UX Design Trends 2020

No matter the industry you operate in, consider having a website a necessity, not a matter of choice. Your website will help create awareness by providing buyers specific information that they’re looking for. Your website can generate business, deliver strong messages, and enable your business to forge winning relationships for the long term. That said, just any other website won’t get you anywhere. There are more than two billion websites (and counting), however, only a handful of them get a substantial amount of traffic. Have you ever wondered why? The most important thing that differentiates a good website from a bad website is the user experience.

While good websites feature a fluid website and are easy to navigate, bad sites are too cluttered. Navigating these sites is a nightmare; no buyer wants to live. To get your target audience to rally around your brand, you need to create a clutter-free, responsive, and lightning-fast website. Your website design is the single most important factor that will impact your site’s user experience. To wow your target audience, you need to be very careful when finalizing the layout and design elements. UX design trends keep on changing with time. A design trend that is in-vogue today can fall out of favor tomorrow. To increase customer engagement, you need to stay on top of the latest trends. With that thought in mind, we bring to you a few UX design trends that will be huge in 2020.

Dark themes are here to stay

In 2020, we will see more websites embrace dark themes. iOS and Android have already announced their dark theme modes. This has prompted several apps to shift their focus on embracing the trend. 2020 will see the birth of websites that adapt to users’ environments. Before starting to work on a plan to embrace this design trend, you need to find out whether your app supports dark themes or light themes. Some big names that are dark-theme ready include Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix. Because people typically use these platforms later in the day, dark themes can drive engagement. On the other hand, websites and social media sites can benefit from lighter themes as they receive a substantial percentage of their traffic during the day.

Inclusive design is the new buzzword

Businesses understand the importance of designing a website that can be accessed by one and all. Your website design should appeal to people from all walks of society. Designers can no longer afford to commit the mistake of solving design problems from their perspective and must develop a broad outlook to create a design that is emotionally, physically, and cognitively suitable to every user. Make sure there are no barriers to accessibility for persons with permanent disabilities. Before your design team starts working on the design, clearly define the design goals, pointing out the elements that should be included in the design. Embrace design thinking that puts focus on the user. Designing for everyone (the essence of inclusive design) will help you cater to a wide user base, providing your business the visibility it desperately needs.

Hamburger menus to fall out of favor

A hamburger menu or hamburger icon is a menu icon designed to hide the traditional file menu. Hamberger menus are used to lend an uncluttered and clean look to websites. Though initially popular, hamburger menus are fast falling out of favor because-

• a)-They hide features behind an icon, which is not the best mobile design choice

b)-Users have to work very hard to access important products/services related information

c)-Having a hamburger icon in the top left corner will more often than not drag down the click rate because of accessibility issues.

In 2020, more businesses will dare to think out of the box. They will come up with innovative ideas to get rid of hamburger icons.

Chatbots to become more interactive and intelligent

Chatbots are the future of customer engagement. Unlike their human counterparts, chatbots can work round the clock, don’t demand a raise, and can help businesses overcome challenges that arise due to behavioral biases. Businesses around the world use chatbots to increase customer engagement and loyalty. That said, much work still needs to be done before chatbots go mainstream. Many chatbots fail to provide real value to users and are unable to have normal conversations. In 2020, more businesses will step up efforts to humanize their chatbots.

Future chatbots will be incredibly easy to use and capable of handling natural language variations, understanding slangs, emotions, phrases, and text structures. The focus will shift from designing just any other chatbot to an interactive virtual assistant that matches the company’s brand personality. This can be achieved by introducing avatars and selecting voices that represent the business on a personal level. To improve their website’s user experience, many businesses will use typing indicators, response buttons, and welcome/failure messages. Companies will provide their users’ multiple ways to interact, such as free-text typing incorporating autocomplete function and ready-made conversation flows.

More websites to use password-less login

One of the major downsides of password-based authentication is that users often forget their passwords, especially if it is comprised of special characters, upper and lower case characters, and/or numerals. More the complexity of the password, the higher the chances of the user forgetting it. In a study, around 28 percent of respondents admitted to forgetting their passwords ten or more times a year. To help their customers avoid the inconvenience of having to regularly reset their passwords, many businesses are transitioning to passwordless logins. In the not so distant future, websites will use face authentication, a PIN code, or fingerprints to authorize account logins. It is estimated that passwordless logins will replace passwords as the primary form of login by 2022.