace?

Here are 3 main reasons you should build the web design with whitespace in mind:

First off, whitespace can make the page more legible.
Secondly, whitespace focuses the attention of your online visitors on certain important elements of the page, including the CTA button.
Thirdly, using whitespace around the text, you help the visitors to better understand its meaning.

Talking about texts you will use for CTAs, here are the most popular and effective words for actions:

Start
Stop
Build
Join
Learn
Discover

But how can CTA buttons ruin your design?

On the first hand, don’t do these buttons too small because visitors simply won’t see them. Keep in mind that the size of the buttons you place on the home page is crucial. Otherwise, it simply ruins the look of the site and has no sense at all.

Here is a very small CTA button.

The color of CTA matters as well. These days the most popular solutions for CTA buttons are green and orange. Still, you can use any other tone. Just make sure that it looks nice with the rest of your website’s design. Use the color wheel below to find the very shades, which will make the right contrast.

That’s how the button looks without contrast. It’s not the element, which grabs the attention of your online guests.

To end with, the work of CTA buttons is same to pop-up windows. If you use too many of them, it will irritate the visitor. Thus, never ever overuse CTA in case you want them to be helpful!

Experimenting With Web Typography

Needless to say, web design trends are not only about features. They contain typography as well. And, as many popular things, voguish fonts can also be tricky. The best thing a beginner can do when they are going to experiment with web typography is not to do it. In case you are still going to be creative, well, let’s discuss the most common mistakes that can kill your web design. Today, bold fonts are still in trends, so what should you know about them?

#1 Bold Web Fonts: Common Mistakes

Bold typography has always been popular. They are huge enough to say what you wanna say, so website owners usually prefer this style. Needless to say, even such clean thing as bold fonts can ruin your website appearance.

Here’s what you should remember to avoid common mistakes while choosing web typography:

never overboard with it,
your online project is not the demo of unusual web fonts, so don’t mix multiple styles,
think of content readability before all else,
remember about the sleek uniform look, which makes your website classy,
don’t let the fonts distract the visitors,
make web typography you use to highlight the message you deliver/ the items you showcase.

Following these tips, you won’t let fonts decrease the site’s conversion rate. In case you want to use a bold font, be sure that it fits not just your design but the topic of the site too!

#2 Bold Web Fonts: How to Use?

As expected, now it’s time to explain how and when you should use the bold web fonts in web design. Before everything else, keep in mind that they shouldn’t be used for any part of the textual content. It makes the website look like trash of large syllables.

This one is a charming example of using bold web fonts.

To create an ace web design with this trend, follow the next steps:

stay away from such things as faux bold fonts;
avoid using heavy fonts for text emphasis and always prefer bold version of the fonts to its heavy version;
remember that the heavy version is for headlines only,
use bold fonts rather than italics for emphasis,
use bold fonts only when it’s really needed,
try creating contrasts with bold typography,
use it to aid skimming of instructional texts.

#3 Bold Web Fonts: Using Resistant

Finally, keep in mind that you do need to use resistant when choosing bold typography. Understand that it’s hard to read the whole paragraphs of text set in bold font. We already agreed that the bold fonts are meant to create emphasis. So, how can they highlight something when all the text is bold? Such a wrong step will slow down the reader. As a result, a visitor will simply leave your website to find the next, more readable resource.

#4 Creative Web Fonts

Needless to say, there are many creative web fonts. They look unusual, which usually attracts fresh website owners. However, these fonts can literally make the eyes of a visitor burn. To illustrate, here are 3 popular creative web fonts you should avoid.

Curlz Mt

Vivaldi

Viner Hand

Although these web fonts can look cute, believe us, you don’t want them to be a part of your business or personal site!

#5 Mixing Web Typography Styles

It’s OK to use 2 or 3 fonts at the same time. Still, this step also requires special attention. Otherwise, the result of your work may look like this.

And here is a successful example, which shows how different web fonts can work together.

What’s the secret of smart web typography mixing? The main thing you should think about is, yep, the harmony again. Remember that usually the typography examples taken from the same font family look awesome together. Search for the famous font families to find your favorite one.

#6 10 Top Trendy Web Fonts Combinations in 2019

And, for those users, who still want to use something trendy and bright, we selected top 10 web fonts combinations that are popular in 2019. They are:

Merriweather and Montserrat
Josefin Sans and Amatic SC
PT Sans and PT Sans Narrow
Fjalla One and Noto Sans
Alegreya and Lato
Playfair Display and Source Sans Pro
Roboto and Roboto Condensed
Raleway and Roboto Slab
Open Sans and Open Sans Condensed
Oswald and EB Garamond

As you can see, all these combinations (even such creative as the one with Josefin Sans and Amatic SC that’s on the screen above) come with easy-to-watch and extremely readable fonts.

Final Thoughts

Now, looks like it’s time to sum everything up! As you can see, digital progress brought us endless possibilities. As a result, these days, any user can become a successful website owner. There are so many cool and top-notch things that improve web design! Still, the more voguish elements appear, the more chances you have to overuse them. Always remember that everything is good when used smartly.

In this post, we told you about the next web design trends:

Counters
Minimalism
Animated Particle Background
Color Scheme
Trust Signals
Cinemagraphics
GIFs
Video Backgrounds
Parallax Effect
Infinite Scrolling
Pop-ups
Call-to-action Buttons
Bold Web Fonts
Creative Web Fonts
Mixing Web Typography Styles

Needless to say, these are not all web design trends popular in 2019. However, even a couple of them can ruin the appearance of a website. Thus, we hope that this post will be helpful for our readers. Good luck with your website!

How do you think, which of the named web design trends are the most dangerous for the future of online projects? Are there any elements, features or trends you use regularly? Don’t hesitate to let us know what you think about it!