Most WordPress website design trends are eye-catching and user-friendly. Due to the flexibility of WordPress and its source code, you can implement many changes and designs to a WordPress website at any given time. However, in this article, we would like to discuss 20 WordPress website design trends of 2021.

20 WordPress Website Design Trends

As mentioned above, WordPress is very flexible, and you can add or remove features to it by installing official or third-party plugins. A website designer typically uses Adobe PhotoShop or XD to come up with a gorgeous design for a soon-to-be WordPress theme. But, the created project needs programming so that it can be a theme.

As a designer or a WordPress website design company, you can use some plugins that you can use on a client’s website to implement changes or redesign their website. Nowadays, page builders have eliminated the need to have a full-time team of developers and designers at any company. As a web designer, you can take advantage of the tools found in the WordPress repository.

Elementor is the most popular page builder in WordPress, and it currently has over 5 million active users. The plugin comes with a few extra extensions and plugins that allow you to design any website that the Elementor page builder is installed on.
Sliders. WordPress sliders such as Smart Slider 3 or Revolution Slider can transform your website. You can create gorgeous-looking sliders with a call-to-action button that could potentially convert visitors into potential customers on any website.

But what are the WordPress website design trends that you should consider adding to either your or a client’s website?

1. Page Builders

Due to the success of the powerful Gutenberg editor that WordPress introduced, many WordPress users turned into using page builders such as Gutenberg that are block-based, and using them doesn’t require any programming knowledge as everything is visual. You can see the changes as you are making them.
The closest competition to WordPress’s Gutenberg editor is Elementor, Visual Composer, and Beaver Builder. These drag and drop page builders are much like Gutenberg but offer a lot more options and flexibility to users. More specifically, many designers and developers have been using Elementor to design a WordPress theme and proceed to sell it on third-party websites.

2. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

With the help of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, you can offer users a brand new experience that they have never seen on any other websites before. Augmented Reality, or AR for short, revolutionized the eCommerce industry. It gives potential customers better insights into the product’s appearance. For example, Jeep has been using AR to provide a better experience to their users online. You can view inside of their vehicle, add or remove options and see how they would look in the car.

There are AR WordPress plugins that you can install and activate on your website. On the other hand, Virtual Reality is often used in the Real-estate and tourism industry as it would help clients look at the house thoroughly before making a trip to the property and view the place in person.

3. Video Background

Having a video background has always been a trend in website design. However, it has gained a lot of popularity in recent years because it can grab visitors’ attention and reduce the bounce rate. However, some designers believe that having a video background can increase the loading time of a website and since a lot of people care about the loading speed of a website having a video background is pointless.

But having an optimized video background can leave a great first impression, and it can be used to give out more information and the type of information you can’t express in words and prefer visitors to see it for themselves in a video. If you are struggling with user engagement on your WordPress website, we recommend following this trend and adding a video background to your website.

4. Minimal Design

Having a minimal design is very important as fast load speed is growing. Having a minimal website design can directly affect your website’s speed and, most importantly, SEO, leading to a higher ranking in Google and similar search engines.

5. Multipurpose WordPress Themes

WordPress is the best CMS globally, and it’s currently powering 36% of websites on the internet. WordPress is being used in a variety of industries. Multipurpose themes are slowly replacing WordPress niche-based themes as they offer more demos, features, and, most importantly, cost-effectiveness. A multipurpose website can be used for all sorts of the website due to the features they offer.

6. Single Page Design

As mentioned above, a minimal WordPress website is proven to work wonders for speed and ranking high in search engines such as Google. Over the years, single-page designs have gained popularity and have been used for a variety of websites. A single-page WordPress design is perfect for highlighting important information by removing distracting features and elements of a website.

7. Chatbots

Having a chatbot or some digital assistant is favored by both small and large companies as they bring 24/7 pre-designed responses to various questions that you think users may ask. It gives the impression to the customers as if their questions are being taken care of by a real-time agent behind the chat. Chatbots have been effective as it prevents customers from staying in large queues to chat with a real person. A chatbot can handle multiple inquiries at any given time by providing instant responses.

8. White Space

We talked about minimal design above and how it can take your website and place it in a better ranking in different search engines. Having white space in your minimal design is the key to catch your visitors’ attention. By having white space, you automatically convince visitors to focus on the important information you would want them to see. As a result, it increases visitors’ engagement on your website, and it may lead to a call to action being clicked.

9. Mobile UX – Thumb Scrolling

With the rise of smartphones and the features they offer, many people have been spending more time on their smartphones and often make purchases, visit websites, etc., online with their phones. Therefore, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly WordPress website. Younger people tend to hold their phones in one hand and use their thumbs to navigate through the website and click on icons, links, etc.
Therefore, it is crucial to design your website so your visitors can navigate through your website with one finger.

10. eCommerce Improvements

In 2020, due to the pandemic, many people had started an online business with WordPress or any other content management system. In 2020, due to the lockdowns across the world, the postal systems were struggling to keep up with the requests. As a result, in 2021, it is strongly believed a way will replace the postal system, and there will be many improvements coming to the eCommerce of WordPress. For example, digital currencies have been replacing regular payments in many eCommerce websites.

11. Broken Grid Layouts

A popular WordPress website design trend is the broken grid layout. People highly love elements that overlap with one another on the web as this type of layout can break the dullness of a website. Keep in mind; broken grid layouts aren’t meant to be used for every website. However, you can use this type of grid to create a personal-looking website.

12. Vibrant Colors

Nowadays, vibrant colors and high saturations are the key players of every website. Colors can have a significant impact on people’s emotions. Choosing the right colors for your WordPress website can determine whether your design gives visitors a good feel or makes them look the other way.

13. Illustrations

Illustrations on both header and footer can tell a great story. Using customized illustrations, you can make your WordPress website or a client’s website more personal while telling a story about what they do. However, the key to having a great illustration is to find the one that matches your brand and what you are trying to say.

14. Backgrounds

You have probably seen headings in the background before on many websites. Having headings in the background helps your visitors focus on different parts of the website and focus more on the message you are trying to get across.

15. Mobile Friendly

As mentioned above, having a mobile-friendly theme is crucial as many people use their smartphones for their day-to-day tasks or for a simple search on Google to purchase a product. Having a responsive design enables you to be amongst those websites that Google finds mobile-friendly and prefer to display them rather than displaying a website that is not mobile-friendly at all.

16. Sliders

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, having sliders can transform your website. They enable you to display the crucial messages on the homepage with a call to action. You can use sliders to highlight a product, services, etc., that you would like your visitors to see as soon as they visit your website. Sliders are very important as they are the first element that users see, and they can determine whether they stay on your website and scroll down to explore more or leave immediately.

17. Hero Image

The hero image is the large image below the header of websites. Nowadays, many websites that are following the “having a fast loading website” rule use hero images as images can be compressed and optimized for both SEO and speed. Also, you can use sliders to have multiple hero images.

18. Typography

Typography is considered to be the most important design tool of a WordPress website. In web design, having creative typography can take your site to a whole new level. With the right typography, you can highlight the crucial parts of a text, add animation, etc.

19. Split Screens

Having a creative web design can make your website stand out from your competitors. The split-screen layout breaks your website and split it into two sections, and you can maximize the space of each page or section of your website. This layout is often used for real estate agencies where they would like to showcase a house and give out crucial information about the property.

20. Parallax

The parallax effect can give your website more depth. The parallax effect is mostly used in the background. Imagine having a big image in the background, and while you are scrolling down, you can see different parts of the image. Moreover, this effect can also be used on a text or any other small elements.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed the top 20 WordPress website design trends of 2021. These are just trends that web designers or a WordPress website design company follow; it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to follow every single one to have a highly visited website. Which of these designs are you going to implement on your WordPress website? Which one of them are you already using? Let us know in the comment section down below.

WordPress tips and tricks for designers that we regular people know nothing about programming or web design know about. Therefore, some web design agencies that are masters in WordPress know how to design a beautiful WordPress website that is ready for both visitors and Google crawlers.
In this article, we would like to discuss top WordPress website design tips that you need to know before getting into designing a WordPress website on your own.

WordPress Tips and Tricks for Designers

So within the first few minutes of visiting your website, your visitors can guess what your website is all about, and your website actually determines whether your business is trustworthy enough for the services they require. If your website is rather hard to understand, as in the layouts is difficult to read, the price table is off the page, etc. it may be a good idea to understand WordPress website design tips and start optimizing your WordPress website in order to keep your visitors interested and make them return.

What are these tips that you need to know before starting a WordPress website? or if you already have a WordPress website, understanding these points can help you optimize it.

1. Optimize WordPress for Speed

Optimizing WordPress for speed is the most important tip and almost every single WordPress designer out there strongly believes it is important. According to analytical tools such as Google Analytics and research conducted by SEO specialists, a website’s speed affects everything from user satisfaction, amazing bounce rate, and most importantly, conversion.

If your WordPress website isn’t performing well enough and the speed is rather slow, visitors won’t stay on your website; in most cases, if your website is taking too long to load, visitors tend to leave open another website for their services or answers. As a result, because visitors are closing your website, search engines such as Google understand that your website is lacking in speed. Therefore, it will directly affect your website’s ranking.

2. One Item at a Time

Your WordPress design mustn’t bombard visitors with information and all the services and products you offer as soon as they visit your website. Instead, they prefer whitespace or, in other words, low visual complexity.

Hence, most WordPress themes have single-column layouts and tend to use tall pages to neat and in order. You may have come across a website where it has sidebars, right rail, etc., and it is tough to find the content you want to see, and as a result, you tend to leave the website, and you wouldn’t want to visit it ever again. Thus, don’t bombard visitors with everything; cut the clutter and make them focus on one content/layout at a time.

3. False Bottoms

As you probably know, most page builders in the WordPress repository both free and premium use page blocks. This function eliminates the need to know any programming language. However, these blocks often come with dark backgrounds, which in the day-to-day world means you have reached the bottom of the website.

Thus, visitors may think they are at the end of your website, and they will stop scrolling down to see the rest of your website; this is called the false bottom. Thus, be careful when choosing colors for your page blocks; if you want to go for dark colors, make sure it is not as dark as your footer. However, we always recommend going for white.

4. Carousels and Sliders

Both carousels and sliders have been popular for years, and they have been used on both small and big websites. But there is a problem for them. If you have them on the first page, which would be your homepage, visitors may only see the first slide; depending on the speed of your carousel.
So, what can you do instead? You can use featured images with call to action button. Or, if you would like to have sliders on your website, try to stack the slides so that the visitors can see all of them by scrolling down.

5. Social Proof

Have you bought anything online recently? You directly purchased a product or looked at its reviews by other people? By looking at reviews of a product before purchasing it, you somewhat trust and understand the product you are going to buy.
The same method should be added to your website. If, of course, you are selling certain services or products that may require people’s testimonials. Having testimonials from real people can push your visitors to make a purchase. According to studies conducted on this matter, 58% of online visitors are more likely to buy what you offer based on reading real people testimonials.

6. Proper Stock Images

It is always recommended to use real images on your website. Whether it is of a product, services, or testimonials of real people, try avoiding stock images. Sure, stock images can save you a ton of time and resources compared to going for real images. But, you’ll find big websites such as Amazon, GoDaddy, etc., prefer to use real images for their products and services that they offer. Having stock images may get you the “cliché” title, and people may not take what you do and offer as seriously as you have hoped.

7. Guide Visitors with Colors

People tend to connect emotionally to colors such as blue and red. For example, red stands for urgent, blue stands for calm. Colors can be part of your brand’s identity, but at the same time, they can be used to catch visitors’ eye toward a powerful call to action such as add to cart.

8. Keep it Simple

Sometimes less is better. In your general WordPress design, you should always take this into consideration. As mentioned above, visitors don’t like too much complexity when it comes down to the visual aspect of your website. Try to rethink how you would like to use your sidebars. However, in 2021, more and more websites update their design by ditching sidebars and going for single-column design.

Moreover, stick to standard designs. You don’t necessarily have to develop a new design that no one has ever seen; you can take the standard design that visitors are familiar with and personalize it to match your brand and the services you offer.

Read More: WordPress 5.7 Updates and Fixes

9. Go with Scrolling

You might ask, what would happen to all the information that you have on the sidebars if you removed them? How are you going to represent them on your website? Well, you can rethink your design and add everything to your homepage or create different landing pages for each of them.
As mentioned above, having tall pages can be beneficial to your website. People prefer to scroll down rather than clicking on various links and going to different pages of your website. It is sometimes essential to trap visitors in your website by presenting them with different URLs that belong to your website. However, for the homepage, try to avoid that and stick to scrolling.

10. Right Order

Whether they are ordered or not, using lists can be ready suitable for showcasing different pages of your website. However, human attention is fickle. People tend to remember the first and last item (URLs) in a list and forget about the middle section. You can take this to your advantage by adding two of your most essential items at the beginning and the end of your list, where visitors are much more likely to remember them.

11. Linking from Services to Blog

So, why do people visit your website? What is the main goal? To convert them into potential customers. So, you should always avoid linking visitors from service pages to your blog posts. In general, in content marketing, people tend to write articles to convert visitors into potential customers. In this case, the customer is ready to purchase. Thus, you should always avoid linking them from service pages to blog posts as blog posts have more distractions, and visitors tend to exit right after reading a blog post.

12. Outbound Links

Before linking other websites on your articles or homepage URLs, think about whether that outbound link can help you convert leads or lead them away from your website and, in some cases, make purchases from your competitors.

13. Social Media Icons in Header

Having social media icons in your header is rather pointless. Because you are trying to make visitors stay as much as possible on your website and potentially convert them into customers. If you have social media icons of your social networking pages on the header, they may click on it as soon as they enter your website and get distracted by social media platforms and what they stand for. Therefore, it is recommended to add them to your footer where visitors are done scrolling your homepage, and they are likely to click on a link.

14. Subheads

Subheads are everywhere on your website, and often they are long and useless, followed by useful information. It is recommended to have small yet useful subheads with extended information rather than long subheads.

15. Long Paragraphs

Try to avoid long paragraphs on your website. Long paragraphs on the homepage serve no purpose. If the information is crucial and visitors must read them, try to break them into simpler sentences that are easier to consume by visitors who tend to scan websites in the first 30 seconds of visiting a website they have never been on.

Conclusion

This article discussed WordPress website design tips that you should know when optimizing your website or launching a brand new website. Did you know any of the WordPress design tips that we mentioned above? Which one of them sounded interesting to you, and which one of them you will be considering using on your WordPress website?