As 2019 approaches… web design and digital marketing trends are already shaping up to become another exciting year for small businesses online. After the panic of GDPR, mobile site speed and Guttenberg all dominating the headlines in 2018, small businesses can now cast one eye on 2019 as we draw another productive year to a close.

With this in mind, our Cheshire web design agency have complied a list of various web design and digital marketing trends we predict will define 2019. Join us as we cover a range of topics that will apply to all business types… let’s begin!

Customer Branding Interaction

With mobile search surpassing desktop, the days of just providing a great product and/or service are long gone! Businesses now need to engage and interact with increasingly savvy online customers around the clock…

Chatbots
With 1.4 billion customers interacting with chatbots, studies reveal 40% of larger businesses will look to implement intelligent assistants or chatbots in 2019.

Customers want fast, instant answers with minimal fuss and chatbots provide a low-cost solution to providing first line customer service 24/7. As your web design agency, we can implement a chatbot on your website with no disruption.

Social Messaging Apps
2 billion messages are sent between people and businesses on Facebook messenger each month. You cannot ignore this statistic, and with almost every business using at least one social media platform, it would be foolish to ignore the free chat service!

Free and easy to configure, you can also include automated response, meaning as a business owner, you can choose to respond and reply to messages when it’s convenient for you.

Voice Search
In 2016, statistic from Google confirmed 20% of mobile queries were voice search with this set to increase to 50% by 2020.

With Google Home and Alexa now on the market, the increasing use of voice search has made it important for companies to rethink digital marketing strategies to ensure your website is fully voice optimised in 2019… even Dominos Pizza now allows you to order using your voice!

If you would like some tips on how to optimize your website for voice search, we covered this topic with 3 ways voice search will change SEO. You can also use online tools such as Answer the Public, to help shape your content to answer customer queries.

Predict Customer Behaviour

The art of predicting customer behaviour is almost impossible! If you are like me, you will search for a cheaper price elsewhere, research customer reviews and/or contact customer service for more information, so instead of trying to convert visitors into customers, just being there with the relevant information is imperative to shape decisions and preferences.

Micro Moments
Coined by Google as “Micro-Moments”, the search engine offers a great insight into digital marketing by exposing what to include in your content that will deliver your branding messages and experiences that will meet customer needs. With this in mind, we feel influencing customer behaviour will play a major role in digital marketing in 2019.

Product Comparison
In addition to Google Micro-Moment, Google Ads will also be releasing a major update in 2019 by introducing product price benchmarks, similar to Amazon, this will provide a product comparison chat to ensure customers can find the cheapest products on the market.

Web Design

Video marketing
Every year, web design will often adapt, change and evolve to the latest digital marketing trends. As a Cheshire web design agency, we do advise that video marketing can have it plus and negative points, but the statistics are hard to ignore, and we firmly predict video will continue to be implemented into web design in 2019… (statistics)

• 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video.
• 72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate.
• 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions.

Cheshire Web Agency Yearly Review

Even if you take away just one item from this blog and implement into your web design or digital marketing strategy for next year, you will hopefully start to reap the rewards.

If you would like to discuss how any of these trends could impact your website, or simply want any advice on the art of growing your website, please get in touch with your local Cheshire web design agency.

Hope you all have a great Christmas and a wonderful new year.