Every year the "10 web design trends" lists arrive, and every year businesses pay to install what will read as a period diagnosis two years later. I'm a designer — I'm supposed to love trends. I love client money more. Here's what's fashionable right now that you can skip without losing a thing.
What you can safely ignore
- AI gloss. Identical gradient blobs, glass cards and shimmering generated illustrations have become visual noise: sites blur into one. The irony is that the "AI look" now reads as "made without a human" — and lowers trust.
- Scroll hijacking. When the page scrolls "cinematically" instead of the way users expect. Impressive for the first 5 seconds, irritating for the next 50. It has never lifted anyone's conversion.
- Video backgrounds on mobile. They eat data and battery, drag LCP — and nobody admires them on a 6-inch screen.
- Brutalism for its own sake. Works for galleries and fashion brands with a strong art director. For a clinic or a construction firm, "raw" design reads as broken, not bold.
- Custom cursors and chasers. Mouse trails, circle cursors… On touchscreens — most of your traffic — they simply don't exist.
"Trends" that are actually permanent principles
Speed. Mattered ten years ago, matters today. No trend is worth +2 seconds of loading.
Readability. Big text, honest contrast, air. The small-grey-font fashion comes and goes — reading is forever.
Honest photos and numbers. A real team, real work, real results. This "trends" exactly as long as trust exists.
A simple test for any trend
Ask: "will this help my customer understand the offer faster and buy?" If yes — it's not a trend, it's a tool; take it. If the answer is "well, it looks modern" — it's decoration at your expense. What makes a site modern isn't the year of its tricks but whether it solves the job faster than competitors.
When design genuinely needs a refresh
- Conversion falls on stable traffic — the site stopped persuading
- Positioning or audience changed — the design talks to the wrong people
- The mobile version was squeezed, not designed
- The site is 5+ years old and slower than competitors
How we approach design that sells — in our breakdowns of 9 conversion moves and safe redesigns.