You might find it challenging to launch or update your current event’s website due to the lack of time or budget.

However, a good online presence is crucial for the success of your business, particularly if you are in a competitive environment such as events where attendees judge your business by what they see on the first page of your website.

Liat Karpel Gurwicz, Head of Strategic Marketing at Wix.com, explores some of the most interesting concepts that you can use to create or update your event’s website and make it stand out.

Long-scrolling layouts

Everything we look at is at our fingertips – literally! Mobile devices and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have made people accustomed to long-scrolling and infinite-scrolling, whilst constantly seeing new content.

In this sense, either the site has a larger homepage with links to other pages, or the site consists of a single, long page. As websites get longer and longer, image and typography formats are changing in order to suit the requirement of this layout.

Compared to page-by-page navigation, long scrolling layouts work especially well for websites that want to lure users through storytelling, as you can mimic a multi-page site by breaking the scroll into clear sections. Moreover, due to the decreasing attention span of users, website owners must now focus on conveying their message in the most efficient and immediate way, rather than providing a lot of detailed information that users might just skim through.

The rise of long-scrolling layouts goes hand-in-hand with the trend of reduced navigation bars, because rather than waiting for a page’s content to load, consumers prefer to scroll through the page.

This trend can be presumably connected to the use of mobile devices for browsing websites. On a phone, it’s not as user friendly to have a large navigation bar with more than five options. The website is more likely to have a small number of necessary options presented in a slim navigation bar.

Draw attention with gifs and animations

Not only are gifs and animations popular on social media and messaging apps, but they can also give a sophisticated touch to a website as long as they’re not overused.

Since a flat design can look monotonous, more websites are moving away from static images and towards animations and gifs, which can help a website to stand out as well as pack information in a limited space. If overused, they can affect your website’s user experience and potentially turn visitors away from it. It’s important to consider whether animations or gifs add to your website’s story or personality before using them.

Gifs are great to add some dynamic content to a site without using complicated techniques or videos. It also helps accentuate important aspects of your website such as best-selling products, sales pop-ups, event countdown, etc., and bring it to the next level.

Animations can be used to enhance a site’s storytelling in order to make the experience more interactive and entertaining. They can also be used during the ‘loading time’ of your website to keep the user entertained, or as ‘hover animations’ to show off an element that is clickable, which can be used when showcasing your portfolio of previous events.

The Rise of Video Backgrounds

Video content is already strong on blogs and social media platforms, but designers are playing around with it in other ways.

Website backgrounds don’t have to be boring and static; background video and motion graphics make the website more engaging. Video backgrounds that are well-put together can liven up your site, and are perfect for showcasing projects, products or services.

They can set the tone to the website design or even create powerful branding messages. The main downside of this trend is the extended load time as people have to wait for the full experience to load.

However, many websites try to divert from this by using beautiful designed loading screens or animations (as mentioned above). It’s also important not to get too carried away, because using too many videos can overwhelm your site’s visitors and detract from the original purpose of the site.

Break the rules with flashy typography

Typography is a powerful visual medium that enables you to convey your brand or event’s story and personality; it helps set the tone and evoke emotion.

As device resolutions become sharper and text becomes easier to read on-screen, brands will be looking to push the limits of typography to appeal to their users. Moreover, using custom fonts is now easier than ever before, with numerous font marketplaces available.

Big, flashy typographies have been recently trending; it allows web designers to show off their creativity.

Leave your comfort zone and add colours

Every designer knows that the theme and colour scheme of a website reflects the event and brand’s tone, building an atmosphere and guiding the mind-set of visitors.

In the past, many brands and designers have typically stuck with web-safe colours. Nowadays, bright colours are popping around the web as edgy art is coming back, and more brands are being braver in their approach to colour.

Don’t be afraid to get out there and combine a variety of shades creatively as well as explore various hues of a single colour. The use of bolder colours is helpful in attracting the attention of users.

Google maps integration

Google maps is everyone’s go-to map service. Brands will continue integrating this service into their websites as well as customising its colours to complement their preferred web design and type of event that you’re hosting.

Authentic photography

Customers and users seek authenticity and originality from the brands (and events) that they use and interact with. In order for a brand to strike a connection with their audience, brands are now starting to move away from using stock imagery, videos and icons.

It’s difficult to convey the true identity of a brand if they use stock images, and as consumers have seen so many images and are able to identify them easily, they have a tendency to not trust such websites.

Businesses are now creating bespoke, professional content to represent their personality and convey their messaging in order to stand out from the crowd. The main disadvantage of wanting to use high-quality, personalised images is that it can be slightly expensive to create as you need to use a professional photographer.

Alternatively, there are some image banks such as Unsplash or Picjumbo that provide high quality original images that don’t look like typical, cheesy stock photos that we’re all so familiar with.

In conclusion

A functional and visually striking website is an essential business tool. Boosting your knowledge of web designing will help you build your brand and build up towards your event.

Whilst there are some exciting, bold trends this year that will encourage you to think out-of-the-box and be creative, ensure that you only choose the styles and capabilities that will suit your event or company.

Platforms such as Wix.com offer you many ready-made event templates that can easily adapt to your businesses’ needs. If you just want someone else to do it for you, take advantage of the artificial design intelligence tool (ADI), which can create a website for you within a few minutes, complete with text and images.