The best design advice one can ever receive is to never follow a trend blindly. First, check if each feature suits your industry and audience. Does it help you get your message across? How can you benefit from it? Here, I’ve collected some of this year’s most crucial web design trends. Each has its pros and cons, so choose from them wisely.
Mobile-Friendly
Making your site responsive and mobile-optimized became more important than ever, especially after Google rolled out its recent ranking algorithm update. It’s not just about RWD. It’s about rethinking your website’s look and feel. The trend is fast-spreading, but how often do clients order from you using their smartphones? Maybe it’s better to make sure your site looks stunning on larger screens?
Hidden Main Menus
Due to mobile screen limitations many websites hide their main menus on mobile devices when making their websites responsive. You can also see this element on many desktop site versions. Unfortunately, this solution is not quite user-friendly. Some of your audience may have difficulty finding it or understanding the icons. Sometimes, a more old-school way is better.
Scrolling vs. Clicking
Scrolling is much more convenient than clicking, especially on mobile devices. That’s why there are more websites with long pages and several screens of content. In some cases the whole website is turned into a single page. Such designs are often quite convenient for users, but they may become a real problem for SEO. Take SEO requirements into account. Maybe adding another page is not so bad?
Ghost Buttons
Ghost buttons are great. They are not quite call-to-actions, but rather a subtle way to attract users’ attention. To avoid being unnoticed, check the overall page layout from a usability point of view and test the visibility of your buttons.
Large Background Images and Videos
Yes, appealing, large background visuals add a powerful and elegant look to your site, yet not everyone goes for it. Why? First, such elements can be quite heavy and may overload browser cache. Second, in some cases texts and even whole menu items and menus become invisible because of the color scheme of the background image.
Oversized Typography
The bigger, bolder, better type was the trend of 2014 and it has maintained its popularity. It’s an efficient way to grab your visitors’ attention. It’s especially great if combined with large background images and ghost buttons. Just don’t forget about the copy. Your message should be short, catchy, and smart.
Storytelling and Interaction
Speaking of content, sometimes words are not enough. Let your website tell your story. With fancy animations and fun interaction ideas, you will make your clients say, “Wow!” This is not going to be easy though. Be prepared to compromise on things like accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, page loading times etc.
Trends come and go. The best thing to follow is common sense. Be careful and listen to yourself. Keep an eye on your competitors and get inspired with the leading brands, but remember that the main goal for most websites is to serve business needs of their owners (generate leads and sales) and not just bring fun to the visitors or win design awards.