Okay, we all know technology changes weekly these days and next to impossible to keep up with every change and trend out in digital world. What is important is the changes in website design and technology that is becoming an important part of your company brand and business communications.
Th nice thing about new website design is just that, the sites are now being DESIGNED, rather than just ugly content dumped in an unstructured manner. Better font choices and the ability for amazing typography can mean the difference between a website that engages your visitors or turns them away (More on this a little later).
So back to some basic new design directions now being utilised around the world.
1. Flat Design
If you’ve noticed a distinct simplifying trend in web design, that’s not your imagination – that’s flat design. Rather than relying on shadows, bevels, textures and gradients to communicate a 3D look, flat design instead employs typography and colours to simply distinguish one design element from another. This results in a “flat” look and puts the emphasis of flat design on functionality/speed rather than style.
2. Responsive Layouts
Responsive design isn’t so much a “trend” as it is an absolute must for all websites, born out of necessity. With more and more users turning to smartphones and tablets to do their web browsing, it’s essential that business websites adjust to fit a variety of screen sizes, so that users can easily read, navigate, pan and scroll. Responsive design does this automatically, based on a visitor’s device. This provides infinite improvement over mobile-specific sites, which are usually just a normal site shrunk down to a smaller size. Web visitors are much more likely to bounce away from mobile sites that are difficult to navigate or look unseemly, and just expect responsive design.
3. Parallax Scrolling
How can you express movement on a 2D website? Why, with parallax scrolling, of course. One of the biggest trends of the moment, parallax scrolling essentially means moving the background at a slower rate than the foreground to impart the illusion of action.
4. Fixed Header Bars
Back in the olden days, menus that appeared across the top of the page disappeared when you scrolled down, meaning that you’d have to go all the way back to the beginning if you wanted to click on “Home” or “About.” Not so with fixed header bars, which keep those headers in sight at all time. For those of you who are experienced with Excel, think of this like freezing a top row of cells, except way more stylish.
5. CMS (Content Management System)
Whether you’re setting up a corporate website, a standard blog or just want to announce your presence on the web, the age of hand-coding HTML pages and CSS is long behind us. These days all it takes is to purchase hosting and install a content management system (CMS) and can build a website that looks highly polished, displaying the very content that you wish to share with the world.
Word Press – Easily the most accessible and possibly the most commonly used, the strength of WordPress is in its quick installation and the massive user and developer community that results in a vast array of plugins and enhancements for the platform.
We are always researching the latest changes online so you don’t have to!