What are the web design trends and how to pick the right one?

I will quickly answer with one point: you should be supportive of your brand in any design brief you create. Any decisions on what you include or exclude, trends you follow, or ignore, need to be based on what message you want to convey. What is your brand like? What is the feel you want to convey with your website? If you go with 99designs, you should concentrate on building a design brief that expresses your brand values, your sites goals, your target user groups, and the general vibe you want to give. Don't show different trendy sites and say that you want something like this. The whole point of doing something like 99designs is to get a broad range of different design ideas when you yourself don't have them. So don't give a tight box, but rather the ideas that you want to convey and the goals you need to fulfill. On the other hand, I too will advise against using (only) 99designs. My belief is that any company who is solely web-based (as a social shopping discovey platform IMO must be) should have a dedicated designer on the job, working to make sure that the platform is developed continually in the right direction. So many good ideas become REALLY bad ones through continual dilution, small changes to the designs adding up. Also, keep in mind that any design created as a response to design brief is going to be only a first iteration, lacking all solidity. Any design needs to be iterated and grown as a part of the implementation process to be a real success.  Check out 's answer to A good design for a website is a map for your journey along the road, but even a good map is no substitute for actually doing the thing for real. When you have a designer on the team, you are more likely to make development decisions that move you in the right direction. :)

Well, my suggestion would be to avoid using any trend. I've already stated some similar thoughts in my answer to and I'll repeat one of them in here as well: "Design shouldn't relate to a trend or style, and it should be as less present as possible. If you manage to make it that way, people will focus on content, which in most of the cases ( I don't know the nature of business/service your startup provides ) is most important." PS: I would also suggest to avoid 99designs. Since you're planning this thing to grow big, I would advise to hire a designer ( or at least work remote with a freelancer ) that would follow all of the process, understand the needs of the service and make quick changes when it's needed. Designing this kind of service should be a constant sum of changes and 99designs isn't a platform to provide that.

Simple never goes out of style.  Keep it functional and you'll be good.

Heh. I find this question to be like "which horse do I bet on? The one with the white star on his nose, or the one-year-old morgan?" You bet on a trend, and you hope you're right. Of course, as with the races, a little research goes a long way. Look at what you intend. As you say, a "social shopping discovery platform". There are others out there, possibly in a similar niche to yours -- look at what they're doing. Network with some end-users, and get their feel of the interfaces as they currently exist. See what current sites do right, and what they do wrong. Do the right things, avoid doing the wrong ones. As to the design brief, the designer should be involved in the above process. Often, designers will create "roles", or a complete character to test your designs against. These roles will have a life story, family, job, etc., and will give you insight into some reactions. How would my mom (a 70-ish YO yankee lady, very set in her ways but actively social online) handle your site? How would her experience differ from a twenty-something male student at UCLA on a bender? You can't get the "right decision," only a decision you (and your team) can live with. Of course, the beauty of well-designed HTML is that the CSS determines the design style, and that can be staged and re-implemented with minimal changes to the actual pages themselves. So yay for that, anyway...