Voice Search will be a game changer in SEO

According to Comscore, voice searches will be 50% of all searches by 2020. Because of this, Google and other search engines are beginning to place more emphasis on voice search optimization. So, perhaps 2019 is the year you think about optimizing your website for voice search, too.

Although it seems like a brand-new concept, voice search technology has been around for a while: speech-to-text, voice dialing and the infamous Siri are all examples of voice search. Voice search essentially allows users to speak into a device as opposed to typing keywords into a search query to generate results.

Numbers to keep in mind when optimizing your website for voice search: 60% of all searches are from mobile devices and 20% of those are spoken. With these numbers in mind, the first thing you should do is make sure your website is responsive and loads quickly on mobile devices. You also should make sure your images are optimized and files compressed.

Also, as Google moves to the Q&A model, there will be increasingly less focus on driving traffic to your website from search engine results pages and more on mining your website for content. Thus, your efforts should be aimed toward ensuring that your website content answers questions and uses everyday language and structures that fit the way people talk.

For more information and tips on optimizing your website for voice search, check out our article Is Your Website Voice-Search Friendly?

Chatbots

Communication programs are nothing new. Chatbots originate from the research area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its primarily function is to replace human staffs in dealing with predictable inquiries (ie. frequently asked questions) and routine tasks. Over the last few years, chats have become more popular and affordable and it is now used by many online retailers. You may remember seeing small dialogue boxes that lets you type in a question to get real-time responses. Well, you didn’t actually think there’s someone on standby behind a computer, waiting for your questions at 3am, did you?

Chatbots will be an integral part of online customer service and marketing in 2019. So, if you run an online store or have an extensive FAQ section on your website, you may want to learn more about them.

Detailed Footers

The website footer, the very bottom part of a webpage, is often the most overlooked or an afterthought of the overall design – until now.

Typically, the footer is where you will find a website’s contact information, a search box, navigational links to important pages, social media profile icons, and perhaps a newsletter signup form. While it is not a must for your website to have a footer, but not having one may make it frustrating for some of your visitors to find specific information about your website or business – ie. who are you, where to find you, etc.

Other than improving the navigation flow of a website as well as user-experience, you can consider adding a simple contact form, Cookies notification, testimonials, social proof icons, mission statement, list of latest blog posts, a simple About statement and/or call-to-actions.

Are you using WordPress? Check out these footer plugins

Material Design

Material Design is a design framework developed by Google in 2014. Compared to Flat Design, Material Design has more depth and detail with grid-based layouts, responsive animations, padding, shadings and light features.

Material Design enhances user experience because it:

• Adds depth and life to flat design,
• Increases interactivity and liveliness with the use of animations,
• Focuses on user experience and is designed for multi-device experiences

So, if Flat Design is a bit too minimalistic (or limited) for your liking, check out Material Design.

Micro-interactions

Micro-interactions play an important role in user experience and usability. Typically, micro-interactions are used on clickable elements such as buttons and links. But in 2019, we will see micro-interactions go beyond that. For example, the cursor changes from an arrow to a pointing finger every time a cursor hovers over a link.

How to go about adding micro-interactions to your website? Start by making a list of the most common interactions on your website and then think about how an animation could improve the experience. Just remember, the key is not to go overboard with micro-interactions. Your goal is to enhance user experience, not make it more confusing.

Best ways to add micro-animations on your website:

• Animation between pages
• Animated input field
• Upload or download status bar
• Pop-up notifications
• Pull-down menus
• Anchor text animation
• Swipe feature (for mobile users)

Wrapping up

There you go, the top web design trends of 2019. As you can see, many of the web design trends of 2019 focuses on enhancing user experience and usability, in particularly mobile user experience and usability.