How do you make your company website attractive, fresh and engaging for potential customers? Topping the list of key trends to watch and adopt in 2015, is the essential update that makes your website responsive for viewing on devices with any screen size.
People of all ages are getting more mobile and so are their devices. If your website makes them squint, they’ll leave and find one that is easy to read and that has pages they can swipe through more quickly. Google offers an analysis report of how mobile-friendly your website is.
All that mobile surfing of the Internet has led to another web design trend: the long scrolling website. This type of design focuses content mainly in the center of the page, emphasizing images and decreasing the use of text. Hidden menus are also adding to the new uncluttered feel of website designs. Menus are revealed when hovering over an icon or image, but do not statically appear on every web page. Your company or brand information needs to be concisely written and broken into shorter bits of information linked with “read more” links or an arrow that navigates users to more detail.
Web designers are finding more ways to make those once static websites move. Motion on websites is a trend that helps companies with their storytelling. Big font headers and navigation buttons that respond in ways that simulate turning pages each give the user the feeling that the website is dynamic. Home pages that incorporate slow moving video that describes your company’s products or services are meant to engage the user into an interactive experience with your company or brand.
Two other web design trends for the screen views are split screen and parallax scrolling. The terms may sound complex and even painful, but can provide a visually pleasing website layout. If your company wants customers to focus on two major features, the split screen layout left to right can show a before and after result, or a product benefit on the left and a list of product features on the right side of the screen.
Parallax scrolling essentially moves the background of the website at a variable rate different from the images in the foreground. If you recall the opening of the movie Star Wars, with the story text scrolling up and away into the starry background, it is a good analogy to parallax scrolling design. If you update that moving text with pop-up embedded YouTube videos, stunning photos and short lines of testimonials about your company or brand, you will see how all these web design elements work together to build user engagement with the site.
You may be thinking that adopting these web design trends into your website may be too much bother for your company. A good way to explore what would fit your brand image is to review other websites and take note of what engages you. Discussing what you like on other websites can help your web design professional refresh your website in ways that are uniquely – YOU!
