Website design trends come and go surprisingly fast—and not paying attention to the trends can potentially affect your bottom line.
For instance, it was once thought to be “cool” to have as many bells and whistles (Flash features, videos, images, plugins) on a website as possible. But an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to web design will likely slow down page load times, which will prevent people from sticking around to check out what you have to offer. This is just one of the many reasons to be aware of web trends if you want to present a site that’s going to encourage visits and conversions. Take a closer look at the first half of our two-part installment of Web Trends: What’s Hot and What’s Not below!
Hot: Asymmetry
Breaking the mold of conventional design styles is an ongoing trend that’s likely to continue. More website designers are finding creative ways to embrace asymmetric layouts that are purposely off center in one direction or another. It works because it creates new focal points for the eye when a visitor first arrives.
Not: Homepage Carousel Content
Carousels are those rotating visuals or blocks of text and images that highlight different aspects of a brand. Putting keywords within carousels can diminish their value and make it difficult for Google to properly index your site. Plus, only one percent of website visitors click on carousels and many tend to ignore them altogether.
Hot: Open Composition
Web design has literally gone out of the box with open composition layouts. It simply refers to creating the illusion that there’s something more—beyond what’s on the actual screen. It can be effective because it breaks the mold of having everything nice and neat and contained.
Not: Hidden Navigation
Because of the need to get more content on websites, the hamburger menu (those three lines in the corner of a website) has become the most common type of hidden navigation used on websites. This design can alienate visitors to your site who aren’t accustomed to searching for features or automatically looking to see what’s behind those horizontal lines.
Hot: Increased Diversity and Richer Backgrounds
What we’re seeing instead of a “standard”, simple and minimalist approach to website creation is more diversity with designs, such as splitting apart headers, paragraphs of text and icons—as well as the use of various geometric figures. This trend typically includes:
- Overlapping elements (e.g., text partially over photos)
- Enormous headlines with thin separator and decorations
- More backgrounds and patterns (dots, dashes, stripes, etc.)
- Grid patterns
Not: Frustrating Load Screens
At one point, it was thought to be a good idea to put on a “dog and pony show” to welcome visitors to your website. However, the issues with complex load screens and mandatory intros are numerous. No one wants to be forced to sit through a mandatory introduction, which can result in visitors’ bouncing off of your site.
Trends come and go, so make sure your website stays up-to-date with the latest trends, techniques and technology by partnering with Comit Developers for all of your web development needs. Don’t let your marketing efforts suffer from an obsolete website—when it comes to your brand, cutting corners just doesn’t cut it.
