Just as important as creating a website is keeping it up-to-date. While web design trends can take years to reach the market, technological innovations emerge at an ever-increasing rate and directly impact the user experience of websites.
Check out 5 website trends that could make a difference in 2016:
1. Flat design has gained more traction
With the strong appeal of responsive design, flat design continues to be popular. Focusing on content, making it easier to read, and highlighting colors, but without overly dramatic visual effects, websites are lighter and load faster.
A good example is the new logo of googleWith a flatter design and using a sans-serif font, it was noted that this new formatting reduces the size of files used on websites, making them easier to read even on lower-end devices.
Minimalism has become the key to effective content.
2. Social media may be saturating
You already know that social media is an incredible tool for reaching your audience more easily. The problem is that with the platform's success, its use may be saturating. Facebook recently changed its algorithms and started showing only the most relevant posts to each user. Therefore, unless your followers update their settings to continue seeing all of your company's posts, you risk losing visibility.
It's best not to focus your efforts solely on social media, but to diversify. In this case, investing heavily in good old-fashioned email marketing can yield positive results.
3. Frameworks as components
Second Jowita Ziobro, the new role of technology for the web is to reduce complexity and increase semantics. In 2016, scripts should be like Google Analytics and component-based frameworks.
4. The different menu and scroll bar trends
Menus and scroll bars are a big unknown, and it can be difficult to adjust your website to the trends right away, especially since they've been experiencing so many variations this year.
The menu can be in any corner of the screen and be visible or not.
Scrolling can be long, making navigation easier and reducing clicks on various menu items, but making it harder to find content. Or it can be long, finding content faster but running the risk of reducing the user's time on the website.
The tip is to test the different options for a certain period, and find out which one is most efficient for your company.
5. Speed
To retain users, any website needs to offer a good experience, and this must be taken into account when creating it.
With the widespread adoption of 4G connectivity, internet speed is no longer a problem for browsing and downloading. Therefore, a configuration that loads content quickly has become a must.
A good website must be essentially functional, so it's crucial that design and development are aligned. No matter what your product or service is, following trends and staying alert to market changes can not only prevent you from losing leads but also help you convert them.
