In past few years, we have seen a lot of shifts in the website design and development domain. 2016 is anticipated to be the year of many advancements in web design; and I have summed up some of them here.
- Technology advancements: Sitecore and Magento 2.0 are evolving as two advanced website development platforms, which a business can look upon.
- User behavior: Users are much more impatient now a days, and fast access to your website will win them. People tend to switch to other sites if your website doesn’t load quickly. Also, the social channels are important aspects of building your presence on internet, where users spend most of their time. Plan social campaigns – either paid or organic to enhance your presence.
- Content Management System (CMS): It is a must to have for your website as it keeps your website up-to-date without depending on developers every time. CMS helps you manage your content on your own – as a business executive, as marketing executive, or for that matter even an HR executive.
- Simplified website navigation: Simplified and predictable model of navigation is the need of the hour. Present important things up-front and make browsing a comfortable experience for your visitors. A very neatly designed navigation I found is of TIME magazine.
- Responsive design: Most of the websites that were perfectly fine few years ago might not stand out today in the light of modern design trends. Mobile/tablet views of website must provide seamless experience to your visitors. You may want to refer – https://advaiya.com/
- SEO friendly structure: Search engine algorithms keep on updating frequently, so do the websites. Always make sure that the website structure is appropriate and live for a longer time. Quick fixes on website structure will let you end up spending more in meeting all the SEO standards.
- Right content strategy: CONTENT, which has been the king of website since past couple of years, will still remain the king and need to be written keeping your audience as well as search engines in mind.
- Social sharing: Social media plays an important role in digital marketing trends of 2016; hence your content should be available on social as well. Allow your visitors to share more and more content on their social network by providing quick social sharing options. Some readily available tools in market are addthis, sharethis or Pay-with-a-tweet.
- Touch friendly: Make sure that your website is touch friendly. Mouse-over is not that effective now, because in case of touch devices, it doesn’t exist anymore.
- Sliders/banners: Sooner or later, these might probably end. Businesses now generally have a unified messaging and only want to focus on that. Adding multiple sliders on homepage dilutes the messaging. You may want to visit https://advaiya.com/ for reference.
- Apps: For e-commerce business to sustain in 2016 and further, mobile app is a must as it makes the customer through a better and comfortable journey. It helps keeping your prospect stick to your offering and avoid comparison with other similar portals. With strategically designed apps, the decision making time becomes less and people end up buying more quickly.
Apart from these, some other enhancements could be around the usage of new icons, fonts, typography and custom graphics, as there is a wide variety available to choose from now when compared to a few years back. Also, always make sure that your visitor get to know more about you and your existing customers, and their thoughts. Few things that could help are – highlighting the reviews, case studies and client testimonials on your website to help visitors relate themselves and take a step ahead in engaging with you.
These are my thoughts on latest web design trends. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts on these.
