Website and landing page design is constantly evolving. It’s important to keep up with new trends to ensure your website stays relevant and appealing to visitors. We’ve all seen disastrously outdated websites on the Internet, whether it’s clashing colors, poor font choices or difficult navigation.
Here are some new developments in Web design that may be important in 2015:
1. Responsive Design
While responsive websites aren’t exactly brand new anymore, they will be almost essential in 2015 as users increasingly browse from their mobile devices. Consumers expect to access all sites from their smartphones, and not offering this capability can lead to higher bounce rates.
Why will this be more important than ever before in 2015? It isn’t just smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops anymore. Web designers need to consider smartwatches too. Even if you already have a responsively designed website, you may need to make some adjustments.
2. Flat Design
Many websites are moving toward a simpler design. This approach can create a better user experience, especially for content consumption, according to Quintain Marketing. Sites call more attention to the content because there is less clutter on the page. Flat design also loads more easily, further improving the content experience for users.
3. Ghost Buttons
Ghost buttons are partially transparent – they often are utilized as a rectangle of a contrasting color and text over a background image. Some designers include subtle hovering as well.
This new form of button is visually appealing and is one of the best ways to use a call to action over a background photo or image.
In fact, using a tagline and a sleek background image with a ghost button can create a beautiful Web page. Another major trend in 2015 will be larger, higher quality images, so these features complement each other nicely.
4. Typography
Along with point No. 3, visual experience will matter a lot more in 2015. Clean, simple fonts will be deeply incorporated into high converting landing pages. Designers are expected to have better access to free typography kits online, rather than having to purchase expensive sets.
In addition, typography may become more responsive, to go along with the larger trend in Web design. Fonts will be able to adapt to any device used to access a website.
5. Code Automation
In the past, companies need to find someone who could write quality HTML and CSS codes, but there’s now a large supply of skilled coders, Creative Bloq stated.
Now, there are a number of tools that allow designers to do much of the work of front-end coders. While these tools can’t generate code as well as a real person can, they are expected to get more sophisticated over time.
If you are crunched for time and have specific design needs, automatic code tools can create decent designs. Tools can often generate website codes more quickly than a human code, which is important for time-sensitive projects.
6. Simpler Home Pages
If you haven’t noticed, many of these Web design trends are aimed to simplify the user experience. Gone are the days of an overloaded home page. While a landing page may be the first thing a new visitor encounters, it’s important to modernize the main page as well.
Decrease the clutter and focus on the central message of what your business does.
The rest of the details can be saved for landing pages. This approach can create more engagement on your website.
7. Interactive Navigation
Most websites have a navigation bar at the top of the home page, but this is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Many brands have started to integrate the navigation elements into images on the home page for a more creative and unique experience. Because it creates more interactive features, users are more likely to spend a longer time engaging with the different parts of the site.
8. Parallax Scrolling
There have been some major changes with scrolling since the mobile revolution because this can drastically impact user experience. Parallax scrolling is the visual effect that utilizes two or more superimposed layers, according to Search Engine People.
Objects in the forefront are faster and larger than the ones in the background. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this design tactic was first used to create an illusion of depth in movies and video games.
In a Web design context, it can make your website look more modern and create more depth.
Let These Outdated Trends go in 2015
The best and brightest new tactics in Web design don’t stay that way forever. It will be important to let go of some remnants of the past to make room for the methods of the future. Holding on to outdated techniques can inhibit your website experience and potentially alienate customers. Forbes reported on some Web design elements that are no longer relevant:
Text-Heavy Websites
Visual elements are reigning supreme all over the Internet, from social media to landing pages with embedded videos. Sites that have huge blocks of text are quickly starting to look outdated.
- Visual storytelling is becoming more important, with videos, infographics and photos.
- Content is still a critical strategy, but the importance of graphics can’t be overlooked.
Mobile Versions of Websites
This was the standard in the past. Marketers would build a separate version of their websites and redirect customers to it, but this makes for a poor multichannel experience, especially because more than half of all website traffic is expected to come from mobile devices.
In addition, Google prioritizes loading speed in its search engine rankings, and redirecting can cause page speed to slow down. Especially with responsive design, there is no longer any need to redirect to a separate mobile site.
Responsive design also provides a more consistent user experience.
Web design changes all the time, and it can be difficult to keep up. In particular, designers need to prioritize mobile experience and prepare for a more visual Web in 2015.
What Web design trends are you most excited about?
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 8 Web Design Trends for 2015
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