Our Pick of Web Design Trends for 2019

As our design team enter a new year, they always take a moment to look ahead to the year to come. What will 2019 mean to the web design world? What will the big trends be? What will matter (and what won’t) when you design your 2019 dealer website?

This year, we wanted to share some of our insights with you. So with no further ado, here are 10 of our top web design predictions for 2019:

If your website isn’t already thinking about mobile first, then it’s behind the pack – and our designers know that mobile first is going to be even more important for 2019.

Your website should always target itself at the biggest group of users – and that means visitors on mobile devices. Car dealer websites are no stranger to mobile users – most of you will have over 50% of traffic on these devices already – and so we can’t afford to be initially designing your website to look great on big desktop computers as we did in the past. Start small and think about design, function and leads.

Linked heavily to mobile first design, your websites have to be swift and adaptable, loading quickly to offer the best possible user experience.

Here at Bluesky Interactive we are constantly focusing on improving your website page speed – developing our products intelligently so you don’t need to worry about this at all. After all, we know you’d much rather be focusing on the fun stuff!

We predict a lot more of this in 2019 – we foresee a move away from the square, uniform website tiles of 2018 and towards a more eye-catching, angled look. These simple design elements can help keep your customer’s attention, as well as performing the clever function of leading the car buyer through your website.

Do you think this is the future?

Here at Bluesky we are no strangers to the power and impact of a well-execute video background – just check out a few of our current websites for examples. We do predict however that 2019 is the year that these stylish, rich media design elements will hit the mainstream.

Dealers that think ahead will be able to provide high quality, slick brand videos to replace the traditional image backgrounds – meaning they won’t have to use boring stock videos and will stand out from the crowd.

Have you ever been on a website with some simple but satisfying animations? Maybe a button grows in size slightly when you hover over it, or a phone call icon wiggles temptingly. These are micro-animations and they have the effect of making your experience of a website slicker, more satisfying and more intuitive – and that should make you more likely to enquire on a car.

We see judicious use of these nifty little effects becoming one of the key ways to make a website stand out from the pack in 2019.

A niche industry like the automotive world often has a problem of websites looking very similar. After all, dealer websites all tend to have a used car search, a servicing section, offers and contact pages – and so on.

However, this uniformity means that consumers are likely to struggle to tell dealer site apart – which is why we think unique sites will stand head and shoulders above. Thankfully Bluesky sites are bespoke designs – meaning you aren’t stuck with a template design that does your dealership a disservice.

Web design isn’t always about transformation – and we think 2018’s big trend towards “flat design” (that is, modern flat colours, no bevels etc) is just going to continue gaining strength into 2019.

The main change is that flat design isn’t enough alone – as we mention above, your website needs to be unique to keep delivering excellent performance.

White space can be a scary prospect – which is why non-designers tend to lean towards filling every inch of space on a page. However, white space and minimalism can actually make your site easier to use, as well as helping it to look more sophisticated.

We recommend you embrace the emptiness and focus instead on keeping your site simple, easy-to-use and classy.

Whilst your site might be minimalist, that doesn’t mean your fonts are. Typography in 2019 gets large, bold and dramatic – and unique fonts can really help to give you that distinct identity. Whilst some manufacturers are very strict on what fonts dealers use on their websites, this doesn’t mean you are stuck looking exactly like everyone else – you just need to think outside the box.

In year past we’ve regularly encountered concerns over whether web users will know what the hamburger icon (the little three bar icon that represents the menu on mobile devices) actually does. 2019 however is the year that this icon reaches full saturation.

By being present on every leading website we no longer need to worry that this is an unfamiliar function – instead, it’s a standard, commonly understood tool. We therefore recommend using it to ensure consistency and ease of use on your dealer websites.

So there you have it – Bluesky Interactive’s predictions for web design trends in 2019. Have we missed anything you think is a 2019 essential? If you want some more inspiration, feel free to check out our latest portfolio work for some automotive ideas.