Website carousels or “sliders” are a popular element in modern web design. Shifting banners all occupying the top real estate of your homepage layout conveys a sense of dynamism, diverse imagery, and an opportunity for multiple different CTAs. At least that’s the drive behind the fad.

Rebranding is a great way to breathe new life into your business, but brand leaders are often quick to assume a rebrand means a facelift for the entire company, website included.

You don’t need a new website just because you’re rebranding your business, but it might be a good idea.

Your website is the contact point for online consumers, so it’s natural to want it to be in line with rebranding efforts. Whether this means a new website or simple changes to key elements depends on you.

Intentionally “bad” web design might be just what you’re looking for to set your brand apart from the competition. Web design brutalism—design that avoids traditional tactics like intuitive user interfaces and instinctual layouts—is a fairly new web design trend, but it’s catching on in certain circles. Is brutalism right for you?

There’s no denying that icons are a huge part of your company’s brand. People recognize images faster than text, and in most cases, your company’s logo (icon) will be the first thing that pops into a customer’s mind when they think of your company.

Icons are great for brand recognition, and they’re a good way to give your audience subtle visual clues about what to expect from your brand. So, with these benefits in mind, doesn’t it make sense to incorporate more iconography throughout your website?

Not necessarily.

Web design is a funny thing. You can do everything right, follow all the best practices, develop a unique brand presence, and still walk away empty handed.

Why? It’s because all of the “best practices” you’ve heard about aren’t as easy to implement as you thought.

We saw a lot of great things in 2018, but as far as websites go, we saw people making the same mistakes over and over throughout the year—usually having to do with viable web design practices deployed incorrectly.

Let’s review a few of these and offer some insight into where they went wrong.

The modern attention span is going down faster than Facebook stock, and the design solution is simple: throw all the bells and whistles at your web page to keep audiences tuned in.

People like shiny things… and things that move… and things that respond! So, lots of animations with every interaction should increase engagement, or that seems to be one mantra. Research, however, indicates that using animations incorrectly can have a reverse effect on your traffic and bounce rates.

Now that 2019 is here, we’d like to take a look back at 2018 to review a few key trends and see what we can learn from them. It’s no secret that cyber threats are on the rise. Malware, ransomware, phishing scams, you name it—the threats are there.

But contrary to popular belief, threat actors don’t generally “break in” to these systems; they exploit known vulnerabilities in website security that give them access. Gartner predicts that through 2020, 99% of security vulnerabilities exploited will continue to be the ones known by security professionals for at least one year.

Web design—as a concept and a practice—is most often pictured in terms of user experience, user interface, and visual aesthetics. Traditionally, designers work with marketers to make data-driven, goal-oriented design choices that change the way a website looks, works, or responds to user interaction.

Today, smart marketers and designers understand that strong web design is powered by analytics-friendly design decisions.

The advent of popular DIY web templates offers cheap and easy solutions for getting a website up and running – which is great for when your budget is tight and your expectations of your web presence are minimal. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of web templates makes it easy to blend into the crowd. Templates are the wrong solution if you’re approaching the web with your brand front and center, which you should be if you’re operating in a sizable industry with big competition.

From the top to bottom, everyone is balancing a budget when it comes to advertising and design. The question that any business operating in the age of smart phones needs ask is whether your web presence is the particular point at which you can afford to cut corners. A basic overview of the contemporary market landscape yields a resounding no.

Icon use in UX web design is nothing new. Designers have taken advantage of icons for decades to tailor the user experience to be more intuitive, and the trend continues as popularity for mobile device usage rises. Icons serve an important role in helping experienced mobile designers make the most of on-screen real estate, direct the conversion conversation, and bring important elements into the spotlight. That’s why it’s essential to understand UX icon design best practices while you avoid common design mistakes that can influence icon success.