Why I’m Not Chasing Website Design Trends This Year & How It Better Serves You

Every single year, companies and thought leaders across YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., post their ideas on what the new website design trends will be for the new year. These posts receive many likes, shares, and comments and get folks all worked up, but here’s a thought that I’ve benn pondering — WHO has been engaging with those posts. It’s not business leaders. It’s not customers. It’s not the average Joe and Jane. It’s other marketers. As I think about my own website design business and how I will be building websites going into the new year, I want to focus less on “what’s the latest trend in design” and more on “what’s the latest stats say about how people interact with the internet.” 

Why? Because at the end of the day, you want a website that converts and helps you reach your goals, not a work of art that people look at and think “that’s cool” and move on.

So rather than chase design trends this year, here’s what I’m going to be focusing on for my clients: 

1. Design for people, not ideas
2. Design for results, not awards
3. Design around facts, not concepts

Design for People, Not Ideas

When it comes down to it, these design trends are just ideas that people have that may or may not come true. To get their ideas for design trends for the new year, marketing experts will look at some of the biggest brands out there to see what they are doing with their current websites to then say “this will be a trend!” 

Here’s what is hard about trends – they change year to year. Last year, in 2024, the trend was simple, clean, boxed elements, and breathability, but then this year in 2025, the trend is brutalism and “anti-design.”

Basically, if you follow trends, you will have to do a new website every year or two to keep up! And what they don’t tell you is that many of these trendy websites aren’t simple $5,000 websites. Many of the top trending websites can cost anywhere between $20,000-100,000 (I know a few designers that landed that top number for websites . . . pretty nuts, huh?).

So rather than following trends, I plan to design for people. Asking question like:

• What do people expect to see on websites?
• Where do people expect to get more information?
• How do people interact with various elements on the webpage to convert them?
• How can we use photos to tell the story that massive fonts, elements, and 3D vectors?

At the end of the day, your website should be designed for people, not for trends, awards, and ideas because ideas don’t make decisions, people do.

Design for results, not awards

A colleague of mine, Jason Gracia, likes to ask, “Do you want a work of art to show your neighbors, or do you want a [website] that can make you millions?” Honestly, this is an amazing thought and concept. Works of art are designed to be showed and paraded. Websites are machines, resources, 24/7 online sales forces to help you grow and scale your business.

For me and my clients, I strive to make websites that look good, but more than that, I strive to design and develop websites that are proven and tested to work for you. In other words, I want to design websites that help you win.

The best way to figure out what a “win” is for you has less to do with the website design itself and more to do with the strategy and roadmap created at the beginning of the process.

It goes back to the old quote from Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

With your website, we figure out where you are going and then design a website to get you there. Rather than follow the trends to look pretty and hope people get to where you want them to go, let’s guide them to where they need to go.

Note from Marc: Let me say this, though — I 100% design websites that look GOOD because a poorly designed website is almost as ineffective as no website. A good website, though, doesn’t have to win top design of the year award. A good website is better than your competitors, speaks to your audience better than your competitors, and converts better than your competitors . . . which helps you win.

Design around facts, not concepts

When you get to the brass tax, design trends are simply concepts that may or may not ring true. For some people’s websites, maybe your website, you might want a website that is simply jaw-dropping, and that is awesome. One thing that folks don’t always realized is that you sometimes have to pay through the nose to get websites designed by the world’s leading designers. But for most folks, a solid website with a good design moves the needle.

But, there are simple facts that need to be accounted for with any website:

• What do people expect?
• What do people want to find?
• How do you want people to respond to what they find?

I know, I know, those are questions and not facts; however, the answer to these questions are sometimes different for your industry. When you work with me, we discover the answer to these questions.

My Process When Working Together For Your Website

When working with me on your website, my process is a little different. On area that I pride myself in the web design world is being more than a pixel-pusher, but rather, I become a team member. We work together to figure out where you need to go, what you’re doing well, what you aren’t doing well, and provide a roadmap forward, ensuring that your website isn’t just a digital brochure, but instead, it is a 24/7 sales person for your business or organization. Why? Because your website truly is the center of your digital strategy.

Here’s a look into what I did for a few clients to help them figure out their goals, their needs, and their wins in order to build them the perfect website.

Praise Christian Academy:

• The Problem: Praise Christian Academy’s old website was hosted with one of the larger Christian School Website Companies the features offered because their school management software handled all parent communication. PCA also wanted to be known and know their developer to have an ongoing relationship with them so that they aren’t just another number in the system with generic tech support.
• The Plan: We built a new website for just a little more than the price as their annal hosting plan on WordPress so that the website is 100% free from proprietary software. Moving forward, the school will save nearly $5,000 per year with hosting and maintaining their website. Plus, they are officially on a first name basis with their web designer!

CertMike:

• The Problem: Mike Chappel is a University of Notre Dame professor and cyber security export. He sells books and offers free resources on his website, CertMike.com, to help people prepare and pass various cyber security. Mike wanted to work with a local South Bend website designer and developer to give him a better design and help the website confirm his authority in the space.
• The Plan: We restructured his course pages so that people understand exactly how Mike will help them with that specific certification and provide a signup form in the first section to get people to enroll in his free email courses (his email marketing set-up is unreal), rather than wait until the bottom of the page. We also laid out the home page and about page to showcase testimonials, published articles, and content, showcasing his experience.

Underground Laugh Lounge:

• The Problem: The Underground Laugh Lounge is the newest comedy club in the Michiana area (Niles, MI), and they wanted a website that had the ability to sell tickets, resulting in losing money to ticket processing websites and not having 100% of their ticket processing.
• The Plan: The Underground Laugh Lounge’s website is completely self-hosted, allowing for the comedy club to not pay any extra fees outside of the standard credit card fees. Looking forward down the road, I set them up with an email marketing platform that collected the email from every customer (people who paid for tickets) so that we can communicate with them in the future. Now, we have nearly 2,500 email address on their list to contact for future shows, have processed over 5,500 payments, and process over $300,000 of ticket sales in less than a year and a half. We also have set up an online store for folks to purchase items and pick them up at the comedy club.

Water Time: 

• The Problem: James, the owner of Water Time LLC (delivers water to residential and commercial locations), wanted a website for his local business that didn’t just tell people they exist, but rather, create a website that helps them rank high for water delivery in the major cities in Northern Indiana and allow people to select, pay, and order their first water delivery, creating less friction between finding his company and ordering the first round of service.
• The Plan: We built a website that included landing pages for each of the types of people Water Time serves (residential, offices, warehouses, etc.,) and landing pages for each of the major cities. We utilized WooCommerce to allow people to select their water cooler, water types, and extras, pay all subsequent fees, connect that order to QuickBooks, and notify the company to set them up in their recurring billing system for future payments. Plus, Water Time now ranks in the top spots for water delivery in each city we targeted.

Ready To Start Your Website Design Project?

If you’re ready to build a website that is focused on solving your problem than having a piece of art to show your neighbors, fill out the contact form below. After you fill out the form, I will reach back out to you to schedule a call where we can begin the process of helping you show up online and look good while doing it!