As a business looking to create your first website or one simply looking to update an old one it’s hard to decide what features, themes, and techniques to incorporate into your design. Understanding the progression of design trends can be helpful in making those difficult decisions. To understand the trends it’s important to know the two driving themes that have been influencing nearly all of web design: simplicity and mobile compatibility. With these two themes in mind here are 7 web design trends of 2015 to help you with your website.
#1: Long Scrolling Sites – Facebook
Traditionally, websites consisted of a landing page with a navigation bar that would send you around to other pages but this design is on a steady decline to a new format. With the rise in popularity and continued development of mobile devices long scrolling sites have gained a lot of interest in a short period of time.
Long scrolling sites aim to compile the majority of the information from other parts of the website into a single page. This allows traditional and mobile users to simply scroll down the page to get most of the information they need. The end goal of long scrolling sites is to minimize the amount of pages a user needs to visit to find the information they’re looking for and, more importantly, optimize the site for mobile usage.
#2: Scrolling Effects – Seattle Space Needle
Scrolling effects are on a slow rise and are very effective if used correctly. The goal of scrolling effects is to help guide the eye down the page through all of the information you want users to see, however, it’s easily overdone. Scrolling effects are very flashy and can be difficult to use in a way that doesn’t distract your viewer from the information you’re trying to convey. When used correctly, these effects work extremely well with long scrolling pages and come in one of two forms, animated scrolling and parallax scrolling.
Animated scrolling is a fairly simple concept that involves an animation that is triggered when the screen begins to scroll downward. A simple example of this is a line extending to an element on the screen displaying a connection between two pieces of information or adding an emphasis to something.
Parallax scrolling is a little more difficult of a concept to grasp. Rather than having an animation take place on the screen, parallax scrolling effects the speed at which different layers of the background move with the page. Generally, parallax sites are composed of two to three layers that move together but at different paces. The front layer will house the text and information you’re viewing and will often move the quickest. The back layers will then move at a slower pace to create the illusion of depth between the them.
This technique, much like animations, can also be overdone and because of that it’s crucial to be careful how many layers you’re adding. If you use it correctly, parallax scrolling can be just as effective at leading an audience through your page as animations.
#3: Responsive Websites
In recent years smartphones have revolutionized the way that we consume information from the web by putting it at our fingertips at any given moment. This presents a unique challenge for anyone designing a website because they’re now forced to develop for two platforms rather than one. In response to this issue the responsive website was born, allowing an easy alternative to the double development.
A responsive website is a must have in today’s market because it allows your website to scale its size according to the device it’s being viewed on. This ultimately makes your website shrink to fit on a minimized web page of your computer as well as the screen on a mobile phone or tablet. This is crucial for your website because a great deal of the visits to your site will come from mobile users looking for easy access to information in a mobile format.
#4: Simplicity – Google Homepage
The idea that less is more has been around for centuries but it hasn’t been fully embraced in the web design community until recently. Lately there has been a movement toward making everything simpler which is illustrated in the aforementioned long scrolling site. This trend has become one of the largest current movements in web design because it not only makes mobile browsing easier but it also makes your site more attractive and accessible to traditional users too.
In addition to giving an ease of use, a simplistic design also gives your website a cleaner look by reducing the clutter on each page. This design method extends to all facets of the site from colors, though creating a high contrast with a specific color palette, to text, by reducing the non vital information on your site. By giving your site a digital haircut you’re bound to liven up its activity.
#5: Micro-Interactions
Making a website feel alive and interactive has always been a difficult task but this trend has been helping to make it more of a reality. Micro-interactions are the small responses that the site makes to a user’s input. Most commonly it’s a reaction when you hover over a button (Trend #6) or when a response to your input is dynamic based on what you choose.
This method of interaction serves to engage users, getting them more involved with the site and imploring them to explore and see more. In addition to this it also helps lower the impact of objects while still making them noticeable, thus driving the attention toward larger elements like headlines or graphics. This helps to assist the overall movement toward simplicity that’s sweeping through most sites today.
#6: Ghost Buttons and Menus
With the simplistic design gaining momentum the large, eye catching buttons have started to look out of place. Then there were ghost buttons. This design trick gives the site a living feel while having a minimal impact on the design itself, making it perfect for simplistic sites. The low profile buttons are a great way to encourage users to continue onward in the site and explore your content.
Ghost buttons and menus are often no more than outlined text that responds when clicked or hovered on. The micro-interaction (trend #5) that takes place on hovering over these buttons helps entice viewers to click and explore more of your site. By implementing these ghost buttons and menus in key spots it can help to clean up your site and attract users to different pages.
#7: Large Visual Heading and Typography – Holiday Inn
Many techniques now used in website design involve making a high impact in a short period of time. This is often done by minimizing the amount of time it takes for viewers to find the information they’re seeking. High impact designs using large visual headings or typography have been very successful at getting a user’s attention quickly and guiding them to info.
Large visual headers and typography also stem from the simplistic movement by substituting large amounts of text for large, concise headings.This makes a great trend that’s fairly easy to implement for anyone looking to simplify their website quickly. Combine this with a ghost button, some brief information, and a graphic and before you know it you will have a stunning landing page.
If you find that your website is struggling or you just want to give it a new look consider aiming for a clean, mobile accessible design. By making landing pages utilizing large headings and ghost buttons you can entice users to find info. Your main info can easily be laid out for mobile and traditional users using a responsive long scrolling site format to display the information they’re looking for. additionally, implementing a scrolling effect to guide them and some micro-interactions could be the last steps to your newest customer.