We have had the occasion to meet with and service a large chunk of our client base and even new clients over the past several months and have noticed a few interesting trends that are paying off. This is a short, non-exhaustive list of the top 5 web design trends during the pandemic that we have seen so far. We also give you ideas about how to go about solving for these issues if you find yourself in a similar boat.
Top 5 Trends we are seeing
- Save cost by looking for better deals on hosting, marketing and managed services. No doubt this shouldn’t be a surprise as fiscally mindful businesses have looked to cut costs and save cash in the abrupt turnaround we have experienced. The good news is that there is always a capability to rebalance. Overbalancing can have negative consequences as well (that you may not see until they are playing out badly). A new customer had decided to move to their hosting to godaddy’s cheapest plan. This had a predictable outcome for anyone who has ventured those waters. They lost SERP ranking position, saw an increase in bounce rates and a decrease new leads. Their website went from a very fast and reliable hosting provider to one of the worst. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Easy fix migrating to a mid-range host and luckily no lasting damage. ProTip: If your website doesn’t load in under 2 seconds Google will make your site pay in rankings.
- Setting up the ability to schedule, collect payment, and automatically have an online meeting. This is surprisingly easy to setup and costs about $25/mo plus a small percent of whatever price you are charging to Stripe. The end result is similar to our WordPress Class Online Schedule tool. Great builtin funnels make refining the messaging at the bottom an easy task.
- Taking this time to create really good content. This one caught me totally off guard and has been great to see. This is the #1 item that every website owner should be doing on a daily or weekly basis if they want to compete. We can show you how to get this up and running for your business in a one hour class. The story telling and publication of quality content is one of the most positive web design trends during the pandemic that we have seen.
- Setting up online payments and pickup options. This has been related mainly to brick and mortar stores but is a cost effective way to keep people, and dollars, coming in. The long term transformation to business models, even in the small retail and food space, is going to really be redefining for the bar to enter as a new business in the future.
- Pivoting core business functions to online. Admittedly this is a risky proposition and challenging to accomplish without clear vision of what the desired end goal is. This ranges from creation of calculators to online proctoring systems and virtual walk through. A few examples that are fresh on my mind. Taking services and enhancing them, or augmenting them, with an online component is big right now.
We hope you are getting through this ruff patch for business owners right now and using the opportunity to compete harder then ever before. If not, then hopefully some of these ideas may inspire you.
