Today’s competitive websites are designed for a mobile world, with emphasis on video content engagement and crisp content blocks designed to captivate visitors and convert visitors to customers. We take a look at popular web design trends that clients are currently requesting and ones that we think will be popular in 2015.
Go Responsive, Now! Sleek, brilliantly mobile and intuitive, responsive websites are the ultimate in user engagement for web design today. Responsive websites started gaining traction during 2012, when more businesses realised that mobile engagement was a mandate. As mobile device usage surged, the need for mobile-friendly websites fast became essential, driving web designers to create sites that looked brilliant on any device. The beauty of responsive websites is they employ coding that actually changes the layout and content displayed, depending on the device viewing the website. Text is always clear, easy to read and images are always enjoyable, even on a smartphone. Responsive web design has been an increasing trend since 2012 and, for 2015, it is nothing less than a mandate for competent and competitive web design.
Elegant Design: Clean, minimalist designs eliminate the risk of cluttering up a website and present an ideal design approach for clearly and purposefully presenting design and content elements in a concise, clear fashion. Simple splashes of colour can add creative elements to a clean minimalist design – one that expresses a business or brand in a conceptually stark, yet appealing, manner. Minimalist designs make great use of simplicity and outstanding, creative play with typography and even whitespace.
Typography: Picking the right font can split the hair between a sleek site and an out dated one. Beautiful fonts and typefaces will become a staple for all brands looking to give their website serious standout. How can you capitalise on the typography trend in 2015? As desktop screens get larger, designers have more real estate to play with than ever before. Therefore, text is larger to get bigger, bolder and have more breathing room on the page. Variation of font weight should also be used to break the mould and produce a layered effect.
Video Engagement: Today’s websites require powerful visual content, particularly videos. Videos are engaging, authentic and great for mobile users. There is a mobile video revolution happening right now. YouTube is No. 2 in search engines. Some 40 per cent of YouTube’s traffic now comes from mobile devices. Videos provide an opportunity to quickly engage your website visitors, allowing them a fast platform to be informed and delighted. Today’s web surfers want to be mesmerized and entranced. Videos are an effective visual content tool for intriguing website visitors to learn about your business—and navigate other pages of the website for increased awareness.
Card Design: Are cards the future of website design? They are certainly web design’s present. Card design layouts are highly functional and effective mechanisms for conveying rapid-fire content in concise burst – allowing for website visitors to get an immediate glance at products, services, news, philosophy of business and more. Google uses card design! With Google Now, information is shared on simple cards that appear just when the user needs them – immediate information in a clean content carrier. Cards allow websites to deliver information in small, almost snack-sized formats. When visitors are checking out a site on their smartphones, they want to see neatly organized content blocks. Card design gives them what they want, resulting in happy visitors!
Parallax Scrolling: A hot trend in web design is the scroll factor – parallax scrolling. Parallax scrolling is a visually pleasing 3D effect created when the background of a website moves at a slightly slower rate to its foreground. Parallax scrolling gives visitors a pleasant content experience, as an element of depth appears to cushion the content. Smooth animations and unique visual effects are commonplace in the world of parallax scrolling, resulting in a customer-centric design that provides a pleasing navigation and easy content experience.
Ghost Buttons: The enigmatically named ‘ghost buttons’ – also described as ‘naked’ or ‘hollow’ – are transparent buttons displaying calls to action. They commonly feature a very fine outline, and their transparency allows the background image to show through. The release of iOS7 last year contributed to the growth of this minimalistic trend, and they have many advantages when used correctly. Ghost buttons blend seamlessly into the composition of a page, resulting in a finish that is both elegant and subtle. We expect this trend to continue into 2015, especially considering how well they pair with the large background images and videos.
Web design tools, techniques and tricks are continually evolving to deliver a creative, crisp viewing experience for today’s mobile viewers. Websites that capture the very best of what today’s modern designs have to offer will score high marks with their visitors in 2015.