Trends are changes that occur across all aspects of life and professional fields. There are trends in medicine, fitness trends, fashion trends, and so on. And the interesting thing about trends is that they come and go, bringing about an evolution in how we humans interact with one another and elements of our environment.
In this post, we’ll be looking at web design trends that are going to change the face of web development and define user experience through the rest of 2017. Regardless of what you use the internet for, you can expect to come across these defining changes quite a lot.
Taking a minimalistic approach to web design
The idea of minimalism in web designing is taking on an interesting path in 2017. Instead of homepages being crowded with an overload of content, site visitors now get to land on pages with less content and yet enough information.
This is usually accomplished by presenting the homepage as a “card”, that is, an entry point that serves as a portal to more information. Cards aren’t reserved for use on just the homepage but can also serve on other pages of a site. Netflix is one website that has made maximum use of this minimalistic approach.
By going minimalistic, sites are less cluttered, aesthetically pleasing due to the predominance of visual content, and offer easier navigation. An apparent winning combo that site visitors prefer.
Mobile-first approach
It’s no longer a secret that the future of online activity has shifted from the computer to handheld mobile devices. Thus, the mobile-first approach to designing websites is the ongoing trend has website owners and companies begin modifying their websites to be compatible and viewable across all mobile platforms. Google has further fuelled this trend by favouring and ranking mobile friendly sites higher than non-mobile friendly ones.
Long-scrolling websites
A long scrolling site, also known as a bottomless website, is designed to enable a user explore a website without having to leave the current page. Upon scrolling to the end of a page, you are seamlessly transferred to another page so it seems like the entire site is one long page. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have all benefitted from this design and many web owners are looking to benefit from this trend in 2017.
An increased appreciation for responsive design
Responsive website design isn’t exactly a new trend, but the trend itself has evolved in 2017 as more brands and companies are moving to have their sites become more responsive-based.
Responsive design is basically developing a site with the aid of CSS media queries and dynamic grids/layouts. The purpose of this is creating a dynamic site that can automatically adjust itself to become compatible with the display settings of various devices – You have to admit that’s a useful feature especially in this age where mobile users have taken dominance over PC users.
Why businesses are all jumping on the responsive design bandwagon is because they get to pay for developing a single site that can effectively serve their customers across all devices – small screen of handhelds and large screens of desktops.
With all encompassing toolkits such as Foundation 6 framework from Zurb, you have access to pre-built HTML, JavaScript patterns, and CSS that can help you and your developers easily get a trending mobile-friendly site.
Exciting, gorgeous, and meaningful typography
Typography/font has become more than just the format of text. It is now a versatile and powerful visual tool that can exude personality and set the tone of a website. Designers are beginning to make use of larger, bolder text that push the limit of typography and scream their message in an appealing form to users.
The preference for large and full screen fonts is another form of the minimalistic approach. Instead of lots of words, now you get short, poignant sentences backed and emphasized by images that drive home the text’s point
If you’d like to hop on the typography trend to improve your site, you can visit Typewolf. It’s a great blog that focuses on trends in digital typography.
Authentic photography instead of stock photos
Stock photos have lost favour with the masses. Users now want inspiring, dazzling, entertaining, and emotional photographs that speak to them, and businesses have made sure to make the most of this trend. Pictures have always been a big part of web designing, but now, people want authenticity in photographs presented to them by brands. The imagery presented by authentic photographs have the power to move a user to either be part of a brand or simply ignore it. And it’s not just photographs, videos, animations and other media have begun coming to the forefront.
The power of GIFs and other animations
Website design has begun a gradually accelerating move away from using only static imagery and has begun embracing other ways to engage and communicate with users via animations.
While this trend is on the rise, it’s worth keeping in mind that overusing animations can lead to slow site loading speeds. Nonetheless, animations have proven to be especially effective in drawing the curiosity and attention of users. And the availability of several GIF tools like Photoshop, Giphy, and so on means you are not limited on how to go about creating them.
Soon enough, more brands and businesses will begin using animations to both entertain and communicate their services to consumers and non-consumers alike.
The rise of Videos
Gone are the days when online content was all about the written.
Properly using colours and images, a website’s content becomes alluring. But when videos are properly inserted, the allure of your online content is taken to a higher level.
This ties in to the power of animations as an effective means of entertaining and communicating information to users. Because a video is definitely more engaging than written content, it is clear it has more power to keep a user engaged. Evidence of this can be seen in the popularity of YouTube and other video sharing platforms.
Consumers already favour videos to get their information because videos deliver more information in less time and are less tedious to follow.
According to Hubspot, by 2018, 79% of internet traffic will be video while 50% of current mobile traffic is already thanks to video. That said, it is clear video content is already a huge trend and is set to only get bigger.
Engagement bots are becoming popular
Engagement bots like chat bots are now being used to deliver a more engaging user experience. This is because bots are being used to deliver more effective and accessible customer service to users.
Bold Colours
More brands are becoming bolder in their use of colours to improve the visual appeal of their site. Applying bolder colours in designing a website attracts more attention from users as they are provided a more colourful and aesthetically pleasing site rather than a bland one. In 2017, you can expect to see more brands experimenting with colours to express their identity and purpose.
This list is not exhaustive and not all of the mentioned trends might apply to you. But knowledge is power and you are now better informed on how to position yourself to manipulate 2017’s web trends to your advantage.
