Your website design is the first thing to grasp your visitors’ attention. It does not matter if it is powered by WordPress, Jооmla!, Drupal, another CMS, or it is a custom web solution. The right appearance inarguably contributes to great user experience. Having an eye-catching and user-friendly web design is a must.
Nowadays design trends are rapidly changing, keeping track with the latest software and hardware technologies. We present to you a few current trends in web design to be followed when creating new or redesigning old web projects.
This trend has been growing for a few years now and won’t go out of fashion soon. More and more web designers choose minimalism and get rid of insignificant design elements. 3D and flash elements are giving a way to flat design, beautiful images and more functionality. The material design introduced by Google for Android is now gaining popularity also for desktop applications. Material design can be defined as a next level flat design as it is characterized by the use of typical shadows. You can learn everything about it on the official Google page.
About a year ago, the company announced that mobile-friendly websites would rank higher in search results. Furthermore, responsive design was strongly recommended as a technique for ranking boost. This inarguably urged many webmasters to think in this direction and imposed the need for using responsive design and themes. You can get inspired by numerous interesting examples.
More and more users are relying on smartphones and tablets to reach the Internet. Mobile websites have their own style and are distinguished by simple menus hiding submenus. The so-called “hamburger” menu, widely known from mobile versions, nowadays is more often seen in website desktop versions. Pages are now “longer” which suggests a longer scroll. Traditional design makes users go from one page to another. But today the whole web content might be displayed on a single page as navigation buttons lead users to different sections of that page. As a result, a need of navigation buttons (up/down arrows) arises to show you where you are located and if there is any information which is not displayed on your screen yet.
Larger fonts grab the attention, making the message memorable and they call to action. That’s why while browsing the web, we often notice short messages written with big, beautiful letters. The forecast for 2016 predicts wide usage of various fonts in different colors.
Tip: It is a good idea for the short slogans on banners or sliders to be written only in capital letters to get the visitors’ attention. However, we do not recommend that you write long capitalized messages because afterwards the text is difficult to read.
Images are also growing larger, especially when used as backgrounds. They need to be responsive so as to look equally good on smaller screens and mobile devices. The trend for emphasizing on good quality images will go further, but with modifications. Natural photography has been a most popular choice these days. White background images are used less often.
Video backgrounds are becoming more popular. To achieve the desired result they should be made in a proper way and must contain useful information. The really good video background is good-looking, short and it sends a meaningful message.
The trend for presenting information as an image will keep growing. Infographics are impressive and they can display complex information in a simple way. Moreover, people love sharing them. Webgraphics are even more exciting. They resemble infographics but are interactive. The user is expected to take an action (such as – to click a button) so that different parts of the information are loaded.
Cinemagraphs are still images with a subtle movement element, resembling a slight animation effect which is locked inside the image. Up-to-date websites use them very often.
Every single day we see the spinning wheel signifying that we shall wait a given page to be loaded. Loading animations and animations in general are soon to be inseparable part of the interface, not only as an illustration, but as a functionality. You can check one great collection of examples.
Interactive storytelling content evokes emotions and makes users share, like, comment. It is not enough only to have an interesting story and share it. The story should be told in a powerful visual manner. You can find many interesting examples among the visual stories of nytimes.com.
Your website might me stunningly beautiful, but it is not a successful strategy to make the visitors wait for a long time until it’s loaded. So optimize – design your site in a catchy and user-friendly way which won’t slow it down.
