Speed, clarity, accessibility, regular updates and SEO-ready content are all best practices that remain essential in 2026 websites.
This post is about the tried and tested practices to remember when new trending design approaches arise.
New website design trends inform how websites may look in 2026, but following best practices determines whether websites are working to the best standard. A website built on these principles can deliver impressive, measurable outcomes, without necessarily checking every trending box.
Use this guide alongside our recent article on 2026 website design trends to determine your priorities.
1. Website speed and performance
Did you know: Websites loading in under 2 seconds generate significantly higher engagement than those requiring 5+ seconds. Google prioritises fast sites in search results, and conversion rates increase measurably with faster load times.
When websites load quickly, visitors stay, explore, and convert into customers. These conversions are essential to online success, making a website’s speed the difference between retaining and losing customers to the competition.
Superfast hosting will keep your website loading rapidly, maintaining the speed visitors expect and search engines reward.
How does my website perform?
Check your website’s current performance using the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool to identify quick wins to improve speed and performance.
2. Clarity over confusion
A website’s purpose is to give visitors the information they need. The clarity of a website determines if they find what they need or leave without engaging.
But what does having effective clarity mean in website terms?
It includes:
- Stating value propositions simply, so the visitor quickly and easily understands what we’re offering, and why it’s beneficial to them
- Enabling quick discovery through navigation, meaning visitors aren’t confused trying to find a contact page or description of services
- Using accessible language that is appropriate for all readers, including those using assistive technology
- Making the next steps clear and guiding them through the user journey.
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Research shows visitors spend less than a second deciding whether to stay on a website or goes somewhere else. If clarity is missing and content is confusing, we’re faced with more of a challenge to keep them engaged.
Test your audience’s reaction to content
One way to test the clarity of your content would be to look at Google Analytics data, specifically engagement time per page.
This tells us how long visitors spend on a page, alongside bounce rates, which let us know if they left instantly.
Low engagement rate and high bounce rates can indicate that an audience hasn’t found what they’re looking for, or that the content is too confusing. Higher engagement rates and little to no bounces suggest a stronger performing page.
If you’re not sure whether Google Analytics is gathering data on your site, we can take a look for you. For more insight into optimising the visual content on your website, read this guide.
3. Accessible websites for all visitors
Accessible websites are a best practice that expand business reach and improve search performance. Search engines and AI prioritise well-structured content that’s also tailored for those using assistive technology, such as screen readers.
This means that accessibility is a technical SEO advantage alongside being an ethical choice, and it’s an unavoidable best practice in 2026.
Making a website design accessible
Accessibility factors to consider on any website design include:
- Using readable colour contrasts
- Understanding keyboard navigation
- Adding alt text for images
- Having a logical heading structure
- Descriptive link text
- Utilising captions for videos.
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The Creating Adventures website is a great example of this, including the use of an accessibility plugin for a positive user experience, regardless of the user’s abilities.
To get started, use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards as your framework. Audit the website and identify which areas would deliver the most significant impact.
Alternatively, speak to us about adding a specialist plugin that will achieve the key functionality for you.
4. Create content that’s SEO and AI search ready
Search visibility depends on search engines’ understanding of website content, which now includes AI technology and platforms like Gemini, ChatGPT and Copilot. Content must perform in both traditional search results and AI search environments.
Content website best practices to consider
For this website design best practice, we need to focus on the text content, structure and features of each page on their potential ranking. Following SEO best practice requires:
- Clear heading hierarchy
- Keyword relevance that matches what users search for
- Accurate meta descriptions
- Internal linking that connects related topics
- Backlinking to establish trusted sources using Google services such as Google Business Profile or Maps listing
- Fresh and regularly updated content
- Mobile-optimised formatting.
For AI search, answer specific questions directly, include statistics and data with sources, create standalone sections, and write for people first, search engines second.Â
The benefit of optimisation
Organisations publishing consistently see ranking improvements across both traditional search and AI. Content reaches customers through all the ways they now search, and a well-optimised website drives consistent, growing organic traffic.
5. Keeping everything up to date
Regular website updates signal to search engines that content is current and reliable. Fresh content improves rankings, demonstrates active business status to visitors, and enables quick communication of changes to the market.
With many new websites being created every minute, 175 according to Forbes, outdated websites with older content are more likely to perform poorly in search rankings.
What to look out for
When was your website content last updated? Are you able to update text and images easily and add new pages, or does it require technical help? Can team members make changes independently?
Building websites with content changes in mind means using software and tools that create an easy-to-use editing interface.
Websites updated regularly can increase organic traffic and appear more trustworthy to visitors because Google recognises the organisation as active. When updates become manageable, team members can make changes quickly and follow best practice.
We recommend WordPress, specifically Elementor, for an easy-to-edit interface, and all Beech websites are built with the ability to update your own content.
Need help with this? Ask our experts here.
Why these website best practices work alongside trends
Trends describe what’s emerging. Website best practices describe what works.
Website trends, like those highlighted in our previous post, help to inform the direction of a modern website design.
A website addressing these five practices can help keep working at its best despite the continuous changes in design trends throughout the years.
We recommend using the practices outlined in this post, alongside this blog on the 2026 website trends, to create a plan for updating your website.
If you’re ready to talk through those options, book a call with us.